After much anticipation, South London rapper Loyle Carner returns with his third album, hugo. Having exploded onto the scene in 2017 with his debut album Yesterday’s Gone, Carner is an established presence in the UK hiphop scene. Known for collaborating with artists such as Tom Misch and Jordan Rakei, hugo is a definitive deviation from this more whimsical aspect of his craft.
The gravity of the themes in this album are certainly not lost upon the listener as through a mere 10 tracks, the rapper sets himself the mammoth task of tackling fatherhood, his mixed-race heritage and racial violence. Carner’s musicality is underscored by this maturity and sensitivity which is not just prevalent in his work, but his self-presentation. These tangible qualities certainly lend themselves well to exploring what are distinctly heavier matters than those on his previous album, although he gives himself less room to do so than the 15 track Not Waving, But Drowning.
Carner opens the album with lead single, ‘Hate’, which has an almost industrial quality to it. The heaviness of the production as well as the sentiment itself (the track opens with “Let me tell you what I hate”) is very committed to this new sound he is cultivating. This typifies much of the sonic and thematic qualities of the record that seem a far cry away from the optimism and nostalgia that was so integral to his last album.
The following track, ‘Nobody Knows’, is sonically more reminiscent of ‘Isle of Arran’ (the opening song on Yesterday’s Gone), which examines Carner’s experience of feeling ostracised as a mixed-race person. This is also explored in ‘Georgetown’ which engages the powerful rhetoric of Afro-Guyanese poet John Agard, who uses the analogy of the keys on a piano to underscore Carner’s feelings. Indeed, Carner does not shy away from features on hugo, as rising star Olivia Dean and long-time collaborator JNR Williams both appear on ‘Homerton’, in addition to Wesley Joseph and Athian Akec on ‘Blood on my Nikes’. Athian Akec, a youth activist based in Camden, makes a compelling address to Parliament concerning knife crime which is inserted at the end of this latter track. There is a haunting quality to the song that is present throughout, a grief that Carner wants to convey as he raps “Mama, I lost a friend / Mama, I lost again” to describe the deaths of young men he was aware of growing up. This political urgency is also seen in the usage of voiceovers and reverb in ‘Plastic’, a song that involves far more digitised production than Carner’s typical stripped back style.
Much of the album concerns itself with fatherhood: Carner’s experience of becoming a father for the first time and his recently reestablished contact with his biological father. It is indeed the latter that prompts much of the reflection the rapper has about his Guyanese heritage, and the implications this might have for his newborn son. Carner’s traditionally mellow and honest style is found again in ‘A Lasting Place’, which features his partner reading a moving poem exploring the limitations of fatherhood. This is similarly revisited in ‘Polyfilia’ which has Carner questioning his capability as a father as he was failed by his: “They even killed the Wolverine / That was the only father figure that I’d seen”.
It is worth mentioning that Carner’s mother, Jean, was a significant focus in his previous albums, which both featured her reading her own poetry. Instead, hugo closes with a very prosaic conversation between Carner and his father who is teaching him how to drive. With much of this album dealing with feelings of hopelessness, it finishes with a tone of cautious optimism, of honesty in uncertainty as the rapper is negotiating intergenerational relationships. Carner’s magnanimity is revealed as well as his disillusion, complexifying his disposition and marking his evolution as both a man and an artist.
Image “Loyle Carner 2” by Stéphane GUEGUEN – Capo @ HiU is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.