Iceland’s hip-hop and electronica scenes are thriving, but it’s more traditional fare from Hannah Lou Clark and the mighty Sonics that has the greatest impact
For Iceland, 2016 is the year that rap broke. Noting that one of the themes dominating this year’s Iceland Airwaves festival is Icelandic hip-hop, an article in the Reykjavik Grapevine, amusingly titled Get Rich or Freeze Tryin, lists some of the acts worth looking out for. It has also coined the acronym Nwoihh, for the New Wave of Icelandic Hip-Hop.
Day two kicks off with a variety of intriguing new rap acts, starting with Auður, who is said to perform “smudged R&B”. He’s the Icelandic Weeknd, basically, only blond, offering a slight spin on the genre by strumming an electric guitar as he croons sadly about the sorrowful travails of the high life, like Ed Sheeran shambling uninvited into The Party & the After Party. Unfortunately, he doesn’t quite have the charisma to pull off quiet depravity in the way Abel Tesfaye does, and he’s too keen to telegraph his moral dissolution by saying “fuck” every other word over his slow, torturous soul. “I wanna be alone tonight,” he sings, and he probably will be.
Continue reading...by Paul Lester via Electronic music | The Guardian
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