Rejjie Snow - Dear Annie

The Guardian 80

Though it’s hard to hear his Dublin roots on this long-awaited debut, Snow’s conversion to soft-voiced Brooklyn seducer is convincing and stylish

A couple of years ago, as part of a social media charm offensive that also involved hurling racist abuse at One Direction’s Zayn Malik, accusing Beyoncé of trying to “capitalise on blackness” and telling a 14-year-old Disney star that her mother could boost the girl’s career by “sucking dick”, Azealia Banks took on the entire UK rap scene, allegedly calling it “a disgrace to rap culture in general”. Forget Drake’s boosting of Skepta and Giggs, she suggested: “No American rappers are looking to the UK for any sort of tips. Be as angry as you want to be. But facts are facts.” However wrongheaded she may have been about the scene’s quality, it’s hard not to think she might have had a point about American hip-hop’s parochialism. Almost 40 years since Rapper’s Delight was released, hip-hop has reached middle age without really breaking the rule that rappers from outside the US never make it there, unless you count Canadians and émigrés: Britain’s Slick Rick and Australia’s Iggy Azalea both moved to the US years before their careers began.

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Related: ‘People are vibing off each other’s cultures’: Hare Squead and the rise of Irish rap

Pitchfork 55

This Irish rapper's debut suggests great potential, even if he's limited for now by the obvious influence of N.E.R.D and Tyler, the Creator.