Muhsinah is a 28 year old musician from Washington D.C. who’s been creating experimental R&B since 2005/2006. Her music, up until recently, has been a fascinating hybrid of R&B, neo-soul (á la Georgia Anne Muldrow and Erykah Badu), indie pop and electronic music. At times the electronic parts are reminiscent, or at least influenced by, some the stuff that’s come out of Flying Lotus and his Brainfeeder crew. The track below, from her third album “The Oscillations: Triangle” (2009), was actually produced by FlyLo and was once listed as a favorite track by Thom Yorke on Radiohead’s website.


In 2009 I started wondering why there wasn’t a real alternative scene for R&B music. But I pretty soon discovered Muhsinah through her appearances on the Foreign Exchange’s second album, “Leave it All Behind”, and she more or less nailed the kind of music I was looking for. The track “Daykeeper” earned the Foreign Exchange and Muhsinah a Grammy nomination in the “Best Urban/Alternative Performance” category.
Besides working with Flying Lotus she’s also collaborated with producers Mike Slott, Oddisee, 00Genesis and Exile. On top of that she got a feature on Common’s (not so hot) album “Universal Mind Control”.
On her latest release from last year, the double EP “Gone”, she shifted her sound to something much less inspired by Georgia Anne Muldrow and the L.A. “beat” scene and more influenced by… The-Dream? Most definitely in a more “top 40” kind of direction.
Read an old article on Mushinah in XLR8R here.
Oh and here’s cover of Radiohead’s “Scatterbrain”.