In recent years, Lakeith Stanfield has made a name for himself thanks to his work on things like Donald Glover’s Atlanta and the new movie Sorry To Bother You, but he has a music career as well. He’s part of the musical group Moors alongside Hrishikesh Hirway (who you may know as the host of the Song Exploder podcast), and today, the group has shared “Mango,” a new collaboration with Tune-Yards.
The track is carried by the rhythms of both the instrumental and Stanfield’s vocals. He sometimes delves into shouting like a less intense Death Grips, and overall, “Mango” accomplishes so many different things in just three minutes that it feels much longer than that. It’s the kind of song you want to play again even though you just finished listening to it. Moors and Tune-Yards connected while the latter group was working on the score for Sorry To Bother You, and Tune-Yards’ Merrill Garbus says the collaboration was all about keeping it weird:
“We became big Lakeith fans by spending hundreds of hours scoring Sorry To Bother You and watching his incredible acting skills. We met at the Sundance premiere, and Lakeith was really into the score so we talked about collaborating.
He had really specific ideas about the track, different characters he wanted to give voice to, and we worked together to keep amping up the weird. Times are weird. Lakeith is reflecting his universes and creating new ones — it’s fascinating and important and we’re grateful and lucky to be a part of amplifying his voice.”
Listen to “Mango” above.
