8. The Very Best - Warm Heart of Africa

Last year Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit released a free digital mixtape. I'm not sure what possessed me to download it. The cover art had a huge fucking lion on it; it was cheesy. Most of the artists they covered i didn't care for, and Esau sings in his native language Chichewa, some dialect in Malawi. On top of that, their sound is hard to describe. It's pop music, but it has what i can best describe as jungle beats? I could give you a list of bullshitty made up genres but i won't. Listen, this was not something that grabbed me at first. I just kept it in my rotation because it was the newest music i had. And a week later it's all i'm listening to. And then a month later, it's still all i'm listening to. It was so, good. I would show everyone i could and would generally come to the same conclusion: it sounds like the fucking lion king. Which is not to say it doesn't, but it's like looking at the tip of the iceberg and not realizing the actual size and depth of it. And it was just a simple collection of covers ranging from MIA to The Beatles. In my opinion some of the tracks were actually better than the originals. So naturally i couldn't wait for their first full length, which they hint at during the closing moments of Jackson's "Will You Be There." I got it on the release date and still can't put it down because it is such a damn good album. In fact the only complaint i can think of is that it has two slightly different but still very much the same versions of Kamphopo and Kada Manja which were on last year's mixtape. But they fit nicely towards the end of the album, like meeting with old friends you haven't seen in a while. It is hard to pick a favorite track because it's that album you listen to start to finish. Perhaps the biggest reason i enjoy it so much is Mwamwaya. You can hear in his voice that he is the luckiest guy in the world to be doing what he's doing. You don't hear that much these days. In the end, this is some of the most uplifting music you will hear all year. It put a smile on my face.
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Here is the link for their 2008 mixtape Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit Are The Very Best http://www.greenowl.com/download_album/16088-esau-mwamwaya-and-radioclit-a . The guys are generous enough to give it to you for free.