It was only my third gig of 2013, though Young Fathers’ rice ‘n’ pea-powered Shacklewell Arms showing remains one of the finer evenings out of this one thus far. The off-kilt hip hop trio appeared to come of age there and then upon that most oily of stages, and an incontestable highlight came in the surprisingly refined form of a then unknown track as we now know entitled I Heard. You can hear it below, and combining the slow burn balladry en vogue at the moment having been favoured by all and sundry from Tyler, The Creator (Treehome95) to Frank Ocean (his first, his last, his everything) with fizzing rhymes and a perfectly grubby early ’00s-inspired chorus during which the troupe openly profess: “Inside I’m feeling dirty/ It’s only ’cause I’m hurting”, it makes for an unprecedentedly polished composition to epitomise the ineffable fluidity intrinsic to much contemporary R’n’B. However Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and ‘G’ Hastings here acutely pinpoint a raw emotivity absent from much of the genre’s more conventional outpour and, a first to have been lifted from their forthcoming Tape Two, mercifully there’s sure to be a whole load more unorthodoxly Scottish urbanity where this one came from…
Tape Two is anticipated June 11th via L.A. label Anticon.
