Francis the Great - Ravissante Baby [Remastered] (2015)

Rare funk and avant-garde soul from a seven-year-old kid singer featuring the best musicians of France and the Cameroonian diaspora, recorded in Paris in 1977. The album contains two nicely dramatic tracks: "Ravissante Baby (Negro Phasing)" is a long, hypnotic, funky soukous track with a tremendous lead guitar and a long spoken-word and soulful kid vocal about the beauty of nature; "Look Up in the Sky (Negro Nature)" is a stretched funk groove with psych synth by Michel Morose, bubbling bassline by the great Victor Edimo, the famous Toto Guillaume on guitar, and a brilliant poetic lyric by Francis the Great, who at that time studied in Ménilmontant, Paris. Originally produced by his father, a great impresario of African artists in Paris during the '70s, and coordinated by his mother, this album is unique, fresh, and almost unclassifiable. It's universal funk!