Print editor Richard Ainslie reviews Skepta’s latest album.
grime
Album Review: Dave’s PSYCHODRAMA
“Stop all the pain. How do you stop all the pain?” Dave’s opens his debut album with an inquisition into his own mental health – and the next 51 minutes are spent encouraging the same self-evaluation from his listeners. Appending certain tracks with snippets of a therapy session, Dave leaves facetious hip-hop skits behind in […]
EP Review: Dave – Game Over
The hype surrounding Dave, aka Santan Dave, has been bubbling away under the mainstream surface for some time now. Alongside UK grime stalwart AJ Tracey, he has released a steady stream of high-quality singles over the past year, each slightly different from his 2016 breakout EP Six Paths. A co-sign from Drake, adverts with Foot […]
Album Review: AJ Tracey – Secure the Bag
“They thought I would flop and they’re wrong,” AJ Tracey, the 23-year-old rising grime sensation from Ladbroke Grove, West London confidently raps on ‘Quarterback’ and he’s right, Secure the Bag is certainly anything but a flop. Consistently throughout Secure the Bag you can hear that the intricacy of the beats has been taken to another […]
Afropunk London 2017 Preview
Last year saw the massively popular arts festival Afropunk move from its regular hosts of Paris, New York and Atlanta to London, bringing a wave of culture to the UK in its two-day extravaganza. Now, the festival is steaming ahead towards ‘round two’ in London on the 22nd-23rd July, bringing a whole host of some of […]
Album Review: Drake – More Life
Categorising More Life as a ‘playlist’ is an interesting yet calculated move from Drake. It displays a sense of awareness that this material is not worthy of a formal ‘album’ status, so it makes its way onto a new type of collection. Of course, it is quite likely that the financial benefits that Drake will surely reap from […]
Stormzy – Gang Signs & Prayer Review
Wow, this album was long. Long to the point of being difficult, long to the point of having its saggy middle blur into one vast half-trap, half-R&B, oh-yeah-it’s-also-grime mess, God, Gang Signs and Prayer feels as long as this sentence. And yet it only runs fifty-eight minutes. Don’t get me wrong, this review’s not a hatchet […]
Album Review: Skepta – Konnichiwa
Konnichiwa has been the grime scene’s most anticipated album since Skepta returned to form back in 2014, putting the mainstream, materialism and his Gucci away with single ‘That’s Not Me’. After a period of uninspiring, commercial hits grime was alive again. Not since its 2002 East London origins has the genre been as culturally relevant […]
Music Genre of the Week: Grime
GRIME Background and Info With its origins in London’s pirate radio shows Grime is a genre that sticks its hands in a lot of musical cookie jars. Jungle, Drum & Bass, Garage, Reggae and Dancehall to name a few. It has also been labelled as ‘gritty’ hip hop and ‘deep’ rap. It’s certainly a […]
Big Narstie at Exeter Phoenix, 03/10/15
“If you do not understand the basics, how can you understand the bass?” As the fog of weed smoke fell, Big Narstie swaggered onto stage like a tranquillized elephant. After passing his spliff to the front row, the Brixton grime MC declared “Don’t bun it now, we’re already getting into trouble”, and proceeded to charge […]