10 Best UK Albums Of 2019

Hoodies All Summer is such a unique album in the UK hip-hop landscape. Kano has spoken of the unorthodox way this album came to fruition, in that him and his team started completely from scratch. The tradition of trading beats and bars via emails was thrown out the window, and it shows with every single second of this album. Everything is so fluid, it's as if the album is a living and breathing organism constantly evolving in real time.

Hoodies All Summer is also surprisingly optimistic when you consider the heavy subject matter Kano chooses to focus on a lot of the tracks. Issues like police brutality, systematic racism and knife crime preoccupy his mind but he never loses the optimism that makes him who he is.

The opening track, Free Years Later, is a jaw dropping mix of traditional grime elements with dramatic orchestral arrangements whilst Kano paints a vivid picture of his London upbringing and how he has navigated his life to get him to where he is now. The way he flows and folds rhymes inside other rhymes is unlike any other rapper in the world, British or not.

This is an album experience in every sense of the word. Clocking in at just under 40 minutes, Kano has crafted a wholly cohesive and consistent sonic landscape in which to lose yourself. It requires your full undivided attention. And not because it is pretentious, but because every time you listen to the album you are almost certainly guaranteed to find something new to appreciate.

Class of Deja is, and this is no understatement, one of the greatest grime songs of all time. D Double E provides the killer hook on the song where he raps about how he used to rob houses and slap up domestic pets. However the second verse with Ghetts is where this song becomes a whole new monster. Ghetts and Kano go unpredictably back and forth for the entire verse with insane chemistry, made even greater by the fact that the live performance of this song is just as tight and in time as the studio recording.

The album closes with the very satirical SYM, a moment equally beautiful as it is depressingly true. Regardless, it is the perfect way to close this album.

It's astounding to think that Kano has been a pioneer of UK Hip-hop for over 15 years now, yet this far into his career he is able to release something that is so fresh and well crafted that we begin to question once again just how high his artistic peak really is.