rap
Hamilton, Victoria Palace review - rich, radical and ridiculously excitingSaturday, 23 December 2017
“Are you aware that we’re making history?” demands Alexander Hamilton in the show that has finally made the lesser-known Founding Father an international household name. And whether its creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, knew it when he wrote that line or... Read more... |
The Best Albums of 2017Tuesday, 14 November 2017
Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why.SIMPLY THE BEST: THEARTSDESK'S FIVE-STAR REVIEWS OF 2017Alan Broadbent:... Read more... |
Patti Cake$ review - endearing tale of a big girl with big dreamsTuesday, 29 August 2017
Hearing that a music video director has just made their first feature film generally strikes fear into my heart. But in this instance, Geremy Jasper has done a pretty good job, directing a warm and quirky drama about a young woman from a working-... Read more... |
CD: Mary J Blige - Strength of a WomanFriday, 28 April 2017
Mary J Blige has a voice that was built to age gracefully. Gutsy, churchy, sometimes rough, it was miles away from the over-trained melismatics of the Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston imitators of the Nineties, or the velvet-toned ingenues that... Read more... |
Mobydick: North Africa's outrageous rapperSunday, 20 November 2016
A couple of years ago I saw an extraordinary outdoor concert where a rapper called Muslim (great name if you want to be hard to find on Google) performed at the Timitar Festival in Agadir in the South of Morocco to 80,000 delirious fans. The song... Read more... |
Hip Hop World News, BBC FourSaturday, 01 October 2016
Oh BBC Four, we do love you, but this was an uncomfortable proposition from the start. We watch your pop music documentaries, because – let's face it – nobody else is making any, but so often they are pretty thin gruel. There are gems, of course,... Read more... |
CD: De La Soul - and the Anonymous NobodyMonday, 22 August 2016
De La Soul are the posterboys for creative longevity in hip hop. While some contemporaries have maintained a presence by relying on “heritage” status while going in ever-decreasing circles musically (hello, Public Enemy), the trio – still in their... Read more... |
CD: Rae Sremmurd - SremmLife 2Wednesday, 10 August 2016
The duo of Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi – aka 21- and 23-year-old Tupelo Mississippi brothers Khalif and Aaquil Brown – are the epitome of everything that is baffling to ageing hip hop fans. Whisked from obscurity as teenagers by superstar producer Mike... Read more... |
CD: Paper Tiger - Blast OffSaturday, 25 June 2016
Around the turn of the millennium, two producers – the Californian Otis Jackson Jr aka Madlib, and the late James Yancey aka J Dilla from Detroit – started a revolution in hip hop: knocking beat patterns off the musical grid, searching further and... Read more... |
Sónar Barcelona 2016Tuesday, 21 June 2016
A few beers down, in the middle of a crowd listening to music you love, you tend not to think of the latest news story as your highest priority. But Britain's relationship to Europe weighs heavy on the mind these days, and when the news of the... Read more... |
CD: Bugzy Malone - Facing TimeFriday, 27 May 2016
In 2016, grime is facing a new test of its ability to operate on its own terms. At the start of this decade the genre was flirting with major label crossover that resulted in a few great pop records, but all too often diluted its musical impact or... Read more... |
CD: James Blake - The Colour in Anything / Skepta - KonnichiwaMonday, 09 May 2016
Skepta (aka Joseph Adenuga Jr) and James Blake provide a fascinating parallel as voices of the UK's “generation bass”. Both are from north London, and both have come from a grounding in the subsonic undercurrents of London's early 21st century ... Read more... |
