Saxophonist Steve Lehman debuted the eponymously titled Sélébéyone in 2016. The collision of modernist jazz, underground hip-hop, and electronics by a septet from three continents shook up the jazz world. Jazz and hip-hop hybrids weren't new, but Sélébéyone sounded alien, other, with its left-field rap, multilingual nu-break flows, vanguard jazz, and African polyrhythmic concepts, all colored by experimental electronics. Several world tours and a pandemic later, Sélébéyone return as a band on Xaybu: The Unseen. The septet from the debut is replaced by a quintet here -- keyboardist Carlos Homs and bassist Drew Gress are absent. Lehman and Paris-based Maciek Lasserre play saxophones, Damion Reid plays drums, and American HPrizm (aka High Priest of Antipop Consortium) and Senegalese rap sensation Gaston Bandimic deliver spoken word and rapped vocals in English and Wolof (the primary language in most of West Africa). The set was deeply inspired by Islam's mystical concept of al-Ghaib -- that which is unknowable and unseeable. (Bandimic, HPrizm, and Lasserre are Sufi Muslims.) Lehman and Lasserre evenly split composing and production duties. The pared-down Sélébéyone puts more emphasis on beats and conversant interaction between alto and soprano saxophones on one hand, and vocalists, electronics, and rhythms on the other.

1		Time is the First Track
2		Djibril
3		Lamina
4		Gas Akap
5		Liminal
6		Gagaku
7		Poesie I
8		Poesie II
9		Go In
10		Navigation
11		Dual Ndoxol
12		Dual HP
13		Zeraora
14		Souba
15		Time is the First Track