The rap trio kick off their just-announced world tour to an eager audience but fall into old habits of tardiness
Dressed in a red frock that flounced as she performed, the rapper, singer and musician Lauryn Hill told the eager but weary crowd: “Respect the miracle. Respect the miracle of this union” three and a half hours later than billed.
Related: Fugees announce reunion world tour, 25 years after The Score
Continue reading...With the release of a new album – Certified Lover Boy – we pick the best tracks from the Canadian rapper and global superstar’s hit-studded career
Borne aloft on a blaze of horns and flanked by three all-time greats, this was Drake’s entry to rap’s big leagues: “Last name ever / first name greatest”, is how he opens his verse. It’s a rather corny boast and gets cornier still – punchlines like “at the club you know I balled: chemo” could be included in Christmas crackers, were they not deeply insensitive. But his cockiness connects, and the chorus hook is memorably strong.
Continue reading...There is some sustained brilliance here, but unfortunately it comes from the guest stars – and at 108 minutes, this long-awaited album is in need of an edit
Chaotic preview events for Kanye West’s 10th studio album Donda have dominated social media feeds in recent weeks, each one promising a release date that never materialised. The coverage of the events has focused on Kim Kardashian dressed as a Balenciaga-clad sleep paralysis demon, $50 chicken tenders, potential Drake disses, levitation and cameos from alleged rapist Marilyn Manson and the homophobic DaBaby. Fans called West a genius capable of creating exciting theatre that evolves in real time; others saw him as an empty provocateur. Much like kindred spirit Donald Trump, West seems to instinctively know how to weaponise controversy to drive interest in a new project.
With the eventual release of Donda (named after West’s English professor mother, who died in 2007), there is a nagging sense the spectacle has overshadowed the actual music, with this bloated 108-minute album rarely sure of what it is trying to say. The intro, Donda Chant, a sequence of eerie recitations of his mother’s name seemingly designed to send you into a sunken place, is arresting, giving you the impression you’re about to undergo an immersive religious experience. But too often the songs that follow are built on half-baked ideas from a West more concerned with self-pity and martyrdom than confronting his contradictions.
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The London rapper’s melancholy third studio album may not be a genre game-changer, but his renewed focus results in sharp street portraiture
The second Fredo album in the space of six months begins in portentous style. There’s a reading of an extract from an 1852 speech given by the former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass – a speech that contrasted the celebration of “freedom” on 4 July with the lot of the slave – followed by a churchy sounding organ playing a figure that distinctly recalls Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. “I know labels don’t want it to end this way,” offers the rapper on the chorus, “but I had to tell them it’s independence day.”
It’s the kind of bullish declaration of freedom an artist might make had they recently quit, or been dropped by, a major label: a new beginning, free from the interference of A&R men and bean-counters suggesting you round your edges and demanding to know where the next hit is. But the advance stream of Independence Day arrives from Sony, bearing the logo of RCA, which has released every preceding Fredo album.
Continue reading...The recent discovery of unmarked graves at residential schools is the latest incident in decades of trauma for Indigenous Canadians, who are using lyricism to process it
After the recent discovery of hundreds of Indigenous children’s unmarked graves at former Canadian residential schools, Drezus – an rapper of Cree and Ojibwe heritage from the Muskowekwan First Nation in Saskatchewan province – grew unsure about his longstanding plans to release a new music video, Bless. He starts the song by calling the atrocities his people have faced “an act of war”, then follows that with bar after bar of Indigenous empowerment. Unsure if that would be appropriate while his people grieved, he turned to his mother, who had attended one of those schools. Her advice? “Release it, son. We need it now.”
This government-funded, Christian church-administered boarding school system was established in Canada in the late 1800s. Its founders’ intent: to forcibly remove Indigenous children from their “savage” parents and impose English and Christianity. Some 150,000 Indigenous children attended these schools before the last one closed in 1997. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report detailed nearly 38,000 sexual and physical abuse claims from former residential school students, along with 3,200 documented deaths. The mortality rate for those children was estimated to be up to five times higher than their white counterparts, due to factors including suicide, neglect and disease.
