Kutiman ft: Mejja - Timam (Official Video)

Following the beguiling, tabla-laden double single “Guruji/Majan”, genre-defying producer Kutiman returns with “Timam”, his new single featuring Kenyan rapper Mejja.

Blending scattering afrobeats with an infectious top-line guitar melody, “Timam” is a joyous three minutes of intuitively danceable music, pairing sampled acoustic instrumentation with a club-focused bassline that is punctuated by Mejja’s Genge-referencing verses. It is a track that sits perfectly on the dancefloor or on headphones, evoking the optimism of a sun-dappled landscape filled with hip- swaying rhythm and a head-nodding groove.

“Timam” is a collaboration born out of unique circumstances. Kutiman was initially approached by Google to help launch their crowdsourcing app Task Mate by creating a song made up entirely of music and lyrics submitted by users. Focusing specifically on Kenya, Kutiman set to work sending out requests on the app and he was soon inundated with responses. “I just asked people to play whatever they wanted and we got a load of interesting recordings back,” he says. “Among the sounds of Kenya — background radio and local language — there was some great stuff, like a guitar riff that I sampled the song’s main hook from, as well as chords that made up the chorus.”

This audio collaging method is not unusual for Kutiman, who gained notoriety for his 2009 Thru You projects. Here he edited together clips of amateur YouTube musicians into seamlessly coherent compositions spanning everything from funk to R&B, hip-hop and house. Applying a radically open approach to his source material, Kutiman went on to develop an intuitive aptitude for multiple musical styles, releasing projects based on field recordings made on the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, as well as “Guruji’s” Indian classical instrumentation, and 2021’s album of ambient modular experiments, Surface Currents.