Kojey Radical

Photo credit: Sightracked.

The ‘rap game’ as many insist on calling it, has – aside from a few exceptions – been in an unrelenting state of mundaneness, a seemingly perennial tedium. I could go on at great lengths in describing the contempt I have for the overwhelming majority of current rap “artists”, or how I loathe the supposition that hip-hop songs should be “turnt”. Instead I will simply say that the reality is that the bulk of contemporary rappers are about as indistinguishable from one another as ‘ two rats fighting over a courgette that has fallen into a urinal’.

I do, however, find some comfort amidst the nugatory collective failures of acclaimed hip-hop artists, and that comfort has manifested itself as my inability to stop listening to Kojey Radical’s new album, In Gods Body. The London experimentalist has managed to emphatically harmonize spoken word poetry and grime inspired beats. Even though this may not seem so monumental and the two are admittedly, not entirely disparate, he does so in a refreshing and prodigious way.

The socially conscious, coarse-voiced rap virtuoso will perform at Exchange in Bristol on the 26th of October and I would urge anyone who values musical authenticity to attend, or at least listen to his debut album in some measure.