Ghostpoet at Shipping Forecast

Ghostpoet raises hip-hop from the dead, and does it with style to spare. Check him out at The Shipping Forecast this Friday...

Obaro Ejimiwe’s recipe for hypnotic hip-hop is exactly what the world needs now. As an antidote to the dipshit dumbass Radio 1 brand of blacked-out Corsa rap, Ejimiwe’s laid-back, intelligent and thrilling new take on the genre is a shot in the arm for the lazy and the generic, and he’s in the city tomorrow to prove why he’s the man to watch.

With influences as disparate and delicious as MF Doom, Fela Kuti and Badly Drawn Boy, the Giles Peterson favourite is set to ignite the Shipping Forecast’s sweaty basement, showcasing tracks from his stunning long-player debut, Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam.

Born and raised somewhere between London, Coventry, Nigeria and Dominica, Obaro admits that his heritage is important to him, but that it hasn’t consciously affected his musical career: “My parents enjoyed listening to music around the house but never really encouraged it as a career. I kind of pursued listening to various sounds late into the night when the house was asleep.” With a sound palette incorporating grime, grunge, world beats, gritty electronica and shoegazey pop, this is hip-hop at its most haunting, honest and immediate. And, with a master like Ejimiwe at the helm in The Hold, its most hopeful, too.