As UK drill and Afrobeats stake their place in the mainstream, London’s Moves Recordings takes stock of a half-decade of innovations in Black British music.
Four years ago, London-based independent Moves Recordings set out its stall with MOVES: The Sound of UK Afrobeats. It did exactly what a good scene-setting compilation should do: It provided a way in for the curious listener, pitched a broad tent for a still-evolving sound (J Hus, an early figurehead, released his debut album in the same month), and pointed to where it might go next. The compilation was curated by Afro B, an early champion of Afrobeats as it blossomed out of West Africa and was picked up by diaspora communities in the UK.
A year later, his song “Drogba (Joanna)” would emerge as an anthem. The track still rings out around stadiums today, and its instantly recognizable, shoulder-rolling “Jo, Jo, Jo” chorus makes a fitting opener for this new collection from the label that helped make it a hit. Where The Sound of UK Afrobeats explored the way UK rap and Afrobeats were cross-pollinating in the mid-2010s, this two-part, compartmentalized, and serviceably titled retrospective draws firmer boundaries: twenty tracks on 5 Years Of Culture: Rap & Drill, and 19 on 5 Years Of Culture: Afrobeats. It’s a fine stamp on an agenda-setting half-decade for the label.
Each half offers a thorough survey of two distinctly Black British scenes that have exploded in the past five years, from fringe concerns to chart-bothering, arena-filling, star-minting phenomena in their own right. This is an opportunity to flex: There aren’t many small independent labels that can boast hits from Wizkid, Davido, Mr Eazi, Chief Keef, Tiwa Savage, and Eugy in their catalog. But the release also offers a picture, if not a warning, of how quickly music now moves. The path from the incubation of a newish sound—the label’s first release in 2016, which features on Rap & Drill, was a remix of Belly Squad’s Snapchat-fueled, student-party sleeper hit “Banana”—to its uptake, replication, and eventual stagnation, thanks to speculative splashes from major labels with budgets to blow, is now something that can take months, not years. This is especially the case for the now-tired genre that became known as Afroswing (pioneers like Yxng Bane and the aforementioned Belly Squad are well represented here). UK drill’s turn has come too—look no further, if you can bear it, than Ed Sheeran’s summer swoop on the scene.
Yet, and this is credit to Moves’ canny A&Rs, there’s very little that sounds dated on this collection. The rap and drill selection, in particular, pokes out the spaces that remain for innovation: the pentatonic scales on TPL, JoJo, and Omizz’ “Skrr Reverse”; Offica’s Nigerian-Irish flow; Fizzler’s grimey skip and slide. The best moments on the Afrobeats side are those raw offerings from the likes of Medikal and Naira Marley that are shorn of any commercial gloss and put movement firmly first.
Given Moves’ proven knack for identifying what’s next, it’s a shame there’s not more of that on show. Despite packing in nearly 40 tracks, this double-comp only features a handful of new songs—two, from Lavish and A92 on the rap release, and a Eugy remix on the Afrobeats side—which makes you wonder what the difference is between this and a Spotify playlist. It could be questioned, too, why the label plumped for two separate, lengthy collections instead of shaving down to a single, more finely curated release. (The answer is most likely a mixture of pride and streaming numbers.) Less stringent titular confines might have opened up space to explore the label’s interests in other areas, such as amapiano or the emergent “freebeat” sound, or even its roster of angsty emo-rap acts, like BVDLVD, that have threatened to take off but never quite escaped their concentrated suburban fanbases.
But then, 5 Years of Culture never claimed to be a crystal ball. In another five years, who knows where we’ll be? You can be assured that Moves won’t treat that question as rhetorical. Listen carefully, and they’ll let you know before we get there.
0 comments:
Post a Comment