Kaytranada released his second studio album Bubba on December 13, 2019, through RCA Records. This kaytranada bubba album deep dive tracks guide walks through a 17 track, 50 minute record that turned a Montreal basement sound into a Grammy winning one.
Bubba arrived three years after his debut 99.9 percent, which had won the 2016 Polaris Music Prize. Where the debut was largely built by sending files to collaborators remotely, Bubba was mostly made in the room with its guests, and it won Best Dance Electronic Album at the 63rd Grammy Awards, where its single 10 percent also won Best Dance Recording.
Kaytranada Bubba Album Deep Dive Tracks: The Guest List
The feature list explains the album range. Pharrell Williams closes the record on Midsection, SiR opens the vocal run on Go DJ, and Mick Jenkins, GoldLink, Masego and Estelle each get a lane. Charlotte Day Wilson appears on What You Need, Tinashe on The Worst In Me, VanJess on Taste and Teedra Moses on Culture, the track Kaytranada has said first convinced him a new album was taking shape in late 2018. Kali Uchis carries 10 percent, released as the lead single on December 9, 2019, four days before the album.
The official video for 10 percent, directed by Steven Isaac Wilson and released in February 2020, stages a ball culture dance competition with Kaytranada behind the decks. It captures the album method in miniature: the producer builds the room, sets the tempo and lets other people shine inside it. The Worst In Me followed as the second single in October 2020.
There is just so many tracks that did not make it. I intended to put it out in two parts.
Kaytranada said that to Zane Lowe on Apple Music in the week Bubba arrived, explaining that he already had roughly another album of material left over. That overflow helps explain why Bubba feels sequenced like a DJ set rather than a collection of singles: short instrumentals like Puff Lah and Scared To Death act as transitions, and almost every track blends toward the next.
The Sound: Funk, House And Montreal
Kaytranada, born Louis Kevin Celestin in Haiti and raised in Montreal, built his name on SoundCloud edits before 99.9 percent made him a Polaris winner. On Bubba the signature elements are all present: drums that swing slightly behind the beat, warm basslines, filtered samples and chords borrowed from funk and soul. In a GQ interview quoted widely at the time, he described the shift from remote collaboration on the debut to building real chemistry in studio sessions for this album, and guests such as Pharrell pushed him to trust his own sound when some earlier collaborators passed on returning.
The Canadian thread on the album runs through What You Need, which pairs him with Toronto singer Charlotte Day Wilson. Readers can follow her story in Charlotte Day Wilson Lands Two Polaris Nods, and his own Polaris history in Kaytranada Returns To Polaris Long List. Bubba also won Dance Recording of the Year at the 2021 Juno Awards, completing a domestic and international sweep for the same record.
An instrumental version of Bubba followed in 2020, and it is a useful second listen: stripped of the guest vocals, the drum programming and bass work carry every transition, and tracks such as Go DJ and Need It reveal how much of the album energy comes from rhythm alone. The album was also shortlisted for the 2020 Polaris Music Prize, a home country echo of the Grammy result. For new listeners, the fastest route in is the opening run of Do It, 2 The Music and Go DJ, then the closing stretch from Culture to Midsection, where the record relaxes into its most confident grooves.
Why Bubba Still Matters
Bubba peaked at number one on the Billboard Top Dance Electronic Albums chart and reached number three on the Top R and B Albums chart, strong numbers for a producer led record with no pop crossover single. Its Grammy double win in March 2021 made Kaytranada the first Black artist and the first Canadian to win Best Dance Recording, a milestone widely reported at the time. More importantly for listeners, the album holds up as a complete listen: 17 tracks, no wasted features, and a closing run from September 21 into Midsection that lands like the end of a night out. Start with 10 percent, Go DJ and Culture, then play it in full, in order, the way it was sequenced.
