Chantz · Instrumental Hip-Hop

11 Tracks Standard + Tape Versions Guitar / Soul / Jazz

Some producers raid the crate like a job. Chantz raids it like a reckoning. B-Side Soul Vol. 1 isn’t a beat tape you half-listen to while doing something else — it’s a record that sits with you, asks something of you, and doesn’t apologize for it.

The foundation is guitar, classic soul, and jazz — but “samples” undersells what’s actually happening here. These fragments aren’t draped over drums and called done; they’re in conversation with everything around them. The tape versions transform the same track into something that feels excavated rather than produced — warm, eroded, alive in a way no plugin can manufacture.

Then there’s the wildcards: the interludes. Chantz peppers introspective spoken-word passages throughout, yanking you out of pure head-nod mode and into something that feels confessional. On a purely instrumental project, that’s a bold call — and it lands. It reframes the whole thing. This isn’t an album. It’s a statement.

Two tracks rise to the top of an already strong tracklist: Track 7 — “Spring Calls” carries that cyclical, unhurried energy that dope instrumental hip hop is built on, while Track 11 — “No Crying” closes things out with the kind of emotional power that remains after the music stops. Both deserve repeat listens.

This is the kind of release that reminds you why instrumental hip-hop exists as its own genre — not backing music, not background texture, but a full artistic language. B-Side Soul Vol. 1 speaks it fluently. Go grab it. Support Chantz. Tell someone.