Carner wants to “rewrite the ending, and the prequel” because for “the cycle to repeat” is the “default”. His final verse goes hard against the conditions that created his line of absent fathers – who were, to quote Philip Larkin, “fucked up in their turn” – looking for a break point in the circuit. The music fades out to leave him, clad in simple white T-shirt, rapping a cappella. There is a sense in this room of him strumming people’s pain with his fingers. We’re neck-deep in the first of a two-night residency in London towards the end of Carner’s UK tour: there’s another sellout – at the 12,500-capacity Wembley Arena – the following night, which will be livestreamed.Įven if you don’t know Carner’s own story, it would be hard to throw a pebble and not hit someone with daddy issues. As his band of nuanced live players slide gracefully into languid, jazz-tinged breakbeats, Carner dedicates the song to “my father, and his father, and his father’s father”, as a sold-out crowd bay their approval. He’s talking about HGU – one of the most hard-hitting songs on his resonant third album, Hugo. “I broke the cycle,” declares south London rapper Loyle Carner, savagely but happily.
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