Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Loyle Carner is a standout voice in UK rap whose upward trajectory has followed a different course from the genre’s main formats of grime, drill and road rap. The Londoner, real name Benjamin Coyle-Larner, is closer in spirit to backpack rap, which emerged in the US in the 1990s as an alternative to hip-hop’s commercialisation. Measured in tone, he is a self-questioning figure at the microphone, the kind of rapper for whom a song is a puzzle to be worked out.
His first two albums, 2017’s Yesterday’s Gone and 2019’s Not Waving, But Drowning, were memoiristic accounts of family, grief and growing up. 2022’s Hugo brought out wider themes of racial identity and black Britishness. His father — originally from Guyana and absent from much of Carner’s childhood — was the knotty personal element at its core.
Now comes an album that flips the script: this time the rapper takes the paternal role. Hopefully ! (stylised in lower case, as are the song titles) finds Carner ruminating about his experiences of parenthood following the birth of his son in 2020. In contrast to the rising profile that has led to a headlining slot at Glastonbury’s second biggest stage this year, the result is his most low-key album to date.
The style shifts from the soulful samples and golden-age boom bap of previous records to a more withdrawn register. Bleary guitar strums give songs an introspective indie feel. Carner raps well but is often in the doldrums. In “Lyin”, anxiety about being unsuitable for parenthood gives him “this fear in my belly that I can’t shake”. On “About Time”, he worries about exposing too much of himself and his family in his lyrics. “They said my son needs a father, not a rapper,” he announces. The song ends with his son telling him that it’s time to leave the studio and go home.
If the earlier albums were about community, then this one has a narrower sense of domesticity. Richard Spaven’s agile, jazzy drumming rescues it from listlessness. Carner’s previously unused singing voice, at once rough and tender, also lights up these smeary songs; his singsong croon is reminiscent of fellow south Londoner, King Krule. “I don’t know, who am I supposed to be today?” he asks in “Time to Go”. There are no easy answers to the questions of identity and belonging running through his thoughtful work. But they are framed less engagingly here than before.
★★★☆☆
‘Hopefully !’ is released by Island EMI
Read the full article here