Forget your Kendrick/Drake diss tracks, people. The only rapper you need to be concerned with and excited about is Fort Wayne’s Sankofa. Stephen Bryden, better known to the hip-hop world as Sankofa, doesn’t concern himself with all that noise. He’s too busy dropping hot tracks at a startling rate. 

Releasing a new album every month of 2024, April brought us Impossible Bottle Service, an album that came together after an email hit his mailbox. Inside this email? Oh, 80 or so of the hottest beats you’ll likely hear this year, courtesy of beat wizard Chumzilla. 

Impossible Bottle Service is Sankofa at his best, as he usually is. It’s another album of absolute fire.

“Proof of Concept” opens the album, telling the tale of how the album came about. It’s a killer beat (one of many) and Sankofa takes us along on the journey. “Rinse/Repeat” sounds like a Spaghetti Western meets Lawrence of Arabia with a New York twist. “Kashal-Tee” comes in hard with an Annie Lennox name drop. 

Laid right in the middle of this album are two tracks that hit like Mike Tyson in his prime, “Mark Gruffalo” and “Fish To Fry.” “Mark Gruffalo” will make even the most rhythm lacking listener bust a move. “Undeniable” indeed, Kofa. And “Fish To Fry” comes rolling in right after and keeps the street funk going. Funk, soul, and a gritty beat lays out the path for Sankofa to lay down absolute fire on the mic. 

The best art comes out of the purest of inspiration. Be it music, paintings, literature, or film, great art begets great art. Sankofa’s inspiration came in the form of an email with a file containing some killer beats. ’Kofa took those beats and added some amazing rhymes and flow. Impossible Bottle Service is the result. 

Hit play and let Sankofa and Chumzilla take you on a journey.