Album Review: Dead, B

By Benjamin Huber-Rodriguez     11/12/14 3:16am

This past year’s Barclaycard Mercury prize winner was Dead, the February release and debut LP by Scotland-via-West Africa hip hop trio Young Fathers. A confident rap record blending heavy Afropop influences with topical, socially-relevant lyrics, the record is a forward-thinking departure from recent electronic and rock winners (James Blake, alt-J) and further advances the globalization of musical cultures and genres.

Young Fathers consists of Kayus Bankole, son of Nigerian immigrants, Liberian-born Alloysious Massaquoi and Edinburgh housing project product G Hastings. From the beginning, the trio does not sound like a typical rap group. The exuberant and heavily-accented Massaquoi begins the record with the line, “Sitting in the parlour offerings of flour / Milk plantain rice for the bridal shower,” a life worlds away from Drake’s or Kanye’s standard depictions of nightclubs and mansions. 

Growing up against the background of civil war in Liberia, Massaquoi’s lyrics are understandably filled with violent imagery. “Forgive them Lord you lost your child / gotta get them now,” he laments in “War,” before falling into the haunting chorus of “This is war / C4.” Five songs into Dead, it is blatantly apparent that this is indeed an album about death.

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While those first five songs are absolutely dynamite, the album stalls a bit in its second half. “Hangman” contains lyrics as scathing and direct as any on the album, but the emptiness of the atmosphere and distant, echoing chorus create perhaps too passive an environment for the song’s content. The record ends on a bit of a low note with “I’ve Arrived,” a lurching song riddled by horns and overproduction without a clear narrative.

Still, the strength of the majority of these tracks, alongside the frightening and all too real subject matter, make Dead a rap album not to be skipped. For many of us, it can be hard to face the realities of the developing world, but when it is delivered through a medium as exciting as Dead’s, the artist succeeds in at least raising awareness while the listener gets a jam of a hip hop record. And, above all else, Dead is indeed one hell of a jam.

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