Kutiman
Ok so "Kutiman" - I know what you're thinking. That don't sound too good... you know "cooties" and things (head lice). He's from Israel so might not be aware of the US/NZ colloquialism.
Anyhow, I first became aware of Kutiman through a really cool YouTube clip below. Basically, its one of those awesome clips where some person has kindly taken a number of very excellent solo clips from YouTube and edited them together. It looks to me like he's used some pitch correction software to get it all in tune, and more importantly . Nice work.
But then I dug deeper, because it sounded like he had some solid goodness in there. Turns out the editor/author "Kutiman" is the wickedest afro-beat nu-funk n soul artist from Tel Aviv, Islael. It reminds of Jamiroqui in a way, because he stands alone in a desert of non-funkiness and is truely super-funky.
And the reason for the post - Kutiman is my first purchase on iTunes! In 2009. OK yes I know - late starter on it, I just never could figure out prior to purchase what the bitrate of the file was going to be and this stopped me from purchasing. Turns out they are 256kbps which is good enough for me (I normally use 320kbps for ripping of CDs).
So checkout this, and also his new album released 2008:
www.youtube.com/user/kutiman
www.myspace.com/kutiman