Re-Entry- Sampha

6 Years since Sampha’s last release, ‘Process’, and I’d been feigning for a new album since 2018 (I went back and saw annual tweets of me complaining needing him to release something; anything). August 2023 Comes around and he begins to announce his rollout for his upcoming album ‘Lahai’, and a month later he releases a deluxe edition vinyl pre-order. I scream in my room like a little girl and get full body chills when I make the purchase. The album isn’t releasing for another month and some change at that point, so the anticipation is killing me. I end up getting the CD version a week early in the mail, before it comes out on streaming services. I feel like that guy, what’d I do to get so lucky? For the remainder of that week all my travels in my car, ‘Lahai’ is the only thing I’m listening to. and the Saturday a day after the official Friday streaming service release, I get the vinyl. I open it up and it’s two LPs, “okay cool”. It’s a long album so I think nothing of it, 3-4 songs a side makes sense. But when I open it up and look at the LP art and track listing pamphlets, there’s two new songs. I get chills again, because similar to the experience a week before of hearing the album before it releases, I feel like I’m getting something exclusive, like I’m a part of a cool lucrative group of hardcore Sampha fans who have these new songs that no one else has heard, since the songs were exclusive only to that specific 2LP clear deluxe version of the vinyl. I throw on the 2nd record, and “Re-Entry” comes on. It starts with “Man is a being that flies away from truth even as he pursues it”, a play on a biblical proverb about fleeing something in the approach. After that, a trippy ass modulated synth starts with strings floating in the background, while what seems to be a message to Sampha from his grandmother is playing. IT glitches even more and hits a Pharrell-esque 4 count, and in comes in the beat. You get blown away; your transcendental experience begins with that beat drop.

I never knew I needed to hear Sampha on a trappy type beat like this, but man it's beautiful.