The Next Movement

I'm somewhere in Alaska / I'm iced out, get ghost, now I look like Casper (Best of Young Slo-Be)

Young Slo-Be - ‘Real Luv’ (July 2019) Young Slo-Be - ‘Play Me’ ( July 2019) Young Slo-Be & Bris - ’21:42’ (September 2019) Young Slo-Be - ‘Trife’ (October 2019) Young Slo-Be - ‘G-Way’ (July 2020) Young Slo-Be ft Bris, EBK Young Joc & EBK Juvie Ju - ‘This Ain’t Nun New’ (July 2020) Young Slo-Be - ‘1AM in Stockton’ (August 2020) Mac J ft EBK Young Joc & Young Slo-Be - ‘Minswell’ (November 2020) Young Slo-Be - ‘NGH’ (March 2021) Young Slo-Be - ‘Shay Shay’ (April 2021) Young Slo-Be - 'Southeast Demons' (June 2021) Young Slo-Be - ‘Stay On Point’ (October 2021) Young Slo-Be - ‘Nike’ (January 2022) Young Slo-Be - ‘Black Heart Dead Rose’ (March 2022) Young Slo-Be - ‘Ricky’ (June 2022) Young Slo-Be ft DaBoii - ‘Ouwee’ (June 2022) Young Slo-Be - ‘Pony’ (June 2022) Young Slo-Be - ‘HoodStar’ (June 2022) Young Slo-Be - ‘Blast It’ (June 2022) Tr3yway6k, Young Slo-Be, EBK Young Joc & YoungThreat - ‘South Central 2 South East’ (July 2022)

Stockton's Young Slo-Be should have lived long enough to be a star. He already rapped like one before he was murdered, aged just 29, in August last year.

Instead, we get the life half-lived, the music cut off somewhere on its ascent, the peak hidden just beyond the next bend. Against a life, it's scant consolation.

Yet what music it was. At its best: raw and magnetic and mesmerising in a way that so much music fails to be. More should be written about it. Slo-Be's last album alone had moments where his powers as a rapper reached new heights. 'Hoodstar' plays out like a whirlpool- an artist circling around a ruin that he knew could be his own and rapping like it. Then there's 'Blast It'- somehow more still and yet even more desperate. Its title lyric sounds like a resignation to constant peril. In the verses, the betrayals by close friends and the loss of others, even family scars, linger and smart. It's a departure, in other words, from the nihilism of 'Minswell'- a track as wonderfully detached as the slurred read of its hook.

But the range was always there. 'Real Luv'- one of the first Slo-Be tracks I heard- was an early indicator of his ability to find the pockets in a pitched-up sample, and make something genuinely catchy in the process. Yet tonally it was a million miles away from Slo-Be's other tracks. 'Trife', also from 2019, was an early sketch of his environment's relentless cycles, '...still in the hood, still buying pounds, still buying these pounds...'. Slo-Be sounded almost regretful about being all in. It didn't detract from the venom of his delivery- the production on 'Nike' is as precarious as footsteps on a highwire but Slo-Be seems to have had that talent of rapping softly and fearlessly so that he never falls off it, and in the process ratchets up the tension to unbearable levels. Later in the catalogue, the words tumble out to completely different effect on 'Black Heart Dead Rose', where his lyrics seem filled with genuine frustration and bitterness.

When they had me in that cell, I was beefin' wit' time…(Best of DaBoii)

Found myself listening to a lot of SOB x RBE at the tail-end of 2020, and though there might be times when Yhung T.O outshines his (former?) groupmates with his meandering hooks, DaBoii always hits the hardest with his raps. He delivers them in angry bursts: flurries of syllables landing on beat and each line laced with venom. Meanwhile the tone of his verses ranges from righteous indignation to gleeful hatred. Sometimes he’s paranoid and fatalistic (‘Ridin’, ‘Long Run’, ‘Right Hour’) other times brazen and fearless (‘Paramedic’, ‘When U See Me’) and sometimes he’s all of those things at once (‘Strapped’). But he seems to rap best on tracks like ‘Sum It Up’ and ‘Onna Gang’ when he embraces his role of pantomime villain for what it is: just a misanthrope here to sound out his nastiest thoughts.

