With a nomination for Best Hip Hop/Grime/Rap Act at the Brit Awards this weekend, Loyle Carner continues his meteoric rise to the top.
Loyle heads to Liverpool at The Mountford Hall on 24th February as part of his UK tour.
In hugo, there’s a central question that Loyle Carner keeps coming back to: “I’m young, Black, successful and have a platform – but where do I go next?”
The answer is explored in this epic scream of a third album. With urgent delivery and gloriously widescreen production, Carner confronts both the deeply personal (“You can’t hate the roots of a tree, and not hate the tree. So how can I hate my father without hating me?) and the highly political (“I told the black man he didn’t understand I reached the white man he wouldn’t take my hand”). Cinematic in scale and scope, hugo is both a rallying war cry for a generation forged in fire and a study of the personal internal conflict that drives the rest of the album – as a mixed-race Black man, as an artist, as a father and as a son.
With Mercury and Brits nominations, NME Awards and appearances in global brand campaigns (Nike, YSL, Timberland), Carner has undoubtedly had a meteoric rise to the top, culminating with his second album Not Waving, But Drowning charting at number 3 in the UK albums chart in 2019. However, hugo sees Carner taking a sharp detour from his previous work, putting it down to lockdown and the “hedonistic side of career being stripped away.
There were no shows, no backstage, no festivals, no photoshoots”. By continuing to write in these tumultuous times with a renewed clarity and sense of artistic freedom, Carner reached deeper beneath the surface than he ever had before.
The result is his most cathartic and ambitious record yet, a coruscating journey into the heart of what it means to be alive in these tumultuous times, and one which looks set to neatly cement his position as one of the most potent and vital young talents around today. Working alongside renowned producer kwes. (Solange, Kelela, Nao), Carner leaves no stone unturned on this album, in both its sound and its stories.
In a 10-track album that moves from gorgeous neo-soul moments to thundering hip hop, with immediate, infectious bangers and sampled interludes from non musicians (mixed-race Guyanese poet John Agard and youth activist and politician Athian Akec) Carner shifts seamlessly from micro to macro, confronting everything from strained relationships with family to the societal tears caused by class stratification.
Catch Loyle Carner on tour:
23 Feb Newcastle City Hall
24 Feb Liverpool The Mountford Hall
25 Feb Manchester O2 Victoria Warehouse
27 Feb Glasgow O2 Academy
28 Feb Sheffield O2 Academy
2 Mar Norwich UEA
3 Mar Leicester O2 Academy
5 Mar Brighton Dome
6 Mar Nottingham Rock City
8 Mar Birmingham O2 Academy
9 Mar Bournemouth O2 Academy
11 Mar Cardiff Uni Great Hall
12 Mar Bristol O2 Academy
15 Mar London Eventim Apollo Hammersmith
16 Mar London OVO Wembley Arena
25 Mar Leeds Belgrave Music Hall
26 Mar Leeds Belgrave Musc Hall
READ MORE: FACT Liverpool announce new programme for 2023-24
