Traffik Island’s Zak Olsen releases hip-hop album with Atlanta rapper Suggs, ‘We Suggs’ – NME.com
Zak Olsen of Traffik Island has released a surprise new collaborative hip-hop album with Atlanta rapper Suggs, entitled ‘We Suggs’ – listen to it below.
The record was made remotely between Olsen’s Melbourne home and Suggs’ in Atlanta sporadically during lockdown over a period of three months. Olsen produced the record with Suggs MC’ing, though Suggs and Daff also contributed to some of the beats.
Olsen’s production on ‘We Suggs’ continues in the cut ‘n’ paste instrumental style of his last album as Traffik Island, ‘Sweat Kollecta’s Peanut Butter Traffik Jam’. The Melbourne artist told NME in an email that the project actually began with Suggs rapping over some of the beats featured on the record.
“We kept going from there and made more of our own stuff. He would have ideas for hooks or samples to use, we wanted to find more of our own sound together,” Olsen explained.
“It’s not quite as sampled as it sounds but there are some on there. Some of the stuff is recycled or even sample my own stuff again, mainly for convenience. You can make things sound like samples if you like.”
Olsen also said they would “definitely” continue to make music together. ‘We Suggs’ is released today (September 8), independently.
Last week, Olsen debuted a new Traffik Island song for Button Pusher, entitled ‘Animals Doing Human Things’. It marked a return to vocal music for the project following the instrumentals of ‘Sweat Kollecta’s Peanut Butter Traffik Jam’, released in February on Flightless Records.
The tracklist of ‘We Suggs’ is:
- ‘TDK’
- ‘Romans’
- ‘Silence!’
- ‘Butthead’
- ‘Start Diggin’
- ‘Thank Christ’
- ‘Pychodisko’
- ‘Clay Jungle’
- ‘Over Easy’
- ‘Pearls’
- ‘One Thing’ – Prod. by DAVE
- ‘Wake Me Up’
- ‘Pointer’