Continue reading...The actor was working as a bouncer when he got a small part in a new show called The Wire. Two decades on, he’s a blockbuster fixture. The Suicide Squad star talks about fighting for his big break, losing his dad, and why acting helped him out of a ‘dark, weird junction’
“I appreciate my quiet time, I really do,” Idris Elba tells me, “but I didn’t choose a career in quiet time.” At 48, his life seems relentlessly full of activity, projects, causes, releases. He’s the star of an imminent summer blockbuster, The Suicide Squad. He’s a rapper who releases music online at a rate of about a track a month. He hosts a podcast. He’s just released a new line of T-shirts. Earlier in 2021, Elba signed a deal with HarperCollins to write children’s books. He and his wife, the Canadian model Sabrina Dhowre Elba, have recently been petitioning world leaders (France’s, Belgium’s) on behalf of rural farmers in Africa. The couple have also co- designed a Louboutin sandal. When Elba sits down to chat to me over Zoom, it’s during a break between night shoots on a new movie he’s making, and I’m tempted to tell him to forget about it; shut the laptop; sleep.
Is he someone who hates sitting still?
Continue reading...The striking vocalist Brother Resistance, who died this month, started a politically powerful hybrid of hip-hop and soca that opened new possibilities in Caribbean music
You would expect a song called Dancing Shoes to celebrate the unfettered joy of a good boogie, but Network Rapso Riddum Band’s 1981 track did quite the opposite. Lead vocalist Brother Resistance – whose death on 13 July sent shockwaves through the Caribbean music community – used Dancing Shoes to castigate his fellow Trinidadians for embracing foreign forms such as disco, delivering caustic lyrics in a flow laden with preacherly indignation.
The song heralded the arrival of a new hybrid sound in Trinidad and Tobago – one that hasn’t had quite the global impact of dancehall, reggae or other Caribbean styles but which is the source of some of its most fascinating and political music, dubbed “rapso” for its melding of rap and soca.
Continue reading...Hip-hop star known for his personality, beatboxing and freestyle skills scored his biggest hit in 1989
Biz Markie, the New York rapper, beatboxer and producer, has died at age 57.
Markie’s representative, Jenni Izumi, said the rapper and DJ died peacefully Friday evening with his wife by his side. The cause of death has not been released.
Continue reading...A group of talented teens push the boundaries of their religious society by putting on a concert in Nabil Ayouch’s earnest film
Franco-Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch has made a likable, high-energy youth movie that could almost be called the Moroccan answer to Fame and which features that time-honoured plot device: putting on a concert.
Using nonprofessionals playing docu-fictionalised versions of themselves, Ayouch has created a drama revolving around an arts centre for young people that he himself helped to set up in the tough district of Sidi Moumen, called by someone here the Bronx of Casablanca. The school includes a special programme called the Positive School of Hip-Hop. A crowd of smart, talented teens join the class and we watch as they find out the challenges, limits and opportunities of learning self-expression through western-style rap in a Muslim society.
Continue reading...Nick Broomfield returns to the deaths of the two titans of 90s gangsta rap, and the disturbing influence of record label boss Suge Knight
Nearly 20 years ago, Nick Broomfield released his sensational documentary Biggie and Tupac, in which he uncovered hidden facts about the violent deaths of US rappers Tupac Shakur and Christopher “Biggie” Wallace, and found that intimate witnesses to this murderous bicoastal feud were willing to open up to a diffident, soft-spoken Englishman in ways they never would to an American interviewer. Since then, there have been two very unedifying movies about Tupac: the sugary docu-hagiography Tupac: Resurrection (2003), produced by the late rapper’s mother, and the similarly reverential drama All Eyez on Me (2017).
Now Broomfield returns to the same subject, updating his bleak picture of the 90s rap scene, a world in which energy, creativity and radical anger were swamped with macho misogyny, drug-fuelled gangbanger paranoia and a poisonous obsession with respect. Marion “Suge” Knight, head of Death Row Records in Los Angeles, cultivated a violent gang-cult image by associating with the Bloods, and encouraged his acts and proteges to do the same, including Tupac – and Biggie’s perceived oppositional identity condemned him. But even more disturbingly, the LAPD allowed its officers to moonlight at Knight’s firm as “security” (a term that euphemistically covers all manner of paramilitary violence and intimidation).
