Skepta - Konnichiwa
Pitchfork 78
In 2012 Skepta found himself at an impasse. He was integral in grime’s early hustle during the halcyon pirate radio days, but the music he was making, from 2008-2012 was soulless, kowtowing to a sanitized version of grime that went hand in hand with the slow-burning corporate ransacking of the genre that started with Dizzee Rascal’s breakthrough almost a decade earlier. He recently compared this dissatisfaction with his role in the mainstream with Britney Spears' infamous shaved head incident. If there is a similar meltdown for Skepta it happened in April of 2012, in a 26-minute video posted to Youtube, titled “#UnderdogPsychosis no.1” with a caption that read: “Break the cycle.” In a monologue by turns manic, vulnerable, self-aware, and inarticulate, he castigated himself, the system, (in DJ Khaled’s parlance the pervasive “they”), the industry, reflected on his forgotten and youthful musical past, and celebrated the life of the underdog. He promised to make music that had meaning. The video was later shown at the Tate Modern, a strange high watermark for the grime renaissance he helped ignite.
It’s been five years since a proper studio album from the 33-year-old Londoner, and after many delays his long-awaited Konnichiwa has finally arrived. It is arguably the first appointment listen in a genre that has never been defined by albums, but by singles, loosies, hotly pressed riddims, and pirate radio broadcasts. This partly comes from an album roll out and rebranding that has lasted almost two years. Last April, he organized an impromptu rave in a Shoreditch car park attended by almost a thousand people via an Instagram post. He helped hijack the stage of the Brits with Kanye West a month before. And even earlier than that Drake had cribbed lines from Skepta’s “That’s Not Me” for “Used To” starting a cross-continental musical love affair, leading to Drake symbolically signing to Skepta’s BBK label. He’s helped unfurl a ocean-spanning red carpet that’s led to wide ranging institutional support prompted magazine covers, documentaries, and a litany of think pieces asking, yet again, if was America ready for grime.
The sudden explosion of cultural cachet seems to have made no dents in his anarchic attitude. Konnichiwa is easily the most blatantly anti-authoritarian statement from rap this year, overflowing with sneering contempt for popular culture’s industry of image, the press, the police, and the government at large. No matter the respect he’s garnered recently, and the friends he’s gained along the way, Konnichiwa proves that Skepta still bristles at the very idea of institutions. He is still flipping the bird, compelling you to help him burn it all down.
“That’s Not Me” was the first song Skepta released off Konnichiwa, and it’s a template for the album's tone: A combination of snarling bravado and earnest self directed criticism—an elegantly brutal volte-face from a previous life. He’s thrown his designer clothes in the garbage, donned his famous black track suit, and disavowed the trappings of the last few years (“I put it all in the bin cause that's not me”). He’s come back out of the thicket of a forced absence, full of self-aggrandizing swagger. (“It's the return of the mack/I'm still alive just like 2Pac”). A year later, at the height of his return to prominence, the music video for the best song on this album,“Shutdown,” was released. Dressed in all white, in the middle of London’s bloated symbol of divisive gentrification the Barbican Centre, Skepta makes very clear that he fears no one: “Me and my Gs ain't scared of police/We don't listen to no politician/Everybody on the same mission/We don't care about your ‘isms and schisms," he rapped, lines that scan as both an indictment and a call-to-arms.
Skepta produced eight of the twelve tracks himself, and they have the same roughly hewn power of his early instrumentals, measured but fiery stews of dancehall, jungle, UK funky, and garage. When it works, it's bone-rattling stuff. Elsewhere, it's a mixed bag, sonically and qualitatively: He caricatures Noah “40” Shebib’s rose-quartz soul on “Ladies Hit Squad;” “Crime Riddim,” produced by Blaikie and Skepta’s brother Jason, has the wild flair of a Death Grips track; and “Numbers” (featuring and co-produced by Pharrell) fails to shoehorn Skepta into Pharrell's bubbly funk universe.
As for his lyrics, there is nothing coded about them, or their meaning: He raps exclusively about distrust and independence. He’s very much aware that London, and the world, will continue to exploit him and erase his individuality. This awareness is why he refuses to appear in pictures with fans or answer press emails in “Man.” It’s why he pulls way back, and samples Wiley’s call for peace in the middle of a battle (“Lyrics for lyrics, calm”) in “Lyrics.” He finds peace, if he finds it at all, in his roots: by remaining loyal to family and friends, by being appreciative of the past, and by incubating a future for his genre. Konnichiwa is as nakedly vulnerable Skepta has ever been, and it represents a tantalizingly wide-open door for grime. It’ll be our job as listeners to step through and discover what we’ve been missing.
