‘Write what you know,” remains sound creative advice and Loyle Carner has certainly heeded it. This 20-year-old south London rapper, born Benjamin Coyle-Larner, is on stage for mere seconds before launching into BFG, a heartrending eulogy for his late stepfather: “Everybody says I’m fuckin’ sad, of course I’m fuckin’ sad, I miss my fuckin’ dad.”
His candour is striking but it’s his love for language that truly excites. The fresh-faced Carner’s wordy confessionals are all charged intensity and sprung rhythms. Hearing this wired figure’s a cappella rendition of Florence, a poetic musing on what it might be like to have a kid sister, it’s easy to see why he has collaborated with Kate Tempest.
His emotive ruminations are delivered over jazzy, sparse yet sultry beats, courtesy of producer/DJ Rebel Kleef, that evoke J Dilla’s less-is-more work with A Tribe Called Quest. Carner freely acknowledges this debt, paying tribute here to the late producer before covering his group Slum Village’s The Look of Love.
He is soul-searching during his cathartic raps, amiable and personable between them. “This is for anybody who has got a deadbeat dad,” he grins before Tiernay Terrace, a moving soliloquy on growing up with an absentee biological father and later being forced to become the man of the house in his early teens.
The counterbalance to this is his love for his late stepfather, which he voices sweetly while brandishing his lost mentor’s football shirt during the poignant Cantona. The fact he does this without appearing remotely mawkish or sentimental hints that Loyle Carner will prove to be a rare talent.
• Loyle Carner is at Outlines festival, Sheffield, on 27 February. Tickets: 0141-241 3040.
