Pa Salieu - Send Them to Coventry review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

The Guardian 0

(Warner Records)
Bleak beats soundtrack an album of smart introspection as the rapper ponders his Gambian heritage and ‘wild west’ home

This year may well have been the toughest in history for a new artist to break through to mainstream success. It’s not merely the lack of gigs, festivals and club nights, or the sense of the promotional machine running at a reduced pace; it’s the feeling that the year’s unprecedented upheavals prompted fans to cleave to the familiar, finding comfort in nostalgia rather than seek out the new. The list of biggest-selling albums in 2020 is packed with releases that came out last year, two years or even four decades ago.

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