lefreeakblog

The first full uninterrupted year post pandemic saw us enjoy gigging and clubbing again and I was thankful to get to see a lot more live music than I had the previous few years with The Killers, Anne-Marie & Manic Street Preachers all providing memorable sets. The range of music released was perhaps wider than ever with the blurring of house and hip hop not letting up, indeed there was a reported revival of sorts with house identified as having a rebirth. Whilst this was largely spearhead by big name pop acts in the charts, for the primary product - the album, LP, Playlist - it was the hip hop that artistically made the most noise with great albums by Black Thought, Kendrick Lemar and Nas (again) whilst Pusha-T, Little Simz and Drake made vital contributions as well. This got me thinking back to Black Thoughts comments to Complex in 2017 about the crossroads that hip hop and its culture are at: are we now starting to see a subtle change in direction? With the huge social change see...