Sean Leon‘s “WHAT IS HAPPENING?” could easily have been a funk banger. All the pieces are there: a shimmying synth bass, choppy strums of trebly guitar, and some unfussy and instantly memorable vocal hooks from the Toronto singer/rapper.
And yet, instead of going all-out, Leon never fully drops the beat. The kicks are mellow rather than rumbling and the tempo is a little slower than expected, with the dubby, psychedelic echoes punctuating the arrangement, which confidently uses uses negative space rather than hyper-compressed maximalism.
Rather than being a full-on summer banger, it’s a sneakily addictive slice of synth-funk minimalism, and an ear-grabbing follow-up to last year’s Polaris-nominated IN LOVING MEMORY.
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