An Acute Case: 9 September 2022
Accra via Sheffield, Bamako via Baltimore, and South London rap via South London primary schools
Confucius MC: Somewhere (2021)
Outside of sampling 90’s BBC comedy (is this the first time Red Dwarf has appeared in a rap song?) William Carabine-Glean frets over the perils of the modern world (“Still fixed in this great system where we live by the face recognition”) and a method for surviving them that’s a touch simplistic (“We are free to accept / But we are equally free to reject”). * (‘Gazpacho Soup’)
CoN & KwAkE: Eyes In The Tower
Confucius is the heavily monopthong’d rapper with a fifteen-year side-line as a primary school educator, Kwake Bass the multi-instrumentalist who’s toured with Sampha and had studio dates with MF Doom, Shabaka Hutchings the London jazz scene’s crown jewel whose CV’s too long to include—what matters here is he’s producing. Lyrically, Confucius continues nursing an eight-year grievance with big tech, hung up this time on 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, from whence the title derives. And who can blame him? “Subliminal blackmail” and the value of compliance to data snoops only sound paranoid if you’re in denial or Mark Zuckerberg. His flow is compelling enough—thoughtful if not dynamic, empathic if not elastic—but what makes this cook is the music, which expands his humanistic slant on modernity with free-flowing jazz that turns corners, takes breaks, tails off, and stops dead, leading him to rhyme schemes, vocal shadings, and song pockets he’s unlikely to find on his own. Without sacrificing hip-hop’s love of repetition, the beats are propelled by a skittish energy that has a lot to do with the album being recorded in three days, a little to do with Con, Kwake and Shabs being friends and collaborators since childhood, and (fingers crossed) something to do with a crop of Londoners who see a hip-hop future beyond the copycatting tendencies of so much grime and drill. A MINUS
Stro Elliot & James Brown: Black & Loud: James Brown as Reimagined by Stro Elliot
Stro Elliot sits bolt upright in bed. For the first time, the James Brown shadow play in his mind has cohered into a single staging. He pulls back the sheets, staggers over to his DAW, and it all comes out in a flurry of mouse clicks and Ableton taps. The result isn’t a fever dream. But it’s also not not a fever dream. It’s the moment after. Bug-eyed but still hazy. There’s waking life solidity to his beats. They jerk, bop, snap, and slap. But they’re also tinged with dream textures. The febrile crescendo at the end of ‘Coal Sweat’. The static hum surrounding Brown’s vocals. The wavy keybs on ‘She Made Me Popcorn’. The beat delayed by a quantum throughout. Nerd that he is, Elliot’s approach is brain first, ass second. But because Brown is the star of any show he’s part of, ass is most definitely in the room. Mostly a deep dive into the grooves that have shaped hip-hop forever, Elliot makes room for message as well as mood on a BLM closer that squeezes the life out of soul sister chants of "I'm black and I'm proud," is interrupted by mumblings from a police radio, fights back with swaggering horns and cries of "You're killin' me," and ends in tragedy, with only sirens remaining. A MINUS
K.O.G: Zone 6, Agege
Unable to hear the industrial north others claim to in Accra-born but Sheffield-resident Kweku Sackey’s music, I decided that so long as he can whip up an hour of vibrant humanism from conventional poly-grooves, I don’t need to. Born to a nurse mum and marine engineer dad whose studies precipitated their move to England, singing and rapping in English, Pidgin, and Ga, and playing and arranging just about everything on the record, he’s got both brains and chops. The former, he puts to use simplifying his message, which reaches its abecedarian peak on ‘Adakatia’ (opening monologue: “It’s important to be nice”, closing chant: “I like music.”) With the latter, he spoils the listener with the tones and tempos of highlife, afrobeat, ragga, jazz, and varoius indigenous species in the spirit of ecumenical pan-Africanism rather than mere virtuosity. When he sings, it’s to the heavens. When he raps, it's sweet and nasally. When he plucks, they’re only the bright notes. Yeah, yeah, you’ve heard "Africa, your time is now" before. And you’ll keep hearing it until Sackey’s childhood dream comes true for everyone: "I want to be like a tree. I want to feel the fresh air. I don't want to go nowhere, have no fear, have no care. I don't want nobody to take me anywhere. Give me my freedom." Perhaps next time he’ll include metallurgy recordings in his interludes and spare me the close listening. A MINUS
