A concept album about prison therapy, anyone? That’s what UK rapper DAVE did with his debut full-length, last year’s widely acclaimed and Mercury Prize winning Psychodrama.
”The boldest and best British rap album in a generation”, said The Guardian, and it was included on several best of 2019-lists.
In October DAVE played at a sold-out Fryshuset in Stockholm, in August you’ll find him in Slottsskogen.
David Orobosa Omoregie, the youngest of three brothers with Nigerian parents, grew up in Streatham Vale in South London. Eyes started turning in Dave’s direction back in 2015 when he uploaded a freestyle to YouTube, aged 16, on the same day he started college. In 2018 he released his debut EP Six Paths. Many listeners and writers were especially impressed by the orchestration on the EP, some even thought that someone else had written the piano parts. DAVE is inspired movie soundtracks, foremost those composed by Hans Zimmer.
She’s about to become quite popular, the Kanye West protégé who stole she show from her mentor. As you might remember, 070 SHAKE got our attention in 2018 when she made tracks such as Ghost Town and Violent Crimes shine a little extra on the Ye album. Signed by the Kanye-founded label G.O.O.D. Music, she was also featured on three other significant records that year: Daytona by Pusha-T, the Kids See Ghosts album from Kid Cudi and Kanye, and Nasir by Nas. Truth is, she gets by pretty good on her own.
Born Danielle Balbuena, she’s a 22-year old from North Bergen in New Jersey (the 070 part of her alias refers to the area code and a hip hop collective). In her youth she enjoyed playing basketball, listening to Alicia Keys or Paramore, and from a distance she could look at the Manhattan skyline. A number of singles and a six-track EP preceded Modus Vivendi.
Music site Clash wrote about the album: “By throwing the rule book out the window, Shake finds herself at the top of her game.”
We should probably expect something extra from her performance in Slottsskogen this summer.
No matter how hard you try, you can’t really pin him down. His latest album, last year’s Zuu, was mostly sunny and uplifting. A contrast to the previous one, TA1300 from 2018, which was dark and introspective. Whatever DENZEL CURRY does, he’s always exciting, always willing to challenge himself and his audience. He’s influential, too. Pitchfork wrote that he ”pioneered the punishing, bass-boosted moshers that swept South Florida, creating a blueprint for Lil Pump, XXXTentacion, Ski Mask the Slump God, and Smokepurpp, among others, and breaking the sound barrier for other SoundCloud outsiders”.
DENZEL CURRY started rapping in sixth grade. At the age of sixteen he dropped his first mixtape titled King Remembered Underground Tape 1991–1995. More mixtapes followed, gaining him quite a following, before the release of his official, and partly trap-influenced, debut album Nostalgia 64 in 2013. Just released is Unlocked, a collaborative EP between Curry and Kenny Beats.
2020 could turn into a big year for MWUANA. There’s loads of new music to be expected from him and the first two singles have already arrived. Expectations are over the roof. His debut full-length Triller was one of the most praised Swedish albums in 2017, it also won him the Best Hip hop category at P3 Guld and was nominated for three Swedish Grammis awards. Now we can proudly announce an exclusive performance at Stay Out West in August.
MWUANA’s career took off after a much hyped EP-trilogy and the mixtape MW-GO!, but without a doubt it was Triller that changed everything. The album was cocky, contemporary, relevant, talented, sincere, tough and soft, varied yet tight.
Sonic Magazine said: ”A masterpiece by an artist who’s on his own trip” and Kingsize said: ”He has the capacity to make you sympathize with lines that show pettiness, like few others he knows how to describe feelings of love, betrayal and lust.”
These days the Stockholm-raised rapper is considered one of Sweden’s leading artists within the hip hop game, hardly weakened by the fact that last year’s singles Craftmanship, Me So Nice and Fast Display all became huge hits.