Oakley ‘O.G.’ Grenell – Moving On

Oakley ‘O.G.’ Grenell – Moving On

The Kiwi’s have always generally banged out some heat in the Hip Hop field over the past decade or so, with the success of Scribe across the Tasman, underground favourites Frontline and even Savage’s signing to Universal in the US bringing some major attention to Aotearoa. One cat I personally have never heard of, Oakley ‘O.G.’ Grenell, is a producer who has dropped his apparent sophomore album Moving On, a Hip Hop/Soul/Jazz excursion with a bunch of featured vocalists on board to put a voice to his music.

Moving On is a very chilled out album overall, spouted from his jazz-leaning tendencies. This is a refreshing take as not much Jazz Hop sees the light of day in 2008, bar Guru’s Jazzmatazz series (and most likely a handful of others).

The vibe here changes up a fair bit, though, from chilled out Jazz on the title track with Mark Vanilau, a funky reggae vibe on ‘Bam Bam’ with Wacklar, borderline two-step with UK cat Dynamite MC, the self-explanatory ‘Roots Rock’ with Switch & KP, to a more straight up and down Hip Hop vibe on the instrumental ‘Experience’.

The UK and reggae vibe is also quite predominant, with KP & Switch and Wacklar appearing on a handful of joints between them that carry the sound well, including ‘Babylon Creep’, ‘We Don’t Play’ and ‘Calibration’.

This is a pretty interesting album, something a little different out of NZ. It’s not something that would catch major rotation in my personal iPod, and there isn’t any obvious singles, but it’s just…cool. Check it out.

(AlleyKat Records/Beatbroker/MGM)

-Cee-For.