slowthai

When I was younger, I'm talking teens, I went to a music festival called Splashy with my mates. We were young and still wet behind the ears but we were eager teens and being away from parents for a week, out in the mountains with music and booze all around, we were made. The first few times we went, we had a chaperone but honestly our chaperone was a true gent, he let us do our own thing but with check-ins to make sure we were all still alive and all that regular admin.

If you came up to me and asked me to look after a bunch of teenage boys at a festival, I'd tell you to go fuck yourself. I'd never ever take on that sort of responsibility, I can barely look after myself as is. There must have been about 4 or so of us to keep a loose eye on and even though we thought we were getting up to all sorts of rebellious shit, we really were just a bunch of kids still being very well behaved compared to what was going on around us.

Eventually though, we got to a point where we felt we wanted to fly the nest and do Splashy on our own. The next year we set up our own camp with some other friends and we felt made but we got a very rude awakening when we saw the people camping next to us.

Full disclaimer - I absolutely love these gents, I have mad respect for all of them and what they're doing. We've had some very great times together over the years but at that moment, man was scared.

You know that feeling you get when you move out for the first time and you've set up your new place and you sit down satisfied with yourself and everything just feels right? You know those first few hours, aren't they pure bliss? You're out here living by your own rules now. You can do whatever you want, you're a grown up. It feels fucking amazing until you start hearing a few gunshots down the street, the sounds of your neighbours fighting through the incredibly thin walls and the pipe under the sink in the bathroom suddenly blows and now you're sitting in your lounge in a situation you definitely don't feel ready for? This is how I felt when I realized we were camped next to this very intense group of guys who are incredible BMX bikers.

Long story short, I saw some very insane shit going on all around us. I won't get into the details of what happened but basically just imagine walking into a room that has a wasp nest in the corner and you don't want to make too many erratic movements incase they decide you're a threat. I even got into an argument with one of the guys over something so silly. Turns out he's the funniest person I know now and I have all the time in the world for him.

At the time, I hated them and the absolute chaos they had about them. This was a bunch of guy who couldn't have been all that much older than we were but they were almost the exact opposite of who we were with our fresh eyes and hair still wet from the womb but that being said, I also absolutely admired just how free they were and unrepentant in who they were. They had this air of sticking the middle finger up to anything that didn't make sense with them and I loved that. That's how I feel when I listen to slowthai

Tyron Kaymone Frampton, better known by his stage name slowthai (stylised in lowercase) and is a British rapper.

He makes the kind of music that makes me think of hoodies, flat caps and BMX videos. His music has been categorised as grime and hip hop but he uses a lot of elements from a lot of different genres which give his music a lot more grit and appeal. There's a nice punk/counter culture feel to his sound and lyrical content

Notable song to check out is Nothing Great About Britain - A song that perfectly captures the current feeling of the average British youth growing up in a country that is supposedly meant to be one of the greatest in all history but actually, the mask is falling off and what we're actually seeing behind the smoke and mirrors is pure shit.


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