When Cosmo put a preview of this mix online in early 2005, it crashed the Rub's website in a matter of hours. Like most people, I slept, and never got a chance to hear it until he mercifully pressed up CD copies a few months later. Now it's come to the Lab, and the world can finally feel the love. Clocking in at almost 70 minutes and comprised entirely of soulful 60s & 70s babymakin' music, Love Break is maybe Cosmo's best mix to date, and anyone who's followed this man's career knows that that's really saying something. The mix is full of joints that most of you probably haven't heard before, without being willfully obscure or inaccessible; it's just gorgeous music from front to back. But Cosmo doesn't shy away from better-known samples either: check William Bell & Mavis Staples on "Strung Out" (the basis for Cam's "Down & Out" or Z.Z. Hill's "That Ain't the Way You Make Love" (sampled by Madlib on Madvillain's "Fancy Clown"). If I had to pick highlights here, I'd go with the Meters' incredible cover of Glen Campbell's "Wichita Lineman", the Dramatics' "In the Rain" and Nina Simone's absolutely fucking heartbreaking rendition of "Baltimore". Easily my pick for the best mixtape of 2005. Highly recommended.

reviewed by Chris Lemon-Red