SOB x RBE - ‘Lane Changing’ (December 2016) SOB x RBE - ‘Humble’ (April 2017) SOB x RBE & Kendrick Lamar - ‘Paramedic’ (April 2017) DaBoii ft Yhung T.O & Lul G - ‘One Day’ (August 2017) SOB x RBE - ‘Intro’ to GANGIN II (September 2018) SOB x RBE- ‘Uber Wit A Dub’ (September 2018) DaBoii - ‘Ridin’ (June 2018) SOB x RBE - ‘All Facts Not 1 Opinion’ (June 2018) DaBoii - ‘Sum It Up’ (August 2018) DaBoii - ‘True Colors’ (August 2018) Cash Kidd ft DaBoii - ‘Zorbas’ (remix) (August 2018) NyNy ft DaBoii - ‘Arco’ (October 2018) DaBoii - ‘Long Run’ (November 2018) DaBoii - ‘Back On My Shit’ (November 2018)   DaBoii - ‘Today’ (November 2018) Yhung T.O. ft DaBoii - ‘Double Back’ (March 2019)* SOB x RBE - ‘Family Not A Group’ (April 2019) Shootergang Kony ft DaBoii, Nef The Pharaoh & Mike Sherm - ‘Charlie 2’ (September 2019) SOB x RBE - ‘When U See Me’ (December 2019) SOB x RBE - ‘Screamin’ Murdah’ (December 2019) SOB X RBE- ‘Ain’t Got Time’ (December 2019) DaBoii - ‘Thoughts Outloud’ (March 2020) DaBoii ft Yhung T.O - ‘Tough Love’ (March 2020) DaBoii - ‘2 Many Tears 2 Hold’ (March 2020) DaBoii - ‘Strapped’ (October 2020) DaBoii - ‘Ten Hour Drive’ (October 2020)

Larry died, man, I cried twice (Best of 21 Savage)

21 Savage is a master of economical raps. His world-building conveys a mood without overselling it. On early tracks like ‘Mind Yo Business’ and ‘Lord Forgive Me’, that world is one of faceless corpses, bodies savaged by demons and riddled by bullets. Each threat- however excessive- is delivered in a slow and sinister half-whisper: the voice of a man whose experiences of hell are lucid, and recent. The imagery is stark. Through the hypnotic beats of ‘Savage Mode’, he barely breaks character; if there’s any shock value at all it comes from the lolling ambience of the beats to tracks which detail street robberies and drug violence. But there’s pathos nonetheless. Like all gangster rappers, conscious mythmaking mingles with real life experience in 21’s raps. Moments when his voice seem ruptured by guilt seep through, like on ‘Lord Forgive Me’ when he confesses ‘I had to get some money/I watched my momma struggle’. As those autobiographical aspects come into clearer focus, the mask of the Slaughter King is peeled back even more. There’s ‘Deserve’- a true tale of traumatic and life-changing violence in which 21’s voice breaks entirely. Or ‘Close My Eyes’ when he angrily asks god why his friends had to die. These songs sketch a liminal period of life and memories which most of us would probably find our lives collapsing into; 21 has built his whole persona around them. The coherence of that persona, its singular vision means he’s now at a point when he can parody his own whisper, rapping lazily over RnB oldies and bombastic trap beats. He found the voice to turn his experience into art. He took the only ladder he had.

Best of 21 Savage 21 Savage- ‘Mind Yo Business’ 21 Savage- ‘Lord Forgive Me’ 21 Savage- ‘Deserve’ 21 Savage- ‘No Advance’ 21 Savage- ‘No Heart’ 21 Savage- ‘Ocean Drive’ 21 Savage- ‘Numb’ 21 Savage- ‘Whole Lot’ 21 Savage- ‘Close My Eyes’ 21 Savage- ‘Thug Life’ 21 Savage- ‘Nothin’ New’ 21 Savage & Offset- ‘Rap Saved Me’ (ft Quavo) 21 Savage- ‘Don’t Come Out The House’ Featured verse on Meek Mill- ‘Pay You Back’ Featured verse on Lil Durk- ‘Die Slow’ 21 Savage- ‘ball w/o you’ 21 Savage- ‘Brand New Draco’ 21 Savage- ‘Said N Done’

I’M IGNORANT AND RUDE DON’T GIVE NO FUCKS I AIN’T USED TO HAVE SHOES (Sada Baby, 2017-2020)

