Loyle Carner becomes a man on new album, ‘Hugo’
There’s been a wealth of change in Loyle Carner’s world since his second album, 2019’s Not Waving But Drowning. Over the last three years, he’s not only become a father and reconnected with his biological father, as well as his Guyanese roots, which have shaped Hugo.
Carner is primarily an autobiographical songwriter who needs to live his life before going to the studio to make an album. He’s an artist that works at his own pace, and if the 28-year-old has nothing to say, then he won’t record anything. Over his three records, fans have seen him evolve from a Guinness-guzzling teen battling the loss of his step-dad to becoming a dad himself.
Fatherhood tends to make artists show their softer side but expressing his tenderness has never been an issue for Carner, who seems to have become hardened by his new-found responsibility. It has made him more inquisitive than ever about the intricacies of his life, such as race, identity, and societal problems that could scar the world his son will grow up in.
The aggressive album opener, ‘Hate’, sees Carner deliver a sermon of Black pride and spit: “They said it was all that you could be if you were black, Playing ball or maybe rap, and they would say it like a fact, All my people in the back, all the nurses in the front, All my teachers, where you at?”
Ever since his debut, Yesterday’s Gone, Carner has openly written about his struggle with identity and the complexities of growing up as the only Black person in his family. Over the last few years, he’s taken two trips to Guayana, including one with his father, who’d never been to his family’s homeland before, and this experience helped shape Hugo.
‘Georgetown’, named after the Guayanan capital, finds Carner taking ownership of his heritage over a trademark Madlib beat. “I’m black like the key on the piano, White like the keys on the piano,” he raps about his mixed-race heritage. Meanwhile, on ‘Nobody Knows (Ladas Road)’, Carner reflects on the harsh reality of his father’s lack of involvement in his life and says from the heart, “You can’t hate the roots of the tree, And not hate the tree, So how can I hate my father, Without hating me?”
On, ‘Blood On My Shoes’, Carner painfully explores the knife crime epidemic through blood-stained lenses. The 28-year-old reminisces about being scared about getting on the night bus while using his expert storytelling to show empathy with those who’ve fatally caught themselves in the vicious cycle of crime.
‘Plastic’ sees Carner take aim at consumerism over the top of a neo-soul beat which morphs into a bouncy, futuristic delight as the rapper pokes fun at the “plastic pricks”. Carner’s self-belief takes a bruising on the poetic, ‘A Lasting Place’, as he raps with a tear in his eye, “Nobody told me I’d lose it so rapidly, I thought this was the kind of thing that goes gradually, My hairline, the good guy I was glad to be.”
The penultimate track, ‘Polyfilla’, sees Carner, who recently sold out Wembley Arena, addressing how fame isn’t everything it was cracked up to be as well as recollections of an anger-filled childhood that still haunts him, and his longing for a father figure to show him the ropes. “I’m the villain in this story, the exception to the rule,” Carner admits as he shells his nicest guy in rap image.
Across Hugo, Carner deals with his demons head-on. Similarly to Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers, it’s an album that lays the creator’s feelings bare, including the parts that have previously been kept away from public consumption.
Thankfully, after the emotional rollercoaster of Hugo, the closing track, ‘HGU’, ends the record with a smile as Carner finally forgives his father for decades of abandonment. You feel the emotion in Carner’s voice as he repeats the line, “I forgive you,” and understand the meteoric meaning he crams into those three words. At the end of the song, a voice recording of a conversation between the pair planning their next meeting is played, which provides a happy ending to a torturous tale.
Carner has always been a candid songwriter, who is an anomaly in British music, but on Hugo, he digs deeper than ever before and produces a record that will define his legacy. Thanks to the birth of his son, the South Londoner felt forced to process the reasons why he is who he is and to finally stop being resentful about those events while simultaneously vowing to learn from his father’s mistakes.
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