For the latest installment in the Fresh Kept Secrets series – I co-present to you (along with my friends & co-workers at the Red Bull Music Academy) some updates from Loose Joints alumna, Fatima. If you’re just now catching on, Fatima is a refreshingly talented singer residing in London, by way of Stockholm, Sweden. RBMA described it best when they said, “mix The Fugees with Sade, Quasimoto, and Minnie Riperton, into one big Studio Chu style collage, and you begin to get an idea of the psychedelic musical journey Fatima has begun.” Comparisons aside, she’s been making a name for herself worldwide through her live shows and collaborations with numerous respected artists – and although she is still currently unsigned, she’s already worked with such heavyweight producers as Shafiq Husayn (SA-RA), Exile, Coleman, Ras_G, Hudson Mohawke, Mike Slott, and more for her upcoming album.

Released by the RBMA earlier this week, we have a free download of a new song from Fatima, entitled “Do I Know You?,” which was co-produced by Cohen, Dorian Concept & Cuthead. The track was recorded when all four of the aforementioned attended the Barcelona session of the RBMA last year, and it is one of the first tracks leaked from the upcoming Various Assets compilation, on which Fatima is featured on a handful of other songs as well. For more info and insight on the track, be sure to check out the full article on the Academy’s site.

But before we get to that, I’ve also selected two of her more well-known collaborations, as well as an unreleased solo demo. First, we have the extremely buzzworthy title track from the debut album of the production trio, TettoryBad (a supergroup consisting of Jazzy Sport affiliates Masaya Fantasista & Grooveman Spot as Tettory BLK from Japan, alongside London’s own Simbad). The song was one of my personal favorites of 2008 and apparently I’m not alone in that opinion, as it appeared on tastemaker Karen P‘s …Broadcasting compilation for Sonar Kollektiv and was also played on almost every respected radio show and podcast last year.

Following that up, we have “Coming Home (Parts 1 & 2)” – one of the highlights from Hygher Baby‘s debut album, Let Me Play U Something U Have Never Heard. Hygher Baby is another supergroup of sorts, this time consisting of Fatima’s old friends from Sweden, producer Pure P and singer, Melo, coming together for their debut release, which dropped in Japan through the Circulations label last year & will be available everywhere else via Raw Fusion in the coming months. You may remember the song from my album preview post a few months back.

And closing out the set is an unreleased demo, “Garbageband vs. Quas,” which features Fatima recording herself as a one-woman band in her living room using household objects as shakers & her own backing vocals – all coming together as a tribute to everyone’s brick-wielding alien alias, Lord Quas.

Streams of all three of those tracks are available below, and be sure to get your free download of “Don’t I Know You?” at the bottom. For more on Fatima, links are provided for her guest selector mix on RBMA Radio, as well as a link to the Loose Joints mix .zip which includes her solo song, “Wildchild,” produced by VeeBeeO.

Another exclusive sneak preview for you guys – this time its from Hygher Baby, the new full-length collaboration from Swedish producer/MC Pure P and singer/co-producer Melo. Their debut album together, Let Me Play U Something U Have Never Heard, is a fresh blend of cool, mellow (no pun intended) vocals and smooth, melodic beats that still have the right amount of bump to them.

The name Hygher Baby is a playful continuation of the now-defunct rap/production duo, Up Hygh, which Pure P was one half of, and whose sole release had Melo featured on a track. As a part of Up Hygh, P had done remixes for Steve Spacek and Owusu & Hannibal and collaborated with the likes of Little Brother, Planet Asia, and Eska – since the group split, he has released solo 12″s and numerous compilation tracks, and has being holding down DJ residencies in his hometown of Stockholm, as well as touring abroad. At the same time, Melo has been appearing on singles from a slew of artists including house producer Rasmus Faber and Raw Fusion labelmate Simbad for years now, and has just released his debut solo album, Off My Chest, earlier this year.

Let Me Play U Something… is a sonic meeting between the spacey, Detroit-inspired funk of Up Hygh, and the soulful, chilled out vibes of Melo’s solo album. With both styles in tact, the tone of the album spans the spectrum of multiple moods and settings, including the bedroom (“Coming Home,” “Let U Go”), more involved relationships (“Grow Old With U,” “Missing U Simply”), and some more upbeat club work-outs (“Intergalactic Love,” “Struggle”) – but my personal favorites are the album’s slow jams. Included below are three highlights from those – a free download of the laidback-but-progressive first single, “Let U Go (Parts 1 & 2),” and streams of both the future slow dance anthem, “Grow Old With U” and the back-and-forth duet with an unexpected-but-welcomed twist, “Coming Home (Parts 1 & 2),” which features promising London-by-way-of-Stockholm songstress, Fatima. You can expect to be hearing a lot more from her in the near future, so remember the name.

As a bonus, I’ve included the Pure P-produced, self-titled Thrilla crew anthem from two rising Portland MC’s, Epp and DaveNotti. Also, after the jump, I’ve included the video for Melo’s “Real Slow” which was directed by John & Karl-Uno Lindgren.