Blak Twang The Rotton Club LP
Another strong offering from the Rotton-ist, beats and lyrics always on point like usual Blak Twang-fare. You can’t really fault his consistency. He’s still football-obsessed, he still likens his thing to our thing (“cosa nostra”), he still has a conscious heart of gold, and he’ll still quash beef… stingingly with punchlines that’ll make your ears burn.
Lead single “GCSE” makes some good use of orchestra swells (although the synth plinky strings annoy me a little) as Twang delivers a lyrical tour de force on real sex education, debunking myths about unprotected sex and pregnancy, forcing people to listen up and ultimately take responsibility for their actions. A little heavy for a lead single but it’s dealt with brutality, delicacy, poignancy and pragmatism and shows off Twang’s skills amazing. He’s very adept at sounding conversational, covering all emotions of the human spectrum and twisting these emotions into brilliant rhymes about real life issues. He can still destroy you, as he does on “Beef Stop”, where he debunks the issue of musical beef with such scathing sarcasm that anyone who disagrees would just feel childish. “Roadworks” showcases some nice musical road rage, using his street wisdom and SE8 Soldier mentality to slay all competition. “A Prayer for the Dying” is nice and sombre and deals with death in a realistic way whilst the leading track, “The Rotten Club” oozes charm and 50’s sophisticat style.
All in all, this is a strong album, more polished than his previous efforts. The beats are all very accessible easily attractable beats. Bringing Harry Love on board for the few beats he does produce is a good move. Not all the beats are to my taste but this is a minor thing. It’s the lyrics that make this album truly great. The Twanger done did it again.
- Nikesh
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