YouTube comments don’t lie, and when someone said there Ain’t no grind like the Midwest believe me they were telling a Gospel truth. Sada’s a big part of the reason why the Detroit sound has taken off, but he also stands freakishly apart from the pack. He’s got the whole mix of sounds: from malicious half-sung grunts to dizzyingly overloaded verses to tracks where he just bounces around yelping threats with his whole throat. The whole thing could teeter over at any moment and sometimes it does. ‘#Skubaruffin’ was my introduction, but like most people who aren’t from Detroit, I got hooked when I heard ‘Bloxk Party’ and the other tracks Sada dropped around summer 2018. Since then, Skuba’s YouTube channel has been a source of near continuous slaps, with the October-November 2019 run standing out most for the way Sada leant into his dancing bogeyman persona while rapping over high-drama guitar riffs, keeping a precarious balance between anger and jubilation until the two just exploded into each other. I’ll talk about ‘Slide’ and ‘Whole Lotta Choppas’ when my mind’s caught up; I’m currently enjoying the mildly less anxiety-inducing melodic stuff on Bartier Bounty 2 but that’s honestly more of a reflection on me.

Sada Baby & Poppa Sada & Tooda Man- ‘#SkubaRuffin’ (May 2017) Sada Baby- ‘Detroit Red’ (November 2017) Sada Baby & Drego- ‘Bloxk Party’ (March 2018) Sada Baby- ‘Ghetto Champagne’ (May 2018) Sada Baby- ‘Pimp Named Drip Dat’ (Aug 2018) Sada Baby & Beno & Drego- ‘My Tool’ (Aug 2018) Sada Baby & FMB DZ- ‘Rock With Us’ (Jan 2019) Sada Baby- ‘Skuba Dolph’ (Jan 2019) Mozzy- ‘Just My Luck’ ft Sada Baby (May 2019) Eastside Reup- ‘762s’ ft FMB DZ & Sada Baby (Sept 2019) Sada Baby- ‘Pony Down’ (Oct 2019) Sada Baby- ‘SkubaRu’ (Oct 2019) Sada Baby- ‘Off White Whoop’ (Oct 2019) Sada Baby- ‘Me, Myself, And Skuba’ (Nov 2019) Sada Baby- ‘ShoNuff’ (Nov 2019) FMB DZ- ‘DrippleDragons’ ft Sada Baby (Jan 2020) Sada Baby & Lil Yachty- ‘SB5’ (Jan 2020) Sada Baby- ‘Aunty Stella’ (July 2020) Sada Baby- ‘Free 8 Ball’ (July 2020) Sada Baby- ‘BILLIE Holiday’ ft Dej Loaf (July 2020)

She asked me what I do I said I play for the Gunners (Best of J Hus)

Who in UK rap is more original than J Hus right now? I can’t think of anyone on the scene who even comes close. He almost reminds me of Tupac with his ability to summon the same energy, whether he’s being happily insane or insanely unhappy. There’s nothing polite about his politics and he’s never been afraid to tackle ugly thoughts in his music, because his music reflects ugly realities: contradictions like the line in his Street Starz Freestyle where he’ll ‘bore my old friends like I never even knew them’ or the moment on ‘Leave Me Alone’ when he’ll ‘still put that motherfucker in a body bag / still help his mother with her shopping bags’, or the whole of ‘Guns & Butter’ for that matter. But that same fearlessness means his highest highs are higher than others’ too. Tracks like ‘Dubai’, ‘Lean and Bop’ and ‘Playing Sports’ show just how much fun he has when he’s being completely unfiltered, which is most of the time. He’s an ugly boy acting erratic, and if you’ve seen him in the village, he probably be in Dubai before you know it.

