AMG Review of Unlearn

Jason Ankeny
All Music Guide

Unlearn shouldn't work, but it does -- refracting the diverse spirits of the New Orleans brass band tradition and new-school hip-hop through the prism of nine white twentysomethings from Madison, WI, the Youngblood Brass Band's debut somehow manages to complete its implicit mission statement to obliterate cultural and musical divisions, even managing to shoehorn Ike Willis and Talib Kweli cameos as well as Madonna and Stevie Wonder covers into the mix. Like New York's brilliant Afrobeat insurgents Antibalas, YB creates music without regard to racial, geographical, or even temporal restrictions -- seemingly the sole criteria which determines the ingredients comprising Unlearn are passion and energy, both of which it possesses in spades.