Why Unplugged by Paradox and Leo Low Pass Still Matters for Guitar-Led Boom Bap
A Denver Emcee, an Amsterdam Producer, a Raleigh Rapper and a DJ on One Single
Start with the instrumental. On Spotify, the beat-only version of unplugged has passed 100,000 plays, while the vocal version sits at around 80,000. That one detail says a lot about the record Paradox and Leo Low Pass released on 2 September 2022, with Tab One on the verse and DJ Sean P on the cuts. So unplugged belongs to a scene where listeners play the beat as often as the rap, and where acoustic guitar has found a home inside boom bap.
Paradox has unplugged in the BlackSounds.News hip-hop and boom bap playlist below, alongside the desk’s other picks from the underground. Every piece on the Denver emcee sits on the Paradox profile. Unplugged came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Press play on the track, then read on for the boom bap history it draws on.
The Wave Behind Unplugged, From Jazz-Hop Beat Tapes to Boom Bap Built on Live Instruments
Boom bap is the sound of 1990s New York hip-hop: a hard kick and snare, a looped sample, and a rapper riding the pocket. The style was built on records. Producers dug through soul and jazz albums for a few bars to loop, then built the beat around them. That method carried hip-hop for a generation, and it still defines the sound when people say golden era.
Two branches grew from it. The first is live instrumentation. When Jay-Z recorded his MTV Unplugged session in 2001, The Roots played the beats as a band. As a result, the set showed that the swing of a sampled loop could come from real players. The second branch is jazz-hop and lofi hip-hop, the beat-tape culture that followed producers such as Nujabes and J Dilla. In that world, the instrumental is the main event. Listeners stream beats while they study, work or travel, so a producer’s name can matter as much as a rapper’s.
Where Unplugged Sits, Between Boom Bap Played Live and the Beat-Tape Culture of Lofi
unplugged sits where those two branches meet. Its title nods to the acoustic idea, and the record is built around guitar textures rather than a dusty sample. Yet the drums still hit like boom bap, and the arrangement leaves space for a verse and for a DJ to cut in. In short, it is a modern record descended from both sides of that lineage.
Paradox has been part of this lineage for a long time. His Spotify discography runs back to Hiatus in 2006, through Called to Mind in 2008 and Mending in 2011, made with DJ Sean P. In 2020, Inspotmusic described him as a Denver-based emcee. His own profile calls his work hip-hop with a purpose, moving from wordplay and punchlines to storytelling and introspection.
Four Players From Denver, Amsterdam, Raleigh and the Turntables Behind the Unplugged Session
His partners on unplugged each bring a different part of the scene. Leo Low Pass is a beatmaker and producer from Amsterdam who blends smooth jazz influences with hip-hop. He made his debut in 2018 and has worked with Phoniks and Awon, among others. He also released Still Dreaming with the Los Angeles emcee Kid Abstrakt through Melting Pot Music. Tab One was born and raised in North Carolina, lives in Raleigh, and is best known for his work with the group Kooley High. DJ Sean P describes himself as a mid-1990s skateboarder who bought his first turntables at a pawn shop in Dallas in 2000. He then worked as a professional DJ, engineer and producer.
That spread is the scene in miniature: a Denver emcee, an Amsterdam producer, a North Carolina rapper and a DJ who learned on pawn-shop turntables, all on one three-minute track. The partnerships also run deep. Paradox and Leo Low Pass kept working together, with Last Stop and Jot in 2024. Meanwhile, Paradox and DJ Sean P returned together on NOW. HERE. THIS. in 2025, more than a decade after Mending.
The Adjacent Acts, From The Pharcyde and DJ Shadow to the Listeners in Melbourne and Sydney
Earlier coverage points to the same lineage. In 2020, AAA Backstage heard echoes of The Pharcyde and of DJ Shadow in the work Paradox made with the UK producer ReFlex the Architect. It pointed to broken jazz beats, swirling samples and an old-school flow. Those two names mark the poles of the wave. One is the playful, jazz-loving rap of 1990s Los Angeles. The other is the sample-built instrumental hip-hop of Endtroducing in 1996.
The listeners have followed. At the time of writing, the top cities on the Paradox Spotify page are Melbourne, Sydney, New York City, London and Los Angeles. A Denver emcee working with an Amsterdam producer therefore finds his largest audiences in Australia. That is exactly how beat-tape music travels: through playlists, across borders, one instrumental at a time.
From the BlackSounds.News Curator Team: “Plenty of lofi records borrow the look of jazz without the feel. unplugged gets the feel from its guitar and the hard drums underneath, then hands the space to a real verse and real cuts. That balance is why the instrumental and the vocal take both still find listeners four years on.”
Stream unplugged on Spotify and Apple Music. Follow Paradox across platforms: YouTube channel, X and Facebook.
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