Aug 30, 2023
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D Double E Freestyle
Aim High Volume 1 [London, 2005]
P Money x Silencer ft. Chip, D Double E, Dizzee Rascal - Stuttering 🔥🔥🔥
Legendary link up!
D Double E - Life’s a Movie / Bluku Bluku 2
Sons of Kemet Album Review: Black to the Future
(Impulse!)
BY JORDAN MAINZER
Black to the Future is more wide-ranging than a concept. The fourth album from the British jazz band Sons of Kemet cements itself as exemplary of and in tribute to Black music the world over. If 2018′s excellent Your Queen Is A Reptile specifically tackled the racism of the British monarchy and bolstered Black women throughout history, Black to the Future does it all. Its song titles, read in order, combine to make a mission statement. It’s big, both in ideas and features, and deep, both thematically and literally, as Shabaka Hutchings added layers upon layers of woodwinds during lockdown to round out the band’s otherwise raw combination of sax-tuba-drums-drums. “I do not want your equality / It was never yours to give me,” declares spoken word artist Joshua Idehen on opener “Field Negus”, over fluttering horns and clattering drums, words he initially recited during a Black Lives Matter protest last summer. More urgent as the song goes on, it’s clear that Idehen and Sons of Kemet are going for greatness. “Born from the mud with the hustle inside me,” goes Kojey Radical’s refrain on “Hustle”, a similar anthem of Black achievement.
The core of Sons of Kemet--Hutchings (saxophone), Theon Cross (tuba), Edward Wakili-Hick (percussion), and Tom Skinner (percussion)--are still the ultimate purveyors of "how did they do that?”-type skill, and they form the foundation of Black to the Future. The fast-paced nerves of “Pick Up Your Burning Cross” contrast the slow, off-beat groove of “Think of Home”, both songs different and yet quintessentially Sons of Kemet. The piping, whistling woodwinds and solemn saxophone on “In Remembrance of Those Fallen”, in combination with atonal tuba and Latin rhythms, expertly conjures the multitudes of grief. Even many of the vocal features, from the Moor Mother-Angel Bat Dawid traded barbs of “Pick Up Your Burning Cross” and D Double E MCing on “For The Culture”, follow the melodies of the horn section, the words essentially inseparable from the music.
As much as Sons of Kemet display their preeminence on Black to the Future, they save the end for some venom spitting, chastising performative wokeness as ignorant of the Black struggle. Over dissonant percussion and horns, Idehen appears again, chanting, “This Black praise is dance! This Black struggle is dance! This Black pain is dance!” It’s a connection to the rest of the record, and Sons of Kemet as a whole, but the words seared into your memory are the last ones: “Just leave Black be / You already have the world / Just leave Black be / Leave us alone.” We should be so lucky to have Sons of Kemet; they’re alone at the top, indeed.
JME - Integrity - Clear Vinyl
Label: Boy Better Know - JME051