Skoota Warner is a multi-talented drummer turned rapper turned drummer again, harnessing hip-hop and southern-fried funk from New Orleans.

I first came across Skoota on an old-skool southern rap number in the seminal David Simon TV show Homicide: Life On The Street. That tune, A Winner, appeared on Skoota’s 1996 album NGA Style but the rapper soon disappeared from hip-hop history.

Now, just as the Baltimore-set Homicide finally gets given a full re-run on Sky Atlantic – it’s essentially a prequel to The Wire, and every bit as good – I learn that Skoota has resurfaced.

Now going by his full name of Skoota Warner, he has a self-released album called Noir, showcasing his extraordinary (and I do mean extraordinary) talent as a drummer.

It’s not a rap album, though there are elements of hip-hop; it’s a fusion of jazz, Latin and the southern-fried funk sounds of New Orleans, where he has lived for the past decade.

Delving deepr into his background, I learn that drumming was his first musical talent before he turned to rap, and that he has played with big-name artists like Santana, The B-52’s, Lionel Richie, Cyndi Lauper, and Mary J. Blige.

Raised in the South, Skoota was given a drumkit by his grandmother when he was only four, started playing with church gospel groups by the time he was six, and went to New York in his teens to follow his dream of becoming a professional musician.

While working as a drummer with B-boys along 5th Avenue and Central Park East, he met a pair of Brazilian musicians, Pepeu Gomes and Baby Do Brasil, and moved there to join their band.

After two years there he returned to NYC where he became a house band member at the Harlem Apollo, and, after session work with those big names, married and moved back down south to New Orleans.

This tune is a showcase for the remarkable talent of a musician who deserves to be more widely known in his own right.