There’s nothing more intriguing than a diamond in the rough, a record that feels raw and embryonic, bright eyed and full of promise. Young Fathers have produced exactly that and are a group of cultural outsiders breathing life into the British Hip-Hop scene, which is more in need of a new set of lungs.
The three-piece outfit were moulded in Edinburgh, but have far stretching roots that have grown through in their sound. The band members consist of a diaspora cultural patchwork consisting Nigeria, America, Liberia and the Drylaw schemes.
Critics searching for a simple categorical explanation of Young Fathers have filed them away under ‘UK Hip-Hop’, but it’s a term that trivialises the depth of sound and ties them to a timeline of British-based rap that has become stagnant and grown into a pastiche of itself. Recent years have seen a ‘post-Grime’ state, where the finest moments of the genre have long since passed, yet nothing has moved in to fill the void.
Young Fathers are as much a product of this timeline as they are a rejection of what the scene has become. It’s a full stop under joke artist names such as ‘Dot Rotten’ or ‘Tuggawar’ or kitsch references and macho-posturing of rappers like ‘English Frank’ that were left in the wake of Grime. It has taken three minds from another of Britain’s capitals to look at the genre with fresh eyes and break free of the contrivances.
‘No Way’ opens the album with the squeeze of an accordion, afrobeat percussion and the bleeping of synths, before a rapped verse starts loaded with iambic pentameter and heavy accent, free of the usual self-conscious hang up in UK Hip-Hop of whether to keep a domestic sound or adopt a more transatlantic twang. The band is a melting pot of cultural reference points that happens to have been formed in this country, shaped but not obsessed with their British heritage.
The trio move from gospel-style wailing to hooky R&B tinged chorus lines and link them together with a rap delivery notable for it’s lack of slickness – it’s accented and clunky meaning that every syllable hits off the back of your ear drum and stays in your head -
‘Mental men are manic in their manacles, I meant to make a metaphor for radicals.’
The album moves from heart racing rhythmic tracks such as ‘Low’ and ‘Get Up’ to the more sombre reflections of ‘Dip’ and ‘Mmmh Mmmh’ that can be likened to the finest moments of TV on the Radio, with emotive harmonies meeting quirky electronic noise. The album as a whole however never loses its uplifting sensibility, it’s the audio equivalent of a cathartic release or an evangelical church service that has got carried away with itself.
Comparisons can be drawn between the sound of Young Fathers and Massive Attack’s 1991 album ‘Blue Lines’ . Both combine a whispery trio of voices and left-of-field imagery with a dark sluggish production style. However Young Fathers lack the sleek approach of Massive Attack, whose sound sunk into your skull with soft vocals and lounge jazz samples. The aspects of ‘Blue Lines’ that later went on to spawn the more radio friendly side of Trip-Hop, derogatorily known as ‘coffee table hip-hop’ are nowhere to be found on ‘Dead’. Both Massive Attack and Young Fathers may be products of urban Britain but the Edinburgh outfit feel far less polished than their Bristolian forerunners.
‘Dead’ as an album title feels fitting in the same way that Arcade Fire’s ‘Funeral’ did. It’s a putting to rest of the old cliches and the rebirth of a sound from the ashes. It’s a raw product born from the death of what went before and although it’s not fully formed, the album’s sound is bursting with potential.
Defining Young Fathers as ‘UK Hip-Hop’ may be to undersell that potential the band have, it’s not a gimmick but more an honest expression. It’s not quintessential of their location but instead it’s sprawled across all these reference points and cultural backgrounds, meaning the specificity genre is lost beautifully somewhere deep down. With a running time reaching a mere thirty-five minutes, you are left with a craving and intrigue to see what these Young Fathers can raise next.
‘Dead’ is out now and can be purchased on the Young Fathers site.
