Cheikh Lo was almost the very beginning of my love of Senegalese music. I saw him play at one of Max and Rita's Shrine events at Cargo, in 2002, and just remember having a lot of fun. Despite his apparent fragility- he is stick thin- his music has gone from great to even better and the album he's about to put out in the UK is pretty exciting new stuff.

We sat in his retro back Mercedes on Monday afternoon listening to it. When he opened the door to the car, which was parked outside his fantastically-tiled house in a run-down neighbourhood of Dakar, cigarette ash blew in clouds out of each door. The seats were slung far back and everywhere there were bits of paper, strands of tobacco, prayer beads, sunglasses, casettes, and plenty of ash. This was his boy´s den away, perhaps, from the prying eyes of the women of the house, though it being in full view of the street we were hot viewing material for the people coming and going from the boutique/tailor shop next door.

One by one we went through the songs, him pointing out this guitar riff and that, who played the drums on this one and who played the sabar on that. After the triumph of his record Ne La Thiass, made in the late 90s and produced by Youssou N'Dour, everyone (including myself) said it would never get any better. But this one has gone back to the acoustic style, his own choppy guitar riffs playing around with his guitarist Baye's Congolese-style melodies, his vocals more passionate than ever and some funky Burkinabe drum beats. I guess it could be called something like acoustic funk.

Cheikh was wearing his gold-rimmed aviator glasses, cool as ever. His long dreadlocks hung down to his leather belt and after much smoking he let me take a picture of him reflected in the little rearview mirror on the dash board. We passed a really nice afternoon together, then he drove me to the bus stop for me to get my bus home.