rap
theartsdesk
The weather is perfect. Rare at a festival in this country. The sun shines. Occasional clouds pass. There’s a light breeze. Flamingods are on the Charlie Gillett stage. They are a London-based unit of primarily Bahraini origin who make psychedelic-electronic rock tinged with exotica and Middle Eastern flavour. Very WOMAD, in other words.All around are iterations of hippy, from gnarled Sixties originals, lined and lived-in, batik-patchwork panted, to psy-trancey youths, half-clad, sleek in bodypaint and retro pink Lennon shades. We jog and nod. The music is likeable, not ecstatic. The vibe, Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Joe Goddard’s torrent of creativity rarely fails to amaze. As well as eight albums as a crucial part of Hot Chip, he has made two in the 2 Bears duo with Raf Rundell, one as Hard Feelings with Amy Douglas, and there’s been various other collaborations besides (A Pulse Train, Extra Credit, Greco-Roman Soundsystem, Lightbox Of Magic Unknowledge), not to mention dozens of remixes and a none too shabby DJ career too. Through all of this there’s been a strong musical personality, circling around palpable love of the dancefloor and its communities, and use of synthesisers to conjure feelings of Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The noise in the international mainstream in recent years might be about dance-pop, hip hop beefs and the serious balladry of Taylor, Billie and Lana – yet at the same time, R&B has been strange, brilliant, ultra-popular, but generated a tiny fraction of the column inches and “discourse”.Jhene Aiko, Tinashe, SZA, H.E.R., Mahalia: these are radical artists, each making fascinating music that generates billions of streams, yet certainly in the UK they’re generating micro-fractions of the column inches that their contemporaries in other genres are. The reaction to SZA’s Glastonbury Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
In 2023 Dave and Central Cee had the longest running number one UK rap song ever with "Sprinter", a song about the logistics of being very rich. The real star of the show, however, was the spritely, luxurious instrumental which was partially produced by South Londoner Jim Legxacy, who also released the best album of 2023: HNPM.This is my album of the year because it feels both like a snapshot of the internet’s genre-blending rap scene as well as of modern day Lewisham. Legxacy is fluent in mixing genres in a way that only an internet native could be, for example on the standout track "old Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It was a year of bleak and brutal conflict, ugly and stupid imposition of power, overt Fascism in the mainstream public sphere, decay of infrastructure and apocalyptic weather. So what better than a record of total pleasure? And Janelle Monáe’s fourth album in 13 years really does do exactly what it says on the tin, in every possible ways. Over 14 songs in just 32 minutes, it positively glows with self-confidence, satsifaction, in-the-moment joy, and deeply felt sensualism.And by sensualism I mean complete filth. Its appeal, though, is not just titillation, not by a long shot – and it’s not Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
FRIDAYRennes Airport Parc Expo is about three miles west of the city. It’s vast, consisting of 110,000 metres of cavernous warehouse-like hangars, and has hosted everything from Holiday on Ice to France’s hugest annual agricultural conference. Every December it welcomes Trans Musicales, the 44-year-old French music festival, with performances from around 9.00 PM until dawn.The first act I catch, Twende Pamoja (pictured left), typifies the festival’s laudable attitude to curation. They are a little-known electro-hop hop act whose members are of French, Nigerian, Ugandan and Tanzanian origin, Read more ...
peter.quinn
Choruses rocked, choreo popped, and thousands of light sticks danced in unison, as an incredible lineup of nine acts lit up this fourth edition of Korea On Stage, celebrating 140 years of UK-Korea relations.The evening commenced with the beautifully clear timbre of the traditional Korean stringed instrument, the gayageum, played by Yageum Yageum, who adroitly fused the ancient and the modern in her opening medley of songs by BTS, FIFTY FIFTY, NewJeans and IVE. Seated centre stage, her nimble-fingered playing, beatific smile and lightly worn virtuosity radiated a sense of joy which set the Read more ...
Harry Thorfinn-George
Drake’s new album is his fourth full-length in under two years. While his peers like Kendrick Lamar and J Cole disappear for years at a time, Drake seems to be afraid that leaving the limelight means he will evaporate into thin air. As a result, For All the Dogs arrives with a side-order of Drake fatigue, which isn’t ideal considering the album is 23 songs and an hour and half long.For All the Dogs is filled with moody R&B, trendy rap and a stacked roster of guests. Like recent Drake albums it is terminally bloated and coloured by Drake’s cagey worldview and distrust of women. Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There’s been a lot of flak flying around this album already. It’s mainly been triggered by Burna Boy’s public activities which have included disparaging the wider Afrobeats music scene of West Africa, and some somewhat overcooked expressions of his pan-Africanist philosophy.And this has then been mapped onto his seventh album itself, with various suggestions that he’s hit creative stagnation reflecting embitterment or backstage political shenanigans. If you listened to it blind, though, it would be hard to square it with this scenario. Yes, the artwork and presentation is more swaggering and Read more ...
Joe Muggs
We Out Here Festival, now in its fifth year (and fourth edition, as 2020 was of course cancelled for Covid), has become an institution. Curated by jazz-centric veteran DJ Gilles Peterson and actualised by Noah Ball – best known for his role in creating Outlook Festival in Croatia which has served as UK bass music’s metting point in the sun since 2008 – it joins the dots culturally through generations of music both strange and hedonistic and attracts a faithful crowd that reflects that.The diversity of the crowd is the first thing you’ll notice about the festival. Though it has grown a lot Read more ...
Joe Muggs
A little remarked fact of modern music is just how lush the sound of modern R&B and adjacent music is. A decade ago, the relative harshness of trap beats and EDM synths seemed to dominate sonically, or on the more bohemian fringes there was a meandering haziness derived from the UK influence of James Blake and Burial. But now, in the work of artists like Kehlani and Tinashe – and filtering outwards into pop from Billie Elish to Ariana Grande – all of this is folded together, the electronics smoothed into more traditional musicality, and with production that is sometimes as Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There are whole books to be written – indeed, hopefully being written – on how hip hop has interacted with dance music culture in North America over the past decade plus. From the overblown mania of rap megastars jumping on David Guetta tracks in the heat of the EDM explosion at the start of the 2010s, to the far more sophisticated fusions done brilliantly by Beyoncé and slightly less so by Drake on big albums last year, it’s created some of the most ubiquitous sounds globally. And in the thick of the raves and festivals, Black American vernacular forms like trap, drill, New Jersey club and Read more ...