Album reviews: Strange Boy has made one of 2021's outstanding hip hop records
Jordan Kelly, aka Strange Boy, has blended hip hop and traditional Irish folk in Holy/Unholy
★★★★★
Limerick has emerged as a crucible for Irish rap and the new album from Jordan Kelly, aka Strange Boy, is among the grittiest and most emotionally pummelling excursions into the genre yet to emerge from the Treaty City. Amid scorched earth lyrics and woozy hooks, it also sets itself the daunting challenge of blending hip hop and traditional Irish folk – an undertaking full of potential pitfalls.
Kelly’s secret weapon is his extraordinary wordplay. Rhyming in his evocative Shannonside accent, his bars brim with lacerating honesty and pity-free self-reflection. “Where should I start/ telling tales from this heavy heart…” he opening on Beginnings before recalling a loved one's suicide attempt.
Here and elsewhere the going his heavy. However, the thematic darkness is spliced with remarkable inventiveness by Kelly and producer Enda Gallery (the project was assembled during lockdown). Clannad’s Moya Brennan adds Celtic melodrama to Beginnings. And Hahaha bursts to life halfway through as a gothic banjo is juxtaposed with lilting vocals by fellow rapper Hazey Hazey.
Holy/Unholy serves ultimately as an umbilical link between old and new. Kelly grew up with fire and brimstone Catholicism so that his traumas arrive with a halo of suffocating religiosity. And yet the medium with which he uncorks his problems is thoroughly modern. And as he interrogates his pain he carves out a space between Angela’s Ashes and Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. In the process, he has made one of the year’s outstanding Irish hip hop albums.
★★★★☆
Having shared a mic with Kate Moss on Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra’s Some Velvet Morning, Primal Scream frontman Gillespie knows his way around a heart-broken duet. And that’s what he and Savages leader Beth serve up in mournful portions with their winning new collaboration.
The subject is romance – or, rather, romance falling apart, as the two vocalists throw themselves into the roles of lovers who have grown disillusioned with one another and with life itself (the technical term for this is “being middle-aged”).
With Primal Screaming providing backing, Utopian Ashes has Gillespie working through the gears until he clicks into Stones pastiche mode on Your Heart Will Always Be Broken and You Don’t Know What Love Is. The real fire, though, is from Beth who crystallises heartache and grief, so that at moments it’s almost a disappointment when Gillespie comes swinging in.
