Young Fathers - Cocoa Sugar

The Guardian 100

(Ninja Tune)

I think about the name of the last Young Fathers album a lot. White Men Are Black Men Too. I’m not sure I know what it means, or if I agree with it, or if either of those things matter. But I like the way it feels – like the sort of thing a freethinking, biracial Scottish rap band should say. Similarly, it’s unclear why this album is called Cocoa Sugar, and its typically fragmentary, allusive lyrics won’t help you. Maybe it doesn’t matter – maybe what’s important is how it makes you feel. 

Cocoa Sugar bursts with the weird warmth of an ice burn, a sizzling stew of Tricky-covers-the-Fall garage rap. Each song is nasty, brutish and short, bristling with imagination. Wow shackles its motorik angst to a dead-eyed drawl, seasoned with abattoir squeals. In My View is a slugabed’s vision of anthemic pop, while Toy is the most conventionally vicious rap here, every word a wound. The trio reckon this is their most “linear” album, which seems a stretch. It feels just as estranged of pop’s traditional structures and strictures as they’ve always been. It feels exhilarating; it feels like freedom.

Drowned In Sound 90

The fact that the Edinburgh trio took far more time over their latest record Cocoa Sugar than at any other period of their career so far, has not affected their staying power. Rather, it has added to their mystique. And it is immediately, abundantly clear that the time spent on Young Fathers' third record was time well spent. This is a far more stripped down, stream-lined record that remains just as essential and urgent as all their output so far with little to no compromise. Truly, we are lucky to be in a time and space where Young Fathers fly in the face of their myriad genres - pop, indie, hip-hop, punk - and traverse them all elegantly.

Cocoa Sugar by Young Fathers

Right from the word go, 'See How' announces that while the band may have slowed down slightly, they've lost none of their intensity. Over the course of Cocoa Sugar's 12 tracks, the band prove again what accomplished songwriters they continue to be. Lead single 'In My View' is perhaps their most emotionally charged and moving song of their entire oeuvre so far, for instance. Meanwhile, 'Tremolo' may make a fairly obvious production choice, the repeated line of "Tremolo my soul" is a haunting sound that manages to avoid overt sentimentality. Proving their durability, this is immediately followed up with 'Wow' which with its pacy beat gives many punk songs a run for their money while even being able to throw in their "doo-wop" acapella vocal stylings in there without blinking.

In the album's second half of the album, the 'darker' sounds take over, such as on 'Holy Ghost' which is perhaps their most straight-up hip-hop song on the record. Other recent single 'Toy' however shows the band's more stripped back style isn't completely prevailing here, as it remains the skittish, textured track they are perhaps more known for. Finale 'Picking You' with its pulsating organ and marching drum snares (and I swear there's a distorted bagpipe drone in there) feel very much like the record's funeral procession - especially when featuring lines such as "I only go to church when someone dies" and "You'll never find your way to heaven"- giving Young Fathers third and possibly best record the deliverance it deserves.

Ultimately, Young Fathers continue to prove their worth as an outlier in UK art-pop. Their very specific melting pot of identities continue to be one of the most exciting things coming out of not only Scotland (which they very much are) but in the world, today, facing an increasingly divisive political sphere of which the band's music is in constant conversation with. In essence, we need Young Fathers more than we actually deserve them.

The Guardian 80

Warp-speed rapping, electronic drones, and lyrics about foie gras manufacture: nothing is too esoteric for the impressive Mercury prize winners

Late last year, Young Fathers announced the arrival of their third album with the release of a track called Lord. It was the stuff of which mainstream leaps are made: a beautiful, careworn piano ballad with quasi-religious lyrics (“Lord don’t pay me no mind … this is my cross to bear”) that swelled into a huge, gospel-influenced chorus. You could imagine it being belted out in painfully earnest style by some young hopeful during The X Factor semi-finals.

Or at least, you could have done, had it not been for the fact that the song’s production seemed specifically designed to give people nightmares. The piano behind the lead vocal jangled out of tune and fought for space with an ominous electronic hum, bursts of sampled vocals sounded like nothing so much as a wailing car alarm, a guitar grumbled and shrieked with feedback, the rhythm track sounded as if it was being banged out on the side of a skip, and what might loosely be termed a string arrangement largely consisted of unsettling scratching and scraping.

Related: Young Fathers: ‘Everybody has a dark side. We’re all complicit…’

Pitchfork 73

The latest from the experimental rap trio is chaotic but sleek, a streamlined presentation of the singular style Young Fathers have crafted.