"When Leon Michels and El Michels Affair released their first record, Sounding Out The City in 2005, it was hard to guess what was next for Michels and his then-introduced, now-patented 'cinematic soul' sound. Now, four EMA studio albums and scores of tribute and remix projects later, Michels takes his golden touch into the realm of hip-hop laying down a musical bed for one of the greatest to ever rhyme into a microphone: Black Thought of The Roots crew. Michels provides his bottom-heavy, soul-tinged production for Black Thought who gives us some of the more personal and transparent verses we've ever heard from him. Being that Black Thought is the co-founder and emcee for, hands down, the best live-band group in hip-hop, Michels took a decidedly different approach to this project and instead of sending recorded tracks of live compositions, he pulled out the sampler and sampled himself and some records from his collection. For Glorious Game, Michels would make wholly composed and recorded soul songs in his studio, sample himself, then chop and/or loop up his sounds and create instrumentals for Black Thought. On some tracks he took a more traditional hip-hop approach, starting from samples of other people’s music but then adding live instrumentation on top. But for the most part, it's him reinterpreting his own compositions into something new. The result is an organic feel of loop-based tracks that breathe and fluctuate enough for Black Thought to ex on." - Big Crown Records

• black vinyl pressing
• music label: Big Crown Records 2023