Wiley- Godfather (2017) A Review

Wiley- Godfather (2017) A Review

By: Ghost Writer

Wiley, is quite an interesting character, self-destructive in a way, just like Sid Vicious was, but boundlessly creative, just like Aphex Twin is, his early MC battles in the grime hardcore scene in the London suburbs are the stuff of legend, you can watch a young Wiley battling with other young MCs in fully packed claustrophobic rooms at dawn on YouTube, you can watch Wiley as a scientific inventing grime by taking the most explosive elements from the worlds of hip hop, jungle music and UK Garage, creating an erratic but exciting musical career sometimes too close to self-sabotage, making awesome recordings and then releasing them for free in order to anger his music label, provoking epic battles not only with labels but also with his management, preventing himself from becoming the sort of popular stuff his fellow apprentices have enjoyed, in a way Wiley has been sabotaging himself from long time ago in order to not becoming a star and to remain underground.

The British grime pioneer has always been a particularly different type of artist, a monstrous brilliant MC with an impressive swinging pugilist flow who has not only made his dent in the music industry thanks to his vocal delivery, but also as a music innovator whose records are enormously rewarding as whole sonic experience, when in the presence of a Wiley record you don't just listening to Wiley's voice and words, you also appreciate his producer skills, but also his work as an electronic music innovator, and on Godfather, his latest recording, we get another interesting chapter in Wiley's always amusing experimentalist suicidal career, a promising record by a legend that at this point may have nothing to prove, but who is nevertheless coming up with a remarkable work of art, even upping the ante from some of his previous works, delivering a record that is both dense and intense, like the kind of records we expect these days.

Godfather starts with the otherworldly sounding of gate crashing Birds n Bars featuring ultra-low frequencies bass and claustrophobic beats, an almost gelid atmosphere, perfect for Wiley's shaky and nervous vocal delivery, almost disorientating, lethal as some of the best works of someone as hardcore as the legendary Ice Cube in his best days with the ruthless N.W.A., and the double the dangerous thanks to Wiley's experimental approach applied in a remarkable cerebral way, his vocals are a brutal attack to the senses, lifted to the next level thanks to the hard hitting arrangements and mind drifting brakes, an attack so ruthlessly powerful that it might remind you of the times when Public Enemy and the infamous Bomb Squad sounded literally like the end of the world.

For Bring Them All/Holy Grime, Wiley's production skills are put in full display with a powerful sound discharge giving us a robust world of sound composed by various sources all shot at one time, martial drums, blaring keys, and samples massive chorused heavenly voices coming up and down, add to that the collaboration of other volatile MCs adding even more intensity to the actions in full kamikaze style, quickly followed by the impressive postmodernism of Name Brand, blaring horns, percussive vocal flow, words shot without second thoughts and a compact but infectious chorus, words so heavy that they can carve holes in your mind, and if that wasn’t enough, next comes Speakerbox, with its impressive beats, explosive percussion and again that razor sharp vocal delivery in one of the most intense moments on the whole record.

For Pattern Up Properly, Wiley brings home another London legend to the studio, the powerful Flowdan, another awesome MC from foggy London, here his profound killing flow adds more tension to the already explosive mix, here a complete success, but Wiley is not guilty of slowing down the automatic weapon like delivery, continuing with the confident Can´t Go Wrong, with an almost sonic terrorist attack like approach on the music, yes, Godfather works out like a hardcore punk record, is high in intensity but low in variety and Wiley tries to solve it with the more R&B sounding U Were Always, a change of pace but not one of the best pieces on the record, compensated by the disjointing On This, and perfectly reaffirmed by the colossal My Direction, without a doubt a declaration of war by one of the best overall musicians in London, a complete artist whose art defies easy classification and one obsessed with always moving forward, it can become a little heavy and monotone in the end, but the exciting combination of Wiley brutal vocal delivery, the enormous input of equally intense MCs and the magical Wiley production make Godfather another unique piece of musical mayhem by one of the most original artists coming from the London zoo.