Fri May 27 00:00:00 GMT 2016Tiny Mix Tapes 70
Skepta
Konnichiwa
[Boy Better Know; 2016]
Rating: 3.5/5
“The purists might debate the name, but while they do that, crews around the world are uniting in this strong and fresh dance movement.”
– liner notes, Grime (Rephlex; 2004)
Practically every time a new grime artist touches down here in the States, critical discussion will often tend to one of the following sides: this isn’t really a grime album, and/or this will totally blow up in America. After sometime, however, nobody — no matter how right or wrong — will even remember what the initial conversation was about and statements will be inevitably rebuked or reversed. Konnichiwa, the highly-anticipated album by Skepta — the longtime bubbling, though severely overlooked, representative of the UK grime scene — has effectively slipped under the radar when it comes to journalistic traps, instead tending toward the huge, buzzing bass slabs and graffiti-dense riot of slanguage that made grime, well… grime in the first place. But just like previous high-profile exports Dizzee Rascal and Wiley, Skepta clearly isn’t only thinking in East or North London terms anymore, nor should he be. Konnichiwa, then, acts as both a love letter to OG grime and an introduction to higher marketability potential for the genre.
Of course, it’s worth noting that Skepta’s contemporary brand of grime differs from the classic grime of a decade ago. The chief difference between, say, the East London grime scene — made and popularized by the likes of Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, Kano and N.A.S.T.Y. crew — and the South London scene lies in the role of the emcee. East London’s grime template, even in its instrumental tracks, has been virtually designed and produced for use with ruff ‘n’ ready vocals. In contrast, South London largely focused on a richer, less brutalistic quality in grime, which was showcased through the austere, mechanoid Rephlex sound. Even to this day, there are fans and purists within the scene debating whether or not the role of the emcee has hurt or benefited the grime scene, taking a genre with roots in UK garage and drum & bass from the dance floor to the darkness on the edge of town. Still, there’s certainly no question that, a decade after grime first hit the mainstream with acts like Lady Sovereign inking a deal with Def Jam, this once humble scene from the Ends has become something of a footnote of a footnote.
But quibbles about genre categorization shouldn’t distract from the fact that Skepta’s latest release on Boy Better Know is an overall exciting album and a quality addition to the grime canon. Moreover, whichever side of the fence you’re on in the grime debate shouldn’t even matter, seeing as how Skepta, a North Londoner, combines the best of East and South’s respective stylistic elements. For starters, Skepta’s flow and vocal delivery are a lot easier on the ears than most of his peers, rapping with a brash Brit urgency and chanting in a singsongy, catchy Jamaican patois reminiscent of dancehall greats. Additionally, he takes most of the production bylines throughout Konnichiwa. Unlike Wiley in his prime, who was obviously a more sufficient emcee than producer, Skepta’s groovy 10-ton bass lines, eerie open-ended synth lines, and hard-hitting snares crush anything Metro Boomin could come up with on FL Studio. This is grime suitable for both late night hooliganism with the gang and drunkenly stomping it out in the club.
Konnichiwa might just be the most talked about grime release since Dizzee Rascal’s Boy in da Corner, which turns 13 later in the year and is warmly embraced by Skepta throughout the album. This, of course, is with good reason, as Skepta’s album arrives as a breath of fresh air in the scene, finding the perfect balance in retaining the trademark grime sound and seemingly higher marketability across the Atlantic and elsewhere. Like the best, most colorful rappers in the States, Konnichiwa confidently struts and showcases the emcee’s vibrant, exciting personality traits perhaps more than pretty much anyone else in Britain, grime or otherwise. Skepta’s music inhabits the good, evil, and the delightful grey areas in between; he can be at once playful (“I don’t know why man’s callin’ me family all of a sudden/ Like hmm, my mum don’t know your mum/ Stop telling man you’re my cousin”), overtly brash (“I bet I make you respect me/ When you see the mandem are selling out Wembley/ Roll deep in a blacked out Bentley/ Pull up outside like ‘wagwan sexy’”), and even emotionally resonant (“Ex girl said that I’m never at home/ So she found a replacement/ Said, ‘You was on the road but I never seen you when I was out on the pavement’”). There’s no question about it, Skepta has enough personality to more than fill Konnichiwa all by himself, and lord knows he needs all the room he can get. I wouldn’t recommend crowding him.
01. Konnichiwa
02. Lyrics (feat. Novelist)
03. Corn on the Curb (feat. Wiley & Chip)
04. Crime Riddim
05. It Ain’t Safe (feat. Young Lord)
06. Ladies Hit Squad (feat. D Double E & A$AP Nast)
07. Numbers (feat. Pharrell Williams)
08. Man
09. Shutdown
10. That’s Not Me (feat. Jme)
11. Detox (feat. BBK)
12. Text Me Back