I dunno, the new Roska EP does sound very good (there are longer samples on Roska's myspace page BTW) but it's also precisely the sort of gentrification move which I think is ultimately the wrong direction for the scene. If you take away the street/dancehall/african/grime elements of funky, what are you left with? A polite broken beat/tech-house amalgam, which I'd still listen to, but wouldn't really monopolize my interest.
I think too often the critical move taken by listeners and artists both is to define their vision by virtue of what they reject - on the one hand there are people who applaud funky when it becomes less housey, less feminine, less kitsch ("oh my god the instrumental of "African Warrior" is actually really good!!" being a good example of this - not that this is an awful thing to say, I even understand where it's coming from, but I've read it about seven times now). On the other, people who applaud any clear rejection of immaturity in favour of "deep" tracks. Fair enough that Roska wants to react against people reducing him to grime-in-disguise, but I think a better way to do this would be to work the more dangerous side of his approach into more expansive tracks that combined a housey or "deep" feel with his more darkly percussive elements. Instead the solution seems to be to pursue a scaled-back middleground.
For me, funky is at its best when it's throwing all the balls into the air. One reason I love that Mak 10/Shantie set to death is that it seems dedicated to this - lots of tough muscular rhythms AND lots of ridiculous, gaseous helium female vocals (also this reminds me of the golden age of rave = never a bad thing).
At any rate I much prefer "Feeline"/"Climate Change"/"Nasty Nasty Nasty" Roska to "Wonderful Day"/"Proverbs Roska. Accordingly my favourite track on the new EP is the "Pyramids" redux of bonus track "Without It".
