Crate Digging: Sunny Kapoor, Curation Music

Crate Digging is a music discovery platform where contributors take home and discuss two records from across Concord Recorded Music’s active and historical labels.

Sunny Kapoor is managing director at Curation Music. Recent supervision work includes the global Facebook X Olympics campaign, FIFA, and Virgin Media, to name a few. In a virtual crate digging session, Sunny reveals his top two finds. 

Fuck Yo Feelings, a title after my own heart, is a Robert Glasper record I've never really heard, so it was a great chance to delve into it properly. The album has notable features including Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), pianist Herbie Hancock and Loma Vista signing Denzel Curry, to name a few.

Fuck Yo Feelings delves more in the Jazz/Hip Hop hybrid opposed to the more straight jazz of Glasper's other works. It’s fragmented layers are met somewhere in the middle, and fuse with soul and experimental harmonies.

The stand out track has to be “Aah Whoa” which is a soulful, motivational, and inspiring piece, that is also quite contemplative. The lyrics - “Not a failure, just an alternate to success” & “Your perspective is weakened by emotion” hit home as listeners can relate to this at any point in their life. The distant vocals also make listeners feel as if they’re attending a motivational speech.

I can see opportunities on this album for film/TV or brands, especially the track “This Changes Everything” which has notable features from Denzel Curry, Buddy, Terrace Martin, and James Poyser.  

Choosing a catalogue album, Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul was an immediate go to. I love Isaac Hayes so it's great to add this classic album to the collection. For me, alongside Black Moses, it's his quintessential record and the one you need to listen to first if you wish to learn more about Isaac Hayes.

Hot Buttered Soul is a masterpiece that single-handedly invented symphonic soul. It's a tour de force, sweeping strings, funk drums and iconic arrangements. For tracks to be longer than 10 minutes and still hold your attention is no mean feat. The album was arranged by Johnny Allen, who had arranged music for The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, and The Supremes, and who would later do the arrangements on the soundtrack to Shaft.

Standout track “Walk On By” - Where do you start? A Magnum Opus of a record. Throw Burt Bacharach and Hal David into the mix, and a track that was the backbone to arguably Biggie's (The Notorious B.I.G.) greatest record, the Easy Mo Bee produced “Warning”, you have an instant classic.

I've actively been trying to get “Walk On By” on something for ages. It’s the perfect track to open up a film.

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