thu 25/09/2025

hip hop

CD: The Go! Team - Rolling Blackouts

The last album from Brighton’s The Go! Team, 2007’s Proof of Youth, followed the template set by Thunder, Lightning, Strike, their 2004 debut. AD-HD sample-driven songs met Northern soul and hip hop with call-response vocals and melodies that could...

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Singles & Downloads 9

Riz Ahmed: He was an MC long before film cameras fell in love with him

This month we have some unjustly hyped rubbish electro-pop, some unjustly ignored brilliant eletcro-pop, some postmodern retro-disco, some dubstep, some grime, some sampledelic New York punk, and, at the top of the pile, one of Britain's brightest...

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Year Out/Year In: Electronic Music Digs In and Spreads Out

2010 saw some major shifts stirring up the UK club music ecosystem and unleashing some fascinating hybrids and variants of existing sounds out into the wild. As the hefty bass of dubstep muscled its way firmly into the heart of the mainstream,...

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Review and Q&A Special: Flawless, Chase the Dream, Royal Festival Hall

Flawless in 'StreetDance 3D', the movie, the moment they hit international visibility

When not one but two street dance crews blasted into Britain’s Got Talent 2009, it felt like a pressure cooker blowing. An ardent, physical and excitingly exact form of dance that had been bubbling away, compressed and hidden, under the surface of...

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New Music CDs Round-Up 15

This month theartsdesk attempts to answer burning questions like - how much of an egomaniac is Kanye West? Are Take That any good? (Yes, actually - surprisingly for some). Can you tell the difference between Rumer and Duffy? What kind of pencil does...

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Odd Future, The Drop, Stoke Newington

Tyler from the LA rap teenage outfit Odd Future: On Big Lists everywhere

Given the somewhat viral nature of Odd Future's rapidly flourishing notoriety, it's both appropriate and a little ironic that their debut UK performance should take place in the basement of a pub in a part of north London where the underground doesn...

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Ninja Tune XX, Ewer Street Carpark

Its authenticity was helped no end by a torrential downpour leaking through the brickwork and creating puddles in various parts of the uneven floor – and by the rousing mix of hyperkinetic Nineties jungle beats cut up with seemingly humanly...

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Takers

Over there is the gang who give the movie its title (though it was originally going to be called Bone Deep), because they take stuff, mostly money. They’re a suave and dude-ish bunch, headed by Idris Elba exuding his usual intimidating air of...

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Flying Lotus & Infinity at ICA

Steven Ellison is one of the most fascinating figures in modern music. Son of Motown songwriter Marylin McLeod and nephew to Alice Coltrane, he's inspired in equal part by his own musical heritage, the slow-and-low hip hop of his home state of...

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New Music CDs Round-Up 10

The-Dream: dark excess

This month's most interesting new music CDs according to theartsdesk music team includes a dark take on sex and consumerism by The-Dream, which is CD of the Month, "morally ambiguous" South London gangsta rap from Giggs, disco pop from Sia, Scissor...

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Time Gentlemen Please, The Demon Barbers, Theatre Royal Wakefield

Clog hop: street dance meets English folk in Time Gentlemen Please

Yorkshire folkies The Demon Barbers have used English dance in their live shows for several years. Time Gentlemen Please takes the idea a step further, integrating  contemporary dance stylings within a cast of more traditional types. Thus three...

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Choc Quib Town, Jazz Café

Choc Quib Town pose for their rather too tasteful CD cover

I love a world music gig where there’s hardly a single world music fan present - or for that matter, a world music journalist. By this I mean that it’s a joy to be at a concert where the audience seems to mainly consist of people from the band’s...

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