SoulBounce has announced Leave It All Behind by The Foreign Exchange as their 2008 Album of the Year!

The Foreign Exchange's Leave It All Behind took us all by surprise.

First we were surprised that the album even got made. After a four-year hiatus, when the duo of Phonte and Nicolay announced that FE was dropping a new disc this year, Hip Hop fans rejoiced. Any true head worth their salt more than likely still rocked Connected, so to hear that a new album was on the way was the best news ever. In production since 2006, the sophomore set was on track to pick up where the debut album left off. But that's where we were all wrong.

Everyone thought they knew what Nicolay and Phonte were going to do, but their next move revealed that this was a game of chess not checkers.

SoulBounce has announced Nicolay as their 2008 Producer of the Year!

He's good.

I've been banging the drum for Nicolay since this site's inception, and being able to feature and write about him so thoroughly here has been as much a blessing as listening to his music. In 2008, Nicolay earned the distinction of being the only artist to have two album reviews published here as well as an audio interview. I even had the pleasure of seeing him live when he came to DC with Kay Jackson to perform tracks from Time:Line. Not a single album in his catalogue has skippable material, not even the straight instrumental joints. There are reasons.

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Rapper/singer Phonte is a little nervous, though getting him to admit it takes some coaxing. Yes, he's toured the world for years as one half of the acclaimed rap group Little Brother, but this is the first time that he's ever toured with Nicolay, the Dutch producer with whom he makes up the genre-bending group Foreign Exchange. And even more notable, this is the first time that he's singing the entire way through.

"Nervous? Come on, fam," he exclaims, before laughing and finally succumbing. "Nah, there's always a bit of nervousness. This is literally the first time [Nicolay and I] have ever played together, like ever," he stresses. "But I'm beyond certain we'll do a great job."

The words "old school" come to mind when listening to The Foreign Exchange's sophomore effort Leave It All Behind but, in truth, there's nothing old about it. If it at all seems that way, it's because there's such a regrettable dearth of its blissfully soulful sound being produced these days. In short, there's nothing retrograde about the material--how could there be when the music's so fresh? For those unfamiliar with the project, The Foreign Exchange is a collaboration involving producer Nicolay (who already issued one of the year's better albums in the splendid Timeline) and singer-songwriter and vocalist Phonte. The two hooked up in 2002 via the hip-hop community site Okayplayer.com and thereafter traded files for a year (Nicolay residing in his native Holland at the time and Phonte in Raleigh, North Carolina), leading up to 2004's Connected release. Though Nicolay (now ensconced in Wilmington, North Carolina ) has bridged the geographical gap, the new release distances itself from the debut's hip-hop focus for a more pronounced "lover's rock" brand of soul. Don't get the wrong idea: traces of hip-hop are clearly evident, and so too are elements of funk (even echoes of drum'n'bass in "If This Is Love"), but the new music's rooted in soul of a thoroughly warm and emotive vintage.

Sugar Hill,