Hip-Hop

This song came out when my kids were at primary school and we used to sing it every day as they were about to leave the house, with one minor lyrical change – “Get your fleece on.”

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This collab between two London rappers of West African origin is a hymn to their families’ mother continent… and the women they find there. But it’s the music as much as the sultry vocals that really catches my ear, with its shuffling rhythms, lazy swing and joyful, jazzy undertones.

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Kae Tempest and Loyle Carner teamed up to make a South London double act in 2014, blending poetry and hip hop to poignant efect in Guts. 

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Shurik’n – Samouraï

19th December 2023 · 1990s, 1998, Hip-Hop, Music

Here’s a slice of French hip-hop from the soundtrack of the Marseille-set cop drama Blood Coast (aka Pax Masillia) by a member of the city’s best known rap crew IAM.

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The Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel was not the first hip-hop hit but it was a landmark in the emergence of rap upon its release in 1981 – and the first hit to use scratching.

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Butcher Brown are a self-proclaimed “proud throwback to the progressive jazz-funk bands of the 1970s with a 21st century twist” – a phrase that would once have filled me with horror.

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Here’s a nice thing by two of the great names in hip hop – DJ Muggs and Kool Keith. It’s the title track from the soundtrack of a new sci-fi film called Divinity by regular David Lynch composer Dean Hurley.

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Nas – Slow It Down

9th September 2023 · 2020s, 2023, Hip-Hop, Music

Here we are on the hottest day of the year and I’m reflecting on the hottest gigs I’ve ever attended. One of them, on a night like this, was by Nas at the 100 Club.

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The Corner is the standout track on Gold Panda’s latest album The Work – a smooth summer groove with a nice video shot in Berlin. Now it gets a new dimension in his remix featuring not one, not two but three rappers: Open Mike Eagle, Infinite Livez and McKinley Dixon.

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Here’s the mid-nineties classic by KRS-One that might well top the hip-hop hall of anti-cop fame were it not for a certain earlier song by NWA.

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