Kano - Hoodies All Summer

The Quietus

As Top Boy returns for its third season (on Netflix rather than BBC this time), it seems like the perfect time for one of its main stars to release his fifth studio album, and his second on a major label. On Hoodies All Summer, Kano moves even further away from grime, choosing to be influenced instead by hip-hop and dancehall. If Kano’s earlier hits embodied the straightforward grittiness of 2011 Top Boy on BBC, this record surely smacks of a Drake-produced glossy international straight-to-Netflix sequel.

Although Hoodies All Summer is produced quite well, it has more than a few cynical nods to summer 2016 pop clichés that feel underwhelming and lazy in 2019. On ‘Pan-Fried,’ for instance, deep 808s, steel drums and repetitive vocal chops underscore Kano toasting his success to a simple-yet-catchy hook sung by Kojo Funds. It’s a pitch that sounds three years too late and more than a few memorable lyrics short of being relevant.

In total, Kano calls in five collaborators on this project, four of which provide the choruses on his record. Of the five features, the most convincing is an angelic dancehall vocal delivered by Popcaan on ‘Can’t Hold We Down.’ Energetic bars delivered by old friends and grime legends D Double E and Ghetts on the most upbeat track on the album, ‘Class of Deja,’ will no doubt cause many fans of Kano’s older work to draw gunfingers. The features on this album aren’t all successful though: on ‘Got My Brandy, Got My Beats’ Lil Silva’s cheesy guest appearance sounds like supermarket own-brand James Blake.

It is a shame that Lil Silva’s hook on ‘Got My Brandy, Got My Beats’ is still a welcome break from Kano’s corny, supposedly earnest bars about love and loss and no longer being able to “build a castle fit for a queen who now one finger skanks without me.” The combination of the cheesy chorus and the recycled rap tropes makes this song very saccharine and actually seems to reveal a lot about the attitude that went into making the album.

Kano performs few choruses and the ones that he does perform aren’t very memorable. Even in his verses he seems to struggle for original lyrical content, catchiness and new flows – something that major label, Parlophone, must have been very aware of.

His vocal performance here is an acquired taste. Less natural than in his early career, it harks more to the affectedly macho performance of garage MCs that forefathered grime. Kano’s delivery therefore doesn’t have much dynamic range and seems to miss some of the emotional sensibility that the features bring to the album.

Ultimately, Hoodies All Summer sounds like it’s been ‘fixed’ by a major label trying to improve Kano’s chances of radio play by throwing some poppy hooks and production into the mix and praying for the best. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but in this case the result is simply banal.

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The Guardian 80

(Parlophone)

Anyone doubting grime’s assurance as an art form needs to watch the engrossing short film that accompanies two tracks from Kano’s comeback album, three years on from his Mercury-nominated, Mobo-winning Made in the Manor. Trouble is a deceptively nostalgic tune about living in an everyday war zone that samples the late campaigner Darcus Howe, while Class of Deja finds Kano going head-to-head with veteran MCs D Double E and Ghetts in a furious old-skool back-and-forth that is testament to how thrilling a lyricist this 34-year-old can still be.

You might argue that grime’s tinny immediacy is blunted by maturity and high production values, but Kano’s state-of-the-nation address is both lush and desolate. That such a subtle operator should occasionally reach for the pianos during emotional interludes is slightly regrettable. But overall this excellent album’s clarion-clear narratives about knife crime and the importance of good times – exemplified on Can’t Hold We Down – are delivered not just with anger and pathos, but humour. SYM is a killer closer that finds a gospel choir intoning “Suck your mum” as Kano tenderly croons “Suck your mother if you think these niggas love these cuffs and riots.”

The Guardian 60

(Parlophone)
The veteran MC reveals his pensive side on a brooding sixth album that skilfully fuses the sombre and the uplifting

‘Every day get new drama, something’s gone down,” despairs Kano on Hoodies All Summer, his voice weary with worry that the status quo might never change. The East Ham MC, who has been a cult grime hero for 15 years now, having announced himself to the underground with debut single P’s & Q’s in 2004 , embraces his elder statesman status on this sixth album, cutting a caring big brother figure over soulful melodies. “Any beef can be squashed if hands can be shaken, any hand can be shaken when the blood dries – I guess that’s not a thug line,” the 34-year-old raps on piano hymnal Trouble, setting the blueprint for an album that shows understanding of the forces that drive young men to violence, but pleads with them to find another path. “Another funeral, another rest-in-peace, another judge gives out 20, welcome to my city,” he cries on Good Youtes Walk Amongst Evil, as sombre synths echo in the backdrop.