CHUNKY

Somebody's Child

Genre: ELECTRONIC

MP3
FLAC
WAV
LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

Straight knock-out debut LP by undisputed Manchester heavyweight, Chunky - a uniquely assured, witty and insightful testament to the artist’s African roots and dare-to-differ vocal and production tekkerz, honed in his home city’s South Central crucible - 100% RIYL Coby Sey, Equiknoxx, Trigga, Tricky, Burna Boy, Space Afrika, Rat Heart.

Chunky’s reputation precedes him as one of the UK’s most in-demand MCs, not to mention one of its most distinctive producers (and recently a burgeoning actor), with a handful of inimitable sessions on Loefah’s [Swamp] 81. ’Somebody’s Child’ is his keenly awaited first album, weighing in eleven songs about his roots in Zimbabwe and branches cultivated in Manchester’s Moss Side and Hulme, with a deceptively laconic delivery of observant, at times laugh-out-loud bars that trade space with more coiled and stinging barbs, all hazily matched by the contours of his music, mutating Afrobeats, grime, weirdo dancehall and downbeat rap tropes to unforgettable effect.

While Chunky’s dextrous wordplay is a central presence on the album, it also features the voices of his younger family in gonzo interviews and older members in harmonious chorus that fix up to a timeless portrait of self and humbly acknowledge his work as the product of his environment. In that sense, it’s possible to hear it as a distant, literal echo of the noirish deep topography to Barry Adamson’s ‘Moss Side Story’, or on a textural, rhythmic level, a lowkey, spiritual cousin to A Guy Called Gerald’s Afro-rhythmic psychedelia, yet more squashed with a red-eyed logic that reeks of a ride around his ends on a sunny day and into dusk.

Slanted between passenger seats, sofas, contemporary blues and sweltering club scenes, the album says its piece with a rare clarity and effortless ease that future-proofs it for repeat play. The laid-back bop of lead single ‘Dancing on Tables’ epitomises the flex with its supple hybrid of Afrobeats and post-dubstep perfectly matching the diffractive flow of his delivery, while the rest plays out like a proper story; from scene-setting evocations of South Manchester strut on ‘Yes I’, thru the whispered soul swang of ‘Daylite’, and old skool bop of ‘Ballin’’, to grimier traces of his time spent in the Manc club mines on ‘GNG’.

However in the 2nd half he really starts to get under the skin with the danker ‘Meh’ and the outstanding Afro-punk-dub holler of ‘Long n Strong’ giving way to an Afrobeat pearl ‘@Me’, and the dream-weft transition of Count Ossie-like horns to breathtaking gospel-folk coda in ‘Give U’, and its skin-prickling closer ‘Spare The Rod’.