Saturday, September 19, 2009

Son Of A Queen - <i>Kill It With Love</i> (2009)

OK, let me just say from the start that after listening to Son Of A Queen’s album Kill It With Love (which, by the way, SOAQ has had the decency to give away for free), I found the results frankly quite average, but…

And it’s a big but…

…Something about the young man’s energy, attitude and general spirit captivated me.  And, though UK hip-hop isn’t my strongest genre in terms of my knowledge and followship, I’m always looking to represent fresh, up-and-coming UK hip-hop artists.

I should also point out that the album has several literal LOL moments, given that SOAQ drops frequent references to the struggle of slavery, black power in general, as well as littering his lyrics with the word “cracker”, despite being white as snow.  However, SOAQ is also quite evidently down with Rastafarianism, so whatever floats his boat.  Good luck to him, I guess.

Mild bitching aside, the album really isn’t that bad.  There are some real bangers up on here (”Jah Jah” is on repeat chez oophiphop), as well as some generally thought-provoking lyrics, mostly revolving around British society and its general state.  The album is, in essence, the biography of any young man living in the grittier parts of the UK, and unfortunately, it rings all too true.

With a few tweaks, and perhaps some lyrical diversification (not to mention a complete cessation of useage of the word “cracker”), SOAQ is genuinely in posession of some raw talent, and is hopefully poised to make considerable noise on the UK hip-hop scene.

You can learn more about SOAQ here (though the content is quite scanty, to say the least), and Kill It With Love can be downloaded here.

NOTE: Track #4, “King”, is absent from the album download due to some kind of file corruption.  It can be streamed via SOAQ’s myspace instead).

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