corto.alto, Mick Jenkins – WHODIS
Glasgow multi-instrumentalist Liam Shortall returns as corto.alto with “WHODIS”, his first new music of 2026 and a collaboration with Chicago rapper Mick Jenkins. It follows a run of recent singles — “APRIL” with French-Senegalese singer anaiis, “VANDAL” with Moses Yoofee, and the solo “DON’T LISTEN” — that have traced an increasingly restless trajectory for the project: each track landing in different territory, none of them settling into a predictable mode.
“WHODIS” is the most explicit genre pivot yet. Shortall builds a hard-swinging hip-hop beat with clear debts to J Dilla — the swing sits in the drums, the low end is thick, and the whole thing has that slightly off-kilter looseness that Dilla-influenced production tends to carry. Jenkins, who has spent a decade making records that take that same tradition seriously, fits the beat without effort. His verse is sharp and laid-back in the way that makes his best work feel effortless rather than casual. The two don’t sound like they’re meeting in the middle — they sound like they’re working from the same set of references. Shortall puts it plainly: “That’s why I reached out to someone like Mick Jenkins, who I’ve listened to forever. I’m entering a different world with this music.”
Shortall started with trombone, absorbed jazz, blues and ska from a young age in Glasgow, and has been building the corto.alto project outward from that instrumental foundation — each release widening the frame without losing the thread. A US tour is currently underway, with European headline dates and festival slots including We Out Here, WOMAD and Montreal Jazz Fest still to come. I wasn’t sure a hip-hop pivot from corto.alto would hold up, but Jenkins on a Dilla-adjacent beat is hard to argue with.
