Zuli Goes Back to His Roots With Egyptian Jazz/Funk Reworks on Habibi Loops Vol 1

Cairene producer heavyweight Zuli launched the first edition of his Habibi Loops beat tapes earlier this weekend, featuring a selection of reworked Egyptian Jazz and Funk classics, harkening back to the sound of his early hip-hop explorations with Abyusif.

Based off an idea that's been “floating around” for the past 8 years, Habibi Loops Vol 1 twists songs Zuli “grew up listening to” into four off-kilter (though certainly head-bob worthy) boom-bap instrumentals, blended with his characteristic cacophonous sample warping.  An exercise in “practicing sound design and stanning Madlib,” the songs sampled on Habibi Loops Vol 1 are deconstructed, stretched and reassembled to the point of near unrecognizability before being given a healthy percussive push with layers of intricate drum sequencing. 

“The plan was to dig into old hordes of stuff at my parents' house and try to find my old cassette tapes, but I haven't found any music yet so at the moment I'm only using 96kbps mp3s I manage to find through Google” said Zuli in the bandcamp description for the project.