Kano - Home Sweet Home, Audio

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Kano - Home Sweet Home - Album Sampler

Kano
Home Sweet Home
Released on 679 recordings 27th June 2005

“I ain’t got punch lines, I got kick lines, I ain’t commercial, but I got hit lines”

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In the ever-changing, ever-accelerating world of the UK MC underground, 19 year-old Kane Robinson has been the hot favourite to blow the grime scene overground ever since he first cut underground favourite Boys Love Girls as a precocious 16 year old from East London’s N.A.S.T.Y. crew. Now, after what he cheekily describes as an 18 year long wait, his highly anticipated debut album ‘Home Sweet Home’ has finally landed. Following five years of endless guest spots at raves and pirate radio stations, Kano has established himself as the one MC to dominate not only the East London underground, but also to move his fanbase’s catchment area a few tube stops west, picking up fans from across the media from fanzines to broadsheets and a full sweep of 2005 ones-to-watch plaudits.

Kano’s instantly recognisable flow and articulate lyricism has already put him streets ahead of most emcee’s, as well as establishing him as an artist unafraid to stretch the boundaries and reject the rule book. After signing with 679 recordings last year he ripped the competition apart with now-seminal chest big-up ‘P’s & Q’s’ and the genre-bending ‘Typical Me’. So its no great surprise that ‘Home Sweet Home’ is a exhilarating, original but utterly East London mixture of grimey beats, old skool garridge and merky b-boy bass lines with hip hop lyricism and heart attack guitar riffs.

The fast-forward grime of his album-opening paean to the ‘Ends’ ‘Home Sweet Home’ is followed by the rawer but equally East Ham-centred ‘Ghetto Kid’. The thoughtful ‘Sometimes’ recalls the mournful beats and deep introspection of early 90s peak-period Tupac. Kano’s trademark plus-16 fast lane vocals matches laidback melodies to tremendous effect on ‘Brown Eyes’, casually defining the incipient rhythm n’ grime micro-genre along the way.

Next single ‘Remember Me’ (released June 6th) is an infectiously boozy samba rap and a clear future smash. Florida based hip hop producer Diplo (the man behind last year’s underground killer Diplo Riddim) adds his talents to ‘Reload It’, set to tear up the scene and fill floors up and down the country as it blends Kano’s effortlessly playful rhymes with furiously hyped-up beats.

Another kick-in-the-face track ‘I Don’t Know Why’, a heavy collaboration with the producer du jour Paul Epworth. Kano rides a sample of Black Sabbath’s midlands metal classic ‘War Pigs’ and cheekily states ‘you should know my name’ with the brash confidence normally reserved for his American counterparts. A razor-sharp dissection of scene dancefloor politics, ‘Nobody Don’t Dance No More’ sees Kano reminisce ‘they don’t dance like we use to’ over an old school garage beat, only for the track to pull up and rewind into the most brutal grime 2005 mash up.

The ghetto state-of-the-nation address ‘How We Livin’ shows Kano in a more reflective mood, rhyming over a mellower beat in stark contrast to the bolshier ‘Ghetto Kid’. Closing track ‘Signs In Life’ by contrast sees Kano displaying the roots consciousness of dreadlocked rastas twice his age.

Home Sweet Home proves that it is one of the most accomplished and significant debut albums of this or indeed any other genre you’ll hear all year.

Flow may not be your game but you definitely should know his name.

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