Damien Morris 

Clavish: Rap Game Awful review – beautifully delivered ambivalence

The London rapper veers between vulnerable and vicious on a mixtape that’s at once epic and pared back
  
  

Clavish.
‘Much wit, if little humour’: Clavish. Photograph: Eddie Cheaba

“I don’t care about being in the charts,” offers Clavish towards the end of this epic, 28-track mixtape. “But if I am, I’m thankful,” he quickly counters. You don’t sign to the world’s largest record company by accident, though, and the north London rapper has been carefully nurtured for success over the past two years, along the lines of billion-stream, award-winning mentors Dave and Stormzy. Now that UK rap has fully flowered into a wide range of popular styles and personalities, there’s room for a truculent, technically gifted rapper who appears ambivalent about his chosen career.

Picture Clavish as Distracted Boyfriend in the timeless meme. His girlfriend is the rap game, and the girl passing by is gang life, with its opps, knives, guns, drugs, faithless women and disappointed mums. He spends most of these 90 minutes poring over his bad behaviour with much wit, if little humour. Rap Game Awful could be less monotone – recent Top 10 hit Rocket Science benefits hugely from Young Adz’s alien Auto-Tune coos. Yet the chill, sparse productions foreground Clavish’s economical delivery beautifully, as he flirts with imploring vulnerability and vicious querulousness without ever committing to either.

Watch the video for Traumatised by Clavish.
 

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