Continue reading...After feeling sexualised even before her teens, the south London rapper wrested back her power. She explains how her disruptive club music creates a space where anything can happen
Shygirl’s tracks are, for want of a better word, filthy. The 28-year-old musician’s lyrics detail sexual exploits and disposable partners. “I like to glide, figure skate,” is not about ice dancing. This week she releases BDE, a collaboration with Northampton rapper Slowthai, and it’s less rapping on her part, more an intoxicating mix of cooed and snarled commands over ominous production. This is sex as chaotic workout, and if it ends up jarring the listener, the artist has achieved her goal. “I love it when art makes me uncomfortable, because I have to question where that’s from,” she says. “How can something affect my equilibrium like that? I want to affect other people’s equilibrium.”
Her domineering musical persona is worlds away from the chatty, pleasant woman I meet in a bar outside Cambridge University’s Union, where she has just given a talk about her artistry and the accessibility of the creative industries. About a quarter of our time is spent laughing; sharp introspections on owning one’s narrative as a public figure come as easily as self-deprecating tales of recording angry voice notes about previous partners. And it’s easy to see why she’s increasingly considered a fashion force: following a recent Burberry campaign and soundtracking runways for Thierry Mugler, she stands out majestically via orange hair, wholesome babydoll dress and eye-catching Telfar Clemens boots, noticed by wide-eyed students in our vicinity.
Continue reading...The rapper has worked with Kanye and Madonna and blazed a trail for black queer pop. Their new mini album, they say, feels like the start of a new chapter…
Mykki Blanco has just moved to Hollywood, and five minutes into our conversation, the 35-year old rapper’s beloved mother calls. “She needs to chill out. Like, I don’t work?” laughs Blanco. “She’s helping me pick out furniture and she’s gone crazy about the whole thing.” There is something pure about one of hip-hop’s most experimental figures having their mother help them decorate. The non-binary musician (who uses the pronouns they/them) has been living outside the US for the past five years, residing mostly in Europe: London and Portugal’s countryside. They also lived in Paris during the city’s second lockdown in late 2020 – an experience Blanco describes as “emotionally distressing”. But now, back living near family and friends, Blanco’s spirits seem high. Their new mini album, Broken Hearts & Beauty Sleep, an electric collection of love songs featuring Blood Orange and Jamila Woods, is a fresh beginning. For starters, it’s the first time they have had a record deal.
That may come as a surprise considering Blanco has not only worked with Kanye West, Charli XCX and Madonna, but was also a founding member of “queer rap”, a sub-genre of hip-hop that allowed LGBTQ+ people to express themselves freely. Tattooed and 6ft 2in tall, Blanco has long played with drag and gender presentation, whether donning waist-length braids and a pink corset or a shirt and a shaved head; rapping bluntly over trippy synths, their hyperactive lyrics address sexuality, partying and bravado from a queer perspective. In 2012 Elle magazine declared them “hip-hop’s new queen”, and in the New York Times Michael Schulman enthused about their “glamazon alter ego… a redoubtable presence on the New York downtown art and cabaret scene”. They self-released their 2016 debut album, Mykki, to critical acclaim: it was described by the Observer’s Kitty Empire as “one of the year’s most riveting musical self‑portraits”.
Continue reading...From drill’s high watermark to Tuareg rock, Colombian pop and London jazz, here are our music editors’ picks of the best LPs from the first half of the year
Continue reading...Last year the Canadian musician scored a global hit with Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head) – now he’s finally ready to meet his fans
For the lockdown superstar, omnipresent fame feels very much like obscurity used to. “I’ve been waiting a long time to go play with the fans,” says Powfu – AKA 22-year-old, Canadian lo-fi rapper Isaiah Faber – gazing around at the same four walls he was staring at before his breakthrough track Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head) unexpectedly racked up 360m YouTube streams, 4bn TikTok plays in March 2020 alone, and major chart placings worldwide at the very start of the pandemic. “But it’s made it a bit easier because it wasn’t like everything hit me at once. It’s not full-level yet.”
