Fat Jon The Ample Soul Physician: Wave Motion (2002)

Lucy Beer

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Published: February 1, 2002

Fat Jon The Ample Soul Physician stays true to his name and displays his abundance of soulful vibes on this, his first full-length release and the mother of all chill-out albums for hip-hop heads. He delves into instrumental hip-hop with refreshing gusto, crafting mellifluous tracks thick with haunting jazz samples, cheerful horns and quirky vocal snippets. His beats are spacious head-nodders that hark back to a time in hip-hop when it was all about the mood, and not the bling-bling. Without resorting to abstraction, Fat Jon's compositions are warm, inviting and aurally stimulating. Fat Jon is clearly on some outer space, cosmic star-gazing kinda s**t — "Wet Secrets" sounds like transmissions from another hip-hop world — but his real genius lies in his ability to translate his innate originality into the musical language of the layman. So what if you don’t understand where he culls his wide-ranging musical references (jazz greats and early 90s hip-hop might be a starting place)? The important thing is that you come away from it feeling relaxed and refreshed. Wave Motion is up there with De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising in its idiosyncratic character and instant likeability. Definitely one for the more reclined moments of your life.

Record Label: Mush Records
Style: Beyond Jazz