Best of J Hus

 ‘Street Starz Freestyle’ (January 2015) ‘Lean & Bop’ ft DoccyDocs (April 2015) ‘Dubai’ ft Locz (June 2015) ‘Guns & Butter’ (July 2015) ‘Playing Sports’ (July 2016) ‘Clean It Up’ (August 2016) Featured verse on ‘High Roller’ by Nines (February 2017) ‘Did You See’ (March 2017) ‘Who You Are’ (May 2017) ‘Clartin’ (May 2017) ‘Goodies’ (May 2017) ‘Leave Me’ (May 2017) Featured verse on ‘Dealers & Robbers’ by MoStack (June 2017) ‘Scene’ (May 2018) ‘Daily Duppy Freestyle’ (April 2019) ‘Must Be’ (November 2019) ‘Repeat’ ft Koffee (January 2020) ‘Big Conspiracy’ (February 2020) ‘Spang DVD Freestyle EP1′ (March 2020)

I don’t ask no questions, I just handle business (Best of Dej Loaf)

Time to honour my Aries 1991 co-star Dej Loaf with a list. Remember how, before this new Detroit wave, Dej was probably the city’s most exciting new talent since Danny Brown? I hadn’t heard anyone like her back in 2014. Her voice was sweet and slight and her flow sleek and winding (‘like a brook’, Christgau called it) but the way she used it was so pugnacious and it didn’t take anyone long to realise that her insights were more perceptive than most. Tracks like ‘Try Me’ and ‘Desire’ sketched her world with a quiet confidence; autobiographical raps delivered like an open mic talent who’s silent until she hits the stage and bodies just about everyone when she gets there. Dej could rap about anything too: veering from belligerent skullduggery to mournful tributes or switching from disdain (for education, dead-end jobs, PEOPLE!) to an earnest desire to make good. She would work, and work hard: looking after her people first and herself second; but she would also go to Miami to ‘take your clothes off’ and ‘see your soul all naked’. Dej’s world seemed small even when she travelled to South Africa or stardom, her outlook clear-eyed and grounded even when she was ‘feelin godly’ and lording it over the rest of us. An unassuming queen, until you made assumptions.    

‘My Life’ (2012) ‘Try Me’(2014) ‘I Got It’ (2014) ‘Blood’ ft Birdman & Young Thug (2014) ‘Me, U & Hennessy’ (2015) ‘Back It Up’ (2015) ‘Desire’ (2015) ‘Been on my Grind’ (2015) Featured verse on Dreezy’s ‘Serena’ (2015) ‘Off the Top’ (2016) ‘Miami’ (2016) ‘Beef & Broccoli’ (2016) ‘Snakes’ (2016) ‘In Living Color (Oh Na Na)’ (2016) Featured verse on Rick Ross’ ‘Maybach Music V’ (2017) ‘Go Dej Go’ (2018) ‘Last Time I Checked’ (2018)

Right before I kicked the door I said a silent prayer

She say I'm always movin', ma I just can't sit around

I mostly made the following playlist as an excuse to post something about Sada Baby’s new and transcendental loosie ‘Me, Myself and Skuba’, which sees him freewheeling his way through drunken horn blares and funk dramas like a mystic travelling further out of his own head (and perhaps, I hear you say, into his own head). The song’s got an autotune hook- and it’s good, and kind of downbeat, and it makes me sad to think that Sada’s probably the best rapper in the world right now and yet I’d never hear this or anything like it in a club because people would rather listen to something that an algorithm suggested.

As well as greedily devouring everything Skuba’s dropped on YouTube, I’ve also  been listening to a whole lot of Young MA’s latest LP. Who else is covering the spectrum from street lamp confessionals to stripper anthems like her right now? ‘Car Confessions’ really sounds like it was written by someone who has to be three places at once, just made it to the third and still manages to shine when she gets there. And then there’s Summer Walker’s ‘Potential’, which hammers a hook into the ground until it becomes something like a prayer for a new relationship. It’s quietly devastating. 

I spend more money on security than I make just to be safe (April 2017)