Rokia Koné & Jacknife Lee: Bamanan (2021)
Found this last December then spent the next seven months periodically scowling my way through. Surely those stretched and strained vocals were crying out for ballast, not diddly keybs and synth mist. Only then, in month eight, the full force of ‘N’yanyan's ethereal breeze hit me and I haven’t looked back. Lee’s an ex-punk and Grammy-winning studio whizz who first heard Kone after judging a remix contest featuring her supergroup—Les Amazones d’Afrique—which this record partly functions as her attempt to break out of. The two didn’t meet during its creation for reasons including pandemics, coup d’etats, and a reluctance to spend time with musicians Lee presumably learnt from working with Bono. 11,000 miles apart, his muted drums, delicate idiophones, and various wavy shapes do their best not to interfere as Kone powers through her formidable range, celebrating powerful women and turning men into dogs and flies (don’t ask). It’s in this mutual non-interference that a small bit of magic happens. Beavering away in the background, Lee’s quietly upbeat afro-ambience never stops mutating. While it doesn’t bounce, it does pulse, sway, shimmer, and move in a variety of other peculiar ways that are minimal but no less fascinating for it. I expect to still be listening this December. Without scowling. A MINUS
Ibrahim Maaloof & Angelique Kidjo: Queen of Sheba
Saucy hook-up between big-voiced Beninese diva (also of Les Amazones d’Afrique) and French-Lebanese trumpeter. While Maaloof's high end is too squeaky to match the badass in Kidjo's vocals, he adequately compensates with excitable parps and stately arrangements. ** (‘Eyin’)
Maggie Rogers: Surrender
By my count containing four good songs, and though only one is shorn of the soggy mushrock trappings that dominate the rest, mush is still her biggest problem. Other good songs may be buried beneath the layers of reverb and stacked vocals. Someone else can excavate them. * (‘Shatter’)
Oumou Sangare: Timbuktu
Now in her thirtieth year as WOMAD queen, Sangare plays the matriarch because it’d be disingenuous not to. Her voice is regal, the acoustics reverberant as a throne room—or at least the largest room in the hotel she owns in central Bamako, where, surprisingly, she didn’t record this album, stuck as she was in Baltimore during Covid. After the commingling of Pascal Danaë’s guitar trills with a variety of handclaps on ‘Wassulu Don’ and the shimmering Disney sweep of ‘Sira’, the scale diminishes in a move towards mournfulness, none of which is overdone but not all of which holds my attention. Guitars quiver rather than sizzle, drums are dampened even when beating a tattoo. A celebrated humanitarian, it’s unlikely Sangare wrested ground from her band, though it’s possible they ceded it in a show of veneration. Whatever the reason, when 'Kêlê Magni' come round at the end I’m reminded that the talented ngoni and kora pickers have more to offer. B PLUS
Vic Spencer x Small Professor: Mudslide
Old fashioned rhymer proud of his self-efficacy disses the competition in general terms over grainy beats of an even older fashion. Plenty of swagger all round, plus Spencer has the good grace to occasionally drop his guard: "Wifin' up my old ho / Your new b— give head to me / My wife gon' hear this / She gon' be off the edge with me." * (‘Pitfall Music’)
Wrecking Crew: Sedale Threat
Billy Woods fans will definitely savour: “The left hand deftly mix the cheap vodka / The right hand air quotes Eastern European authors,” will probably chuckle at: “Never attend a rap battle at a pig farm,” and might even smirk at the Cannibal Corpse reference. So Billy Woods fans: fill yer boots. ** (‘Supreme Rock’)