Stanisland Magazine

The British rapper lets his guard down on a heartwarming hip-hop album

Last updated: 22nd June 2025

Loyle Carner (real name Benjamin Gerard Coyle-Larner) is holding down the fort for contemporary hip-hop. His defiance to conform to an ever-expanding facet of runaway UK rap labels is refreshing.

While the scene’s artistic and lyrical slip from pure art and professionalism becomes noticeable, it’s warming to know that rappers such as Carner swim against jagged tides.

What Hopefully! Sounds Like

On his last album, Hugo, he embraced the chaos of painful trauma, whereas “Hopefully!” pivots, framing happiness and discovery into his music. Stylistically, it’s a move away from his last album, this time he embraces a 2000s British movie score-like aesthetic, broadened by patience and poetic idioms.

The album considers his experiences as a father, reflected through notes of solitude like a carefully curated memory. Bolstering each line, his sentiments on the joy of fatherhood adds to this feeling, as he plays with hereditary strums of the present, hoping to transcend the ideas of both the now and the future.

READ MORE: Little Simz Drops Album ‘Lotus’, Teetering on Quality Sound

As a slow-burn project, it will appeal to a particular aficionado within the genre, and while it’s hip-hop at its core, the rapper taps into slight shifts away from the spectrum; something he has always done. This time, he employs acoustic direction and bursts of percussion with the light scent of drum and bass meets jazz, as heard on songs like Horcrux and Hopefully featuring the late Benjamin Zephaniah.

Tracks like Strangers augment the challenges of city living, and how hip-hop is a diaristic venture for him. In a sense, this is an explanation for the rapper’s attraction to the genre, and music itself.

It makes contact with the listener’s attention through the raw intimacy of guiding compositions, akin to a lazy Sunday, pensive yet, grounding. It typifies expectations of the artist—he understands the need of listeners who crave something different while remaining in a place of artistic polyphony. The album does this spectacularly well, summoning nostalgia, like sun rays on your arm through a window curtain crevice.

The Verdict

It’s not just parents who will reflect on Hopefully!, but anyone with a sense of the trials that come with the role. It weaves a gentle fabric of pride in the enjoyment of his current responsibilities, intertwined with a persistent fear he accepts as part of the job.

The gentle elements of its ambience are light; I hope this album gets an instrumental release too. It’s an album indicative of Loyle’s indefatigable skill and promise as he navigates the complexities of life’s richness using bold intrigue as a vehicle.

Buy Vinyl and Stream it

Loyle Carner’s Hopefully can be streamed on all major platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal. You can also purchase the album on vinyl, CD, and cassette.

The rapper is also preparing to tour worldwide, with tickets available to buy directly from his website.