Big into Loyle Carner at the moment in terms of UK artists. It was a few months ago now but he did a great video with BT Sport for the Champions League final. Worth a watch if you haven't seen it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2g_QC9lV-o
That’s quality, that. Hadn’t seen it before, so cheers for sharing. I really liked his album that came out earlier this year, the kid’s a real talent.
I’m British, but for some reason have never really been into UK hip hop that much – even though there’s a wide geographical spread of artists, loads of them just ended up sounding pretty samey to me and a bit...eh...cockney, I guess? Not that there’s anything wrong with cockneys of course, it just never really did anything for me. Think I just prefer American voices rapping. Weird, I know. Love a lot of Roots Manuva’s stuff though, I think I like the quasi-Jamaican thing he’s got going on with his voice and Brand New Second Hand’s a hell of an album, and I used to be quite into Blak Twang – I realise both are Londoners and Carner too, which sort of invalidates my point about disliking cockney vocal deliveries but fuck it, I’m a hypocrite.
There’s a few others I used to check for too – Task Force, as mentioned above, Ty, Jehst, Lewis Parker to a certain extent. Aspects from Bristol were a lot of fun, my big brother was good mates with one of them so I saw them a few times. I seem to be listening to less rap these days full stop, maybe a symptom of hitting my thirties, and know sweet FA about the current happenings in UK hip hop – that Loyle Carner lad’s the first I’ve paid attention to in years. Can’t get into grime at all – I liked Dizzee Rascal’s first album but mostly for Fix Up Look Sharp, which is pretty much hard bars over an old school hip hop beat anyways.
Whoever said there’s always been good technical MCs in the UK scene has it spot on though. I used to go to a few battles and some of the guys there seemed easily as good as a lot of what was happening in the US, in a freestyle sense at least, and in some cases a lot better. It’s a shame that UK hip hop’s never really got the push some of its practitioners deserved.
@puroresu_kid I’ll check out some of those artists you mentioned. I’ve been neglecting stuff from these shores for far too long.
