The story goes that while The Public Opinion Afro Orchestra were in the studio working on their latest full length when members 1/6 (Aaron Stephanus) and Lamine Sonko both came up with solo tracks for this single on Australia's Hope Street Records. They just couldn't help themselves - too much material is never a bad thing.
The A-Side track "Cosmetic Love" was born out of an old studio session at Hope Street from the PutBacks, the guitar smoothly transitioning from a lonesome solitary groove, emerging out of a shimmery cymbal as the intro to a shuffle back beat fires up and 1/6 builds a massive rapid-fire narrative about a relationship lost. A detailed play by play that walks through the feelings of this loss, going over events to see if there's anything he missed, where things went wrong. The introspection works against this groove decorated with bass phrases, slow building organ and brass from POAO's producer Tristan Ludowyk making something of a funk hybrid, the lyric working more like spoken word than traditional hip hop.
On B-Side's "Jappo", The Public Opinion 6, the rhythm section from POAO takes that same abandoned sketch and reworks the percussion and bass right off the bat with more layers and an expanded brass section. That guitar drops out and they end up completely taking this one in a new direction with Lamine delivering his vocals with a huge cavernous room echo almost going dub, taking massive liberties with the tempo his lyric at one point going from double time over this not laid back tempo and sliding right into the chorus with a smooth vibrato.
Get this one here in the US from Fatbeats.
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