hip hop
Nick Hasted
Becoming a has-been is Eminem’s main raw material now, the rocket-fuel for his rhetorical flights. He was a folk-devil 20 years ago, then a prescription drug-zombied recluse, then a huge comeback pop star. Extending that third act has been hobbled by social media sneers since the unfocused but often excellent Revival (2018), and a perception that he’s run out of road.Having finally retired his work’s real-life supporting cast of relatives out of belated respect for their privacy, and shown withering scorn for contemporary hip-hop trends such as mumble rap, he has fallen back on his core Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
I’ll leave it to others, better placed, to unpack 2020’s gruelling impact on so many. But one of its side effects was the elevation, alongside food and television, of recorded music. It became a salve, a focus, a locus of social media blather about what was getting us through. Lockdown ears were lifted by a heady gumbo of new discoveries and old favourites. Certainly, my best-of-year lists are overfull. There’s nothing I'm taking a punt on; it’s all lived stuff, revelled in.100% Yes, the third album from London jazz-punk-funk unit Melt Yourself Down, from its title onwards, musters an Read more ...
Barney Harsent
After a 16-year wait for the second album from Australian sample-stitchers The Avalanches, their third, a mere four years later, feels like a rush release by comparison. We Will Always Love You has been preceded by no fewer than four singles which, while welcome, are in danger of distorting the overall picture slightly.While it could still be broadly catagorised as hip-hop and psychedelic pop, We Will… is a more thoughtful collection, peppered throughout with considered call-backs to connecting themes of distance, loss and transcendence. And while the quality isn’t always consistent, the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Doncaster musician Dominic Harrison – Yungblud – appeared a couple of years ago, a self-proclaimed punk, alive with vim and righteousness, touting music that, loosely speaking, fused the snarling northern outrage of Arctic Monkeys with hip hop-tinted power-pop. It was a lively combination and his debut album, 21st Century Liability, had its moments. Since then, his profile has raised dramatically, a cult Gen Z figurehead, his appearance an impressive, sexually fluid spin on Keith out of The Prodigy. This album could be the one that supernovas him – it’s catchy enough – but it does so by Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kali Uchis is a superstar in the making. But she’s seemed that way for a few years and, despite making waves in the US, has not crossed over on the scale her talent deserves. Emanating a presence that’s part Gaga, part Winehouse, part Megan Thee Stallion, and part Shakira, the 26 year old American-Columbian delivered one of 2018’s finest albums, Isolation, demonstrating that sexy, chart-friendly pop could also be wildly eclectic and inventive. Her second album is more singular in focus, a Spanish language affair deep-dipped in Uchis’ uniquely woozy brand of easy listening.Uchis has worked Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Due to COVID-related nonsense too tedious to relate, this month’s theartsdesk on Vinyl was delayed. But here it is, over 7500 words on new music on plastic, covering a greater breadth of genres and styles than most major festivals. From reissues of some of the biggest bands that ever lived, to limited edition micro-releases from tiny independents, it’s all here. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHKiko Dinucci Rastilho (Mais Um)São Paulo artist Kiko Dinucci has said, “The idea has always been to play the guitar as a percussion instrument.” Couldn’t agree more. Dinucci has iron in his musical blood and Read more ...
Barney Harsent
The cast list for Song Machine…, the seventh album from virtual virtuosos Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, is the size of some festival line-ups: Beck, Fatoumata Diawara, Imagination’s Leee John, Peter Hook, Robert Smith, Slaves, Slowthai, St Vincent, Joan As Police Woman, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Skepta and long-time collaborator Tony Allen are just some of the artists featured here and, while impressive, the roll call poses a question. Namely, how do you pull all those disparate voices together and end up with something that sounds coherent, composed and, well, whole?The answer Read more ...
joe.muggs
It’s over ten years now since theartsdesk cited Tinie Tempah’s success as marking the start of a revolution for post grime black British rappers conquering the pop charts on something approaching their own terms. And it’s very nearly as long since we noted the bleak directness of what was then known as “road rap”, underground hip hop well away from the charts in a world of self-distributed mixtapes and YouTube videos, and charting the violence and rivalries of the class A drug trade. That revolution did happen and then some, and in fact it incorporated the grim Read more ...
joe.muggs
Today is World Mental Health Day and of course that means an awful lot of hugs and homilies, thoughts and prayers, deep-breathing exercises and it’s-good-to-talk platitudes from people speaking from positions of immense privilege – ranging from the well-meaning to outright grifters.All too rarely does any of this speak to people’s lived experience of mental suffering, and that goes double in the music world, where perpetual insecurity has increased exponentially with the collapse of the live performance industry and the future looks particularly bleak right now. One new book, however, is Read more ...
Owen Richards
It’s been a hell of a four years for Glass Animals since their last album How to Be a Human Being, from a well-deserved Mercury nomination to drummer Joe Seaward requiring neurosurgery after a near-fatal bicycle accident. But while Human Being was leap forward in writing and production, new release Dreamland is a more subtle development. This is music designed to float on a sunlit pool to, though given lockdown restrictions, you may need to get creative with an air bed and your home lighting.It’s an album that takes its title to heart, building hazy soundscapes punctuated with drum machines Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Lockdown’s easing and the record shops are opening here and there. So, to help vinyl junkies on their way, here’s 7000 words of reviews, capturing the best of the last couple of months’ releases on plastic. As ever, the sounds go everywhere, from hip hop to post-punk to Moroccan trance music. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHThe Four Owls Nocturnal Instinct (High Focus) + TrueMendous Huh? (High Focus) + Telemachus Boring & Weird Historical Music (High Focus)Three albums from Brighton’s High Focus Records which showcase many kinds of verve and ambition. The label is best known for nurturing the Read more ...
caspar.gomez
Coronavirus blah blah blah. Glastonbury cancelled. What to do? Didn’t go to the 2010 festival for reasons too tedious to go into. Suffered the worst FOMO of my life. This is different. There is no Glastonbury. But sitting around at home… we’ve all been doing that for months…I call Don Carlton, who has been my fellow adventurer for eight of the last 10 Glastonburys: “Hey Don, we’ve got to do something that weekend, but I don’t know what…”“I have a plan,” he says.It is Thursday 25th June 2020.T-minus two days until Don Carlton’s plan kicks in. I’ve just driven for four-and-a-half hours on the Read more ...