April delivered sunshine to London; I disappeared to Valencia and ate paella. Beyond sampling Latin delicacies, I was sitting on beaches listening to a bunch of really good new rap albums, as well as a few hip hop, grime and rnb loosies. Drake’s global reach (Top Boy link) is such that I heard him nearly as much over there as I did on the High Road, where ‘Skepta’s Interlude’ still bangs harder than anywhere.  But neither that nor the Kendrick album nor the endless streaming statistics thrown my way should overshadow stellar debuts from Kodak Black, Smino, Playboi Carti and GoldLink from the last couple of months. Carti, for all his limitations, has an ear for beats which makes the most inane reflections sound damn near godly; Kodak sounds like he raps easier than he talks, and GoldLink has the coolest rap song of the year so far in ‘Crew’. I also had to reserve a mention for Future, who has honed his craft to the extent that he can alternate between making trap hits and pop hits more seamlessly than anyone at this moment in time. ‘Sorry’  showcases his duality best. His ‘In and out of time zones, running up a billi/Indian Cherokee/clarity/shining is therapy’ mantra is self-care for a man lost in the rhythms of his own life: reeling so long that it almost feels natural. Then there’s Frank Ocean, who sees both sides and whose strangled yelp through the second hook of ‘Chanel’ haunts my life. I need a bitch to grind on my belt! he howls. Like he needs it more than he needs to breathe. It’s thirst for more than the victories won. And since I’m talking about dualities- what about Nicki and ‘Regret in Your Tears’? Not a ballad but definitely not an outright victory lap either. Just once, do something for me boy, she sings, her voice wavering ever so slightly. A queen who can’t find an equal amongst men.    

They think I’m dumb / They don’t know I see the plot (Late 2016 / early 2017)

Another January laced with laryngitis; another president in the White House; and another collection of raps and ballads from both sides of the ocean to help you bore right through. Don’t want to lapse into glib quotables but It’s just one big cycle here and I’m tired of running round it like a hamster. Most of my interest either side of The Donald’s inauguration has been absorbed by the growth and development of artists such as Syd, Sampha and Dej Loaf, all of whom manage to turn inwards in their most recent projects, without sounding too far removed from the nightmare of 2016-2017. That too probably explains my interest in Nines, a Harlesden rapper whose mumbled reflections seem to evoke a different Ice City than the glaciers of NW. His muted, insular rhymes could not be further removed from the big, brazen brags of Migos’ Culture or even the blockish beats to which Wiley proudly plays godfather. But the popularity of all of these projects is testament to hip hop and grime’s enduring power at times of political and social upheaval, something which is perhaps only just being recognised for what it is. 

Of course they gon' say this money turned me to a monster / It did (Late 2016)

Don’t call it a round-up but here’s a cup of lyrical Lemsip for y’all to sip on in the season which begins bright-eyed in a windbreaker and ends zipped up in a ski jacket like one of the Apocalypse’s Four Horsemen. More than a few saccharine rnb picks this time round: Tink’s ‘Surprizes’ offers a necessarily sweet antidote to winter’s oncoming onslaught and Solange’s ‘Cranes in the Sky’ soars high above even as her words see her searching for simpler pleasures. I’ve book-ended the mix with two of my favourite Dej Loaf tracks from 2016. ‘Snakes’ slinks out with summer while ‘Beef & Broccoli’ is the ‘New Grass’ in a catalogue that has always had the potential to get behind your eyes and break you. Imo Dej is right up there with Young Thug and Future in her approach to melody and her ability to manipulate the listener’s feelings with the slightest shifts in tone and cadence. Beyond Dej-Skip down to ‘Swang’ and ‘Cruisin & Mobbin’ for something to make the whip come alive and ‘Family’ for some stuttering studio fun from Thugga and his sisters Dora and Dolly. Only one UK inclusion, but the closing minute and a half of ‘Dreams/Sunshine’ takes a song that has been coasting along in no particular direction for a little too long and resonates like its name into something almost euphoric. It will warm up that 7am bus shelter. 

It is a small country. 

There is nothing one man will not do to another.

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from ‘The Visitor’ by Carolyn Forche

Ka - “I Wish (Death Poem)” (Independent, 2016)

DOING RAP WITH MY HOODIE UP / RIDE TO THE GUAP LIKE GIDDY UP (July/August 2016)

Favourites from a summer spent crawling at a snails’ pace between the South Coast and North London in search of a new home. Some shiny new tracks and some older ones that got hauled in with the rest of the shoal. The new Noname record is great and probably warrants a few more inclusions but I chose ‘Freedom Interlude’ because it seems to encapsulate the whole project pretty well without really sounding like a rap song at all. Other US tracks include Guwop’s march to freedom and an anthem from SremmLife 2 which I think shows Rae Sremmurd’s superb credentials as songwriters. Also 5 UK raps here: Giggs and J Hus both throwing their heads back in disdain (but at completely different tempos) and Nadia Rose’s breakthrough single from last year which is just as rude and impertinent now as it was then.

Lupe Fiasco - Murals (Atlantic, 2015)

I like southern cities with large moons