NORTHAMPTON, not exactly a location that springs to mind when speaking on the topic of Britain’s brightest young grime artist. However, it is currently the home-city of slowthai, who already has a sold out tour to his name – one tour into his career.

An electrical stage presence. Southampton’s Joiners Arms welcomed slowthai to its short stage last week, playing host to a handful of lyrically violent, anti-governmental, anti-Theresa and anti-monarchial songs curated to appease Britain’s rebellious youth in the most society-friendly way possible.

It’s not often that one act can bring together such a vastly differentiating audience, to then give a performance that blew the minds of everyone between the age of 14 through 40.

That’s not a mis-print, that’s an observation. Mother’s accompanying teens, siblings accompanying siblings; slowthai was for everyone. Contrary to that noted above- he is not just for the youth.

He brought a certain energy to the stage. Bouncing around in nothing more than a pair of slacks and unreleased Off White AM97, the crowd followed bound-for-bound. Reciting lyric for lyric. His presence on stage was alien, especially for this area of Hampshire.

We saw a following of similar fashion the last time OFWGKTA toured. Again, rebellious teenagers were given an international voice of which they’d craved. A voice that screamed independence, almost a justification for rebellion at a point in their lives where it seems somewhat natural.

On top of this? He’s just sold out a Camden venue in a mere 2 hours. Not bad for a boy from N’Hampton with a single tour under his belt. This follows on from an exclusive performance of “Ladies” for Colors Berlin, accumulating over 600,000 views in the months post-publishing.

The tour followed “RUNT” – an EP that dropped on September 7th, 2018. It contained a total of 5 tracks, all residing around one core statement:

“There’s nothing great about Britain”.

Slowthai is the next name to take our world by storm.

 

Header: myjulies.co.uk