Str8beatz – Filtered Joints: A Score For The Lifers [Album]

Washington, D.C.’s Str8beatz came through this week with Filtered Joints: A Score For The Lifers, a free (via Bandcamp) collection of jazzy, smoky, heavily blunted instrumentals. The herb references run deep here, from the album titles to the occasional speech samples, but more importantly, these beats have essentially condensed the sensation of being good and stoned into a series of one and two minute musical vignettes.

The bouncy jazz piano on “Ms. Mary” encapsulates whimsical stoner bullshit dialogue and the sampled woodwinds and sharp snare on the sauntering “Smacked” capture the feeling of strutting down a street feeling good. It’s a romanticized version of the story, as there’s no way to write an instrumental love letter to weed including the feeling in your stomach after eating an entire large pizza or the twitch of paranoia you feel when the lady at the 7-11 looks directly into your bloodshot eyes and asks “cash or credit?” for the third time, but Filtered Joints: A Score For The Lifers is a mellow, jazzed-up hoot from start to finish.

Download: Str8beatz – Filtered Joints: A Score For The Lifers [Bandcamp]