Young Fathers break out of their shackles

Who’s your favourite Scottish hip-hop act of all time? Can’t think of any? Neither could we, to be honest. OK, so we’re sure Edinburgh’s had just as much of a thriving underground hip-hop scene as any city in the UK, but the unique sounding Young Fathers might just be the first rhyming Scots to find themselves being showered with praise by the international music press.

But to describe Young Fathers’ music simply as ‘rap’ would admittedly be misleading. The group – consisting of Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and ‘G’ Hastings – have crafted themselves an inimitable style by melting together a contrasting bunch of sounds. Through blasts of crunchy bass, tribal percussion, ambient synths and warm, crackling reggae tones, they weave their instinctive flows, abstract lyrics and heart-aching melodies. This month they drop TAPE TWO, an ambitious collection of tunes which stands as their finest work to date.

With their 2011 EP TAPE ONE being re-released early this year via Anticon, the underground LA label which originally specialised in alt rap but has since branched out, it seems like Young Fathers are enjoying a second wind. Prior to TAPE ONE, the trio seemed like an entirely different act, a semi-ironically touted ‘hip-hop boy band’ with tongue-in-cheek lyrics and synchronised dance routines. Their 2009 single Straight Back On It drew comparisons to US ‘party rapper’ Spank Rock, and there was even an appearance on Big Brother’s Big Mouth which we suspect they’d rather forget about (fittingly, Crack unearthed the footage from Bebo, the social networking closet which might contain a few digital skeletons from our own early teens).

So, at some point, did Young Fathers group together to revise their game plan? “Not really. We always had albums with as much depth as TAPE ONE and TAPE TWO, it’s just that they never saw the light of day”, claims G, the group’s chief beatmaker. “We were young and were dealing with the wrong people who just sold us fucking lies. With TAPE ONE, we went into the studio for a week after deciding that whatever comes out of it is definitely going out, because we were tired of having stuff suppressed. With TAPE TWO, that was us enjoying this freedom of being able to do what we want, being instinctual and letting go of anyone who was influencing us before.”

It’s not as if Young Fathers’ talent didn’t shine on those earlier recordings, but it was inspiring to hear them unleash their raw, galvanised sound with the euphoric rally cry of TAPE ONE’s opener Deadline, and G’s flattered when we explain just how tricky it is to describe the group’s style when recommending them to a friend. “We’ve always sounded like nothing else, it’s just laughable when people try to fit us into these categories. They need to grasp that we’re on our own with what we do”, he says. It’s a statement which declares Young Fathers’ fierce stylistic independence, and possibly refers to the cultural isolation of their hometown. While Glasgow’s musical output has been rich for decades, there’s a perception that Edinburgh’s alternative scene is comparatively undernourished despite the large population of art students. “Yeah, we’re aware of that. It’s home and we love it, but Edinburgh’s music scene has always been a struggle. We’ve always been up against it. There’s people doing interesting stuff, it’s just not together, there’s no hub. And the council just shuts down anything that makes noise.”

Ally, Kayus and G met each other at an under 18s hip-hop night at the old Bongo club in Edinburgh, a place they gravitated towards after failing to connect with the Bonkers happy hardcore beats hissing out of the tinny speakers of their peers, and at the collective age of 14, they formed their first project. “The funny thing is, we used to really piss all the other kids off ”, G laughs. “We’d go to open mic nights where they’d run battles, people would get up and do like 64 bars of constant rap. But we’d always have our beats on a minidisc, plug it in and do whole arranged songs, with choruses and bridges. People were like ‘what the fuck are yee doing?!’ We loved it. It was like this ‘fuck you’ to that mentality of battle rap. We bonded over hooks, and sweet things against hard backgrounds. We’ve always had that pop head, and we still do.”

So the predilection for mischief has been there since they were kids. Young Fathers wouldn’t claim to be shit-stirring agitators, but the buzz they get from ignoring musical limitations is audible on their new material, and it’s no surprise they’re thrilled to liberate people from their preconceptions. “We get people come up to us and be like ‘I don’t even like hip-hop but I loved that’”, G says with pride. “That happens at nearly every gig, and it’s fucking great to hear.”