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Continue reading...Her track Peng Black Girls was a love letter to womanhood, and a huge lockdown hit. Now the rising south-London star is ready for her closeup.
Photography by Suki Dhanda. Styling by Barbara Ayozie Fu Safira.
In the depths of a bleak Covid winter, very few of us were feeling peng. With Zoom meetings and state-mandated daily walks our only form of socialising, there was little to dress up for, and few opportunities for us to feel beautiful.
Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips
Continue reading...2020’s heavily male ceremony reversed with wins for Arlo Parks, Haim and Billie Eilish, as Little Mix become first all-woman winner of British group
Dua Lipa has topped the winners at the 2021 Brit awards, calling for Boris Johnson to approve “a fair pay rise” for frontline NHS staff as she picked up gongs including the top prize of British album for her chart-dominating disco spectacular Future Nostalgia.
She also won female solo artist, bringing her total Brit award tally to five and cementing her position as one of the UK’s most successful and critically acclaimed pop stars.
Continue reading...The rapper, who has died aged 50, parlayed his life’s difficulties into thrilling, combative, witheringly witty music
Listening to a DMX song from the late 1990s is like riding a wrecking ball through a gated community. The music video for Stop Being Greedy – one of many confrontational highlights from the rapper’s 1998 Def Jam debut, It’s Dark And Hell Is Hot – shows DMX hunting a wealthy white man across a mansion, before eventually feeding the poor soul like a T-bone steak to his pet pitbull; the rapper’s exhilarating, half-barked vocals gave the sense that he wanted to eat the rich.
It’s a song about the poor feeling so ignored that they have no choice but to confront the ruling classes (“Ribs is touching, so don’t make me wait / Fuck around and I’m gon’ bite you and snatch the plate”) and violently rip up their rules, and its message reflected an urge by DMX – who died on Friday at the age of 50 – to liberate a hip-hop culture that by 1998 had become too preoccupied with shiny suits in tacky music videos filmed inside a blingy Rubik’s Cube.
Continue reading...Multi-platinum rapper, celebrated for raw storytelling, was first artist to top US charts with first five albums
DMX, the New York rapper whose gruff tone electrified the US music scene in the late 1990s, has died aged 50.
The star, whose real name was Earl Simmons, was hospitalised after a heart attack on 2 April, and had been placed in a critical care unit at White Plains hospital, New York. His family had organised a prayer vigil outside, which took place on Monday.
Continue reading...Rap star and actor who embodied the edgy and lawless life depicted in his work
The first rapper to have his first five albums go straight to the top of the US chart, DMX, who has died aged 50 following a heart attack, established himself as the premier exponent of hardcore rap in the aftermath of the violent deaths of the Notorious BIG and Tupac Shakur. He announced himself with his multi-platinum-selling debut album It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot (1998), a stormy survey of greed, violence, crime and betrayal, which also displayed his gift for blending light and heavy textures behind an intense, menacing presence at the microphone.
Before the end of that year DMX had released his second blockbuster, Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, another huge seller. He was suddenly the new king of Planet Rap, yet when the 1999 Grammy award nominations came around he was nowhere to be seen. This omission prompted the rap superstar Jay-Z (who would win the best rap album Grammy that year) to boycott the awards ceremony “because too many major rap artists continue to be overlooked”, as he put it. “Rappers deserve more attention from the Grammy committee and from the whole world.”
Continue reading...Last week’s triple triumph capped the glorious rise of a rapper who has inspired a generation of women with her confidence and sublime talent
In 2014, a then-unknown Megan Thee Stallion tweeted: “I need a team [because] I promise this rap shit gone take off for me.”
That promise has been fulfilled in quite spectacular fashion. The 26-year-old, born Megan Jovon Ruth Pete, is now one of the world’s most famous and respected rap stars, with her three Grammy awards at last weekend’s ceremony marking the peak of her career thus far.
Continue reading...