Slowthai – ‘UGLY’
Slowthai isn’t concerned with becoming a face to be plastered across the papers and folded into forgotten fish and chip paper the next day. He’s got his eyes firmly on the future. It means UGLY arrives as his most complete vision yet, far removed from the unfettered fury of his debut LP Nothing Great About Britain or the introspective anger on Tyron; this record hums with the vibrations of an artist ready to press the ignition.
“Jesus fucking Christ” were the words that audibly left my mouth in a whisper as I figuratively dropped the needle on Slowthai’s latest album. Confronted by the Northampton rapper, Tyron Frampton, approaching the speakers with the swagger of a tooled-up hooligan, bolstered by beats from Dan Carey, the new record is the clang of a gauntlet being thrown at your feet. It’s a challenge to match Slowthai’s energy, to try and compete with the power of his persona and to hold on to his coattails as he flies off into the stratosphere. While ‘Yum’ may arrive as a blasphemous belt across the chops and a suggestion that Slowthai was about to deliver another rip-roaring punk-rap explosion, things soon change.
Like his first record, UGLY is flecked with the trappings of punk rock. Now, however, Frampton isn’t operating as a rapper with a penchant for punk, but as the lead singer of a band and a fully-formed musician. “Now I can have my own band,” Frampton noted in a press release with glee. That’s not entirely true, with the singer instead using a ream of impressive session musicians (including Shygirl, Jockstrap’s Taylor Skye and more) to facilitate the new direction, even gaining the talents of Fontaines D.C. on the brooding title track. “This album was me trying to emulate the spirit of the brotherhood ethos that bands have,” he continues. “Music is about the feeling and emotion that goes into it. Like an artist making a painting, it’s the expression of that moment in time. I really felt like I didn’t want to rap, whereas before, rap was the only way I could express myself with the tools I had. Now that I have more freedom to create and do more, why wouldn’t we change it up?”
Listening through the record, it would seem that this ethos has been the directive for every member of the band and Speedy Wunderground producer Dan Carey who sits behind the mixing desk as Slowthai spins the wheel on which genre he’ll land on next. The latter is clearly a huge benefit to Frampton in defining these moves across the musical map. Not only has he reduced the need for Slowthai’s mic to be endlessly drenched in the spittle of a man trying to make a mountain out of a molehill – showing him that subtlety can have just as hefty an impact – he’s also tempered the production into something far more cultured.
That’s not to say that the strength of Slowthai’s lifeforce has been in any way reduced — rather redirected. If Frampton was once a coffee bean sharpened and jammed directly into your eye, Carey, with help from Kwes Darko and Sega Bodega, has dried, aged, roasted and ground the potency of Slowthai’s visceral lyrics and potent worldview into the finest shot of emotional espresso. Poured through the Speedy Wunderground machine, we now have a product that is wholly refined, appreciated for its artisanal craft and yet still able to jolt a sleeping hippo out of his watery bed.
UGLY is a record that continuously rises and falls. From the drug-fuelled barrage of the opening track of ‘Yum’ to the heart-wrenching emotion of ‘Falling’, the record is deeply connected to Slowthai’s own struggles and success. While there are comparisons to Jamie T and Sleaford Mods that are easily made, in truth, the LP feels singular and unique to Slowthai.
There are emotional rock references within the Fontaines D.C.-backed title track, perhaps the finest song on the record, while ‘HAPPY’ could have come directly from a 2000s indie disco, complete with its glitching intro and a heartfelt refrain: “It’s okay to cry, H. A. P. P. Y”. There are flaming bars on ‘Sooner’, sent across the airwaves over bouncing indie jangle. ‘Never Again’ is pure hip-hop storytelling with a noted panache, while ‘25% Club’ is Frampton singing his heart out with a gently plucked acoustic, giving way to the sea hitting the shore as he muses on that special someone who makes up the missing part of ourselves.
Whether it is simply the addition of the band at Slowthai’s hand or Carey helping him realise his potential, this album feels like his most authentic and accomplished work to date. UGLY sounds like what Frampton has always wanted to achieve, an achingly brilliant combination of every thread of inspiration, every fibre of influence wrapped and bound together to make a rope capable of lifting Slowthai out of the swallowing seas of infamy.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out New Music Newsletter
All the latest New Music from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.