Talking All Things 'Rhythm & Melody' with Sango
After delivering a stellar set at Soulection's 25th Anniversary London special show, Seattle producer Sango sits down with us to talk J Dilla, Dwele and the family history behind his new double-disc Mass Appeal project.
Sango in 2026. Image property of Abdi Ibrahim.
For more than a decade, Sango has occupied a covert, yet influential space between alternative hip-hop, R&B and electronic music. A longtime Soulection fixture, his production work and remixes have stretched from underground beat culture to collaborations with superstars like Frank Ocean, Tinashe, Ravyn Lenae and PinkPantheress—whilst his own catalogue has helped turn a distinctly diasporic approach to rhythm into something instantly recognisable, pulling sounds and influences across borders along the way.
At first glance, Rhythm & Melody, Sango's fourth LP, might seem like your standard album. Listen closer, though, and it begins to unfold like an audio map: a musical odyssey across four cities and four distinct pockets of sound, each crafted with the precision that could only come from childhood inspirations and years spent studying places from the outside looking in. Detroit rap sits beside New Orleans bounce; Chicago footwork gives way to funk carioca, mapping the work of an artist who seeks out inspiration wherever he can find it.
And if you spend a few minutes talking to Sango, and the geography starts to feel a lot more personal. Ask where the album's four cities come from and he'll reach for his family tree, childhood memories and the musical influences he has picked up along the way.
"My family is from Louisiana and outside of Memphis. I'm from Seattle, so we're influenced by Bay Area culture like the hyphy movement," he says. Then there is Michigan, where he moved as a teenager, immersed in Detroit's rap scene, and Chicago, where both his parents are from and where his cousins introduced him to footwork years before it reached the mainstream. "All of that stuff is a part of me."
At its core, Rhythm & Melody finds the eclectic producer tracing his own bloodline through the cities that raised the people who raised him. That instinct has followed him throughout his career, long before Detroit and Chicago ended up on the same project.
Growing up, it was rare for his house to be quiet. A Tribe Called Quest was played religiously by his father, and by his teenage years he had worn out every J Dilla record he could find. Neo-soul and R&B followed closely behind, with Musiq Soulchild and Joe in regular rotation. Time spent with his grandfather brought salsa into the mix too, with Willie Colón on heavy rotation. Dwele, though, is a name Sango keeps returning to as both an inspiration and a constant listen. "When I was in high school, my dad rinsed Dwele's albums," he explains.
His mother was gifted an old desktop computer from her office job, which in turn became the family computer, helping him channel his passion for beats and music into a reality by downloading music production software, FL Studio. He started composing beats in his bedroom, not too long before his family decided to relocate from Seattle to Michigan.
There, his musical prowess followed him to school on an MP3 player and a flash drive, trading hands with classmates until he earned the reputation as "the beat guy," with gang members and student athletes alike, who often jumped at the chance to get beats off him and listen to what new material he had been creating over the weekend.
By the time he was enrolled at Western Michigan University, he was already uploading his work online for the masses to see, with recognition trickling in from Soulection to The Weeknd's OVO blog. "They were sharing everybody's stuff at the time. It was pretty cool. I'd describe it as the genesis of my career."
Culture is another aspect that heavily influences Sango's sound. He discusses diasporic music like a historian, tracing how reggae and funk emerged around the same era on opposite sides of the Atlantic, with both genres used as vehicles for protest and resistance.
He points to baile funk, born in Rio de Janeiro out of Miami bass and electro, and the newer sounds emerging from its fusion with Jamaican dancehall culture—something he says few people outside Brazil have caught up with yet. "It's more like a handshake," he says. "I'm putting you on, and you're putting me on. What that does is make better music, and it educates everybody, not a beat being missed."
It's this type of shared culture and collective passion for music that runs through Rhythm & Melody. Sango describes the album as his deliberate return to where it all started and to the version of himself that Soulection first discovered him by; prior to the collaborations and one-off remixes. "It's time to get back to what I'm known for," he says whilst referencing his earlier beats during the creative process on this album. "I could do this again, as I haven't done it in a while."
In terms of collaborators, Sango notes that they tend to discover him rather than the other way round. He describes himself as less of a networker and more of a "sniper producer"—someone who stays in their lane until a call comes in.
In this case, the opportunity arose to work with one of the pioneers of alt-R&B, Frank Ocean. Ocean reached out directly to Sango for remix work around his platinum-selling 2016 album Blonde—eventually leading to him opening at one of Ocean's parties in 2019, where he premiered his remix of "Cayendo". A reworked version of "In My Room" followed soon after, as Ocean entered a new run of singles across 2019 and 2020.
On a more recent note, Atlanta rapper Latto's team once called for drum beats with no further context, with the session eventually becoming "Personal", a track from her new Big Mama album that she later used for her pregnancy announcement. "I'm out here, and I was just like, I'm out?!" he said, still sounding in disbelief.
Rhythm & Melody unfolds across two discs, with each city being given room to breathe and express itself. With an expansive rolodex of guest stars, the album boasts appearances from Boldy James, Big Sean, Babyface Ray, GoldLink and Smino, with each artist placed exactly where their own pocket of sound naturally belongs.
This feeling is part of why Soulection has remained a home for him. Reflecting on his set in mid-August, Sango is candid about having a preference for a show that is completely stripped back to DJs alone, without the shift that a headline live set can bring. "I love it when it's all just DJs," he continues. "You don't switch from live music, and a certain crowd attracts you when you're having live music compared to just DJs." For him personally, a straight DJ set carries a similar philosophy as an album, bringing people together to experience some of the best music both past and present.
Equally, Sango plans to keep his live-show decks well-worn over the next few months, stringing together standalone dates as they come (from Soulection's recent London stop to Brazil in November) while resisting the pressure to turn the rollout into something more rigid. "My album rollout is just based on getting to know me and living with the album," he says, driven by an urge for fans to keep discovering the different corners of his musical interests through both his albums and standalone single drops.
“I want to be the best-kept secret for a lot of people.”
If you ask Sango, music and video games are the perfect pair. He highlights the samurai slicer Ghost of Tsushima and the open-world western Red Dead Redemption among his favourites—drawn to games that let him submerge into alternate realities.
It's not all PlayStation powerhouses, though—Sango's also got a soft spot for cosy titles like Little Gator, too. Minecraft's soundtrack gets a few spins as well. "The Minecraft soundtrack is probably the best soundtrack of all time in terms of video games," he laughs, naming The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and Ghost of Tsushima as close runners-up.
It is quite rare for an artist with a career spanning over eleven years and several acclaimed projects to date to still describe themselves as underrated, but Sango is entirely at peace with that. "I want to be the best-kept secret for a lot of people," he laughs. "You run a thin line of being slept on, but you also get the best of the fans and support. It's the best."
With more music in the pipeline, as well as some time off, Sango foreshadows that he has much more to offer. "There is more music to come, and I'm back in the lab already."
Stream Rhythm & Melody below: