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Rating: The Shapeshifter makes his presence felt on social media and does so with a medium-high quality product. The sound is nothing new, but the grime of Papilla Bronx, aka Gianluca Calabrese, hits like a clap of thunder out of the blue. The project can be described as chameleonic because as you move from one track to another, you wonder if it's a mixtape or a compilation of different artists, which is at times pleasing and at other times not. However, the answer is immediately apparent on the cover, which warns from the start that the project features diverse sounds and that rather than an album, it's an experiment by the artist to understand what he's made of. Thus we begin the journey inside Transformixtape (Samurai Champloo Edition), which with its eight tracks best describes the quest for a definitive style by this versatile artist. The tracks are generally well-developed with particular attention, among which Kamikaze and Troika stand out. The former is accompanied by a somewhat curious and professional video and an instrumental worthy of the best overseas productions. In the latter, the artist embraces a chill style over a rhythm and blues beat, the influence of late '90s rap is felt in the verses by Papilla and Norman, slightly less so in the chorus where the contemporary style brings us back to the present after just a few seconds. The use of samples from the Japanese anime specified in the subtitle seems to bring the project a notch lower than where we could truly place this product, yet it's clear the artist wanted it this way, and we can't fault this choice.
A downside for Revisitation, which seems to lower the overall quality of the project, but despite this, the record remains a good project to listen to while waiting for stylistic developments from the artist. We await the album to deliver a final verdict; for now, the rating is 4.
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