UK rap duo Datkid and Mylo Stone explode bar bombs for their intense hip-hop album
Now this is an interestingly great piece of hip-hop from the UK. Datkid and Mylo Stone release their new album, Don’t Get Caught—our fresh stringent daily dose of nutritionally dense boom-bap by design. Released via High Focus Records, it sets out a manifesto for a sailcloth of diligent rap, compounded by its dexterous music production.
Don’t Get Caught is a Lyrically Rich Experience
Filtered through an exacting precipice of ride-or-die rhyme schemes, it’s unapologetically raw and gritty — like there’s nothing to prove except to take action.
Under the hood, the UK’s hip-hop scene is often cheerleaded by a collective of banal-sounding music. They sound tired, and the same — cooking up beats with little to no personal identifiers. However, look past the grime fence and you’ll see a demonstrable platter of rap goodness.
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It opens with Brother’s Keeper, a slow-burn musical medley moulded by the raspy vocals of Datkid and Mylo Stone, who perform their distinct array of verbal gymnastics. Aside from a detour where he paradoxically comments on drugs and religion, it tees up the listener for a ride where prolific bars are not in short supply.
C U Next Tuesday starts as it means to go on, with explicit diatribes — terrainous, textured with a golden lexicon: “I’m outside the window staring in looking starvin’, here to take the whole plate for the harvest“. This is but a mere taster of where the track runs —with a memorable hook.
The Realist is a fantastic wordplay parade of multisyllabic actions taken by a foursome of bruising verses. It features wildly talented rapper, Worms Ali, who unleashes need-to-note bars with a fluid flow to match: “I’m spooky with the flow, I don’t need a ghost to write.”
Overall, there’s some fantastic production at play — replete with out-of-the-box, rough-to-the-core assets. These are further augmented by an Olympic-level pen game honed by each lyricist, as heard on tracks like Victims of Tradition.
The demeanour shifts as we arrive at Survivors Guilt, where personal trials and ventures are documented. It’s a gripping listen, one spiralling into heavy narratives of a stop-and-start life. The album is expertly curated, leading us from introspective music to a posse cut — A Good Day, featuring DJ Charley Cut and Jman.
The Verdict
Here I am, ironically, behind my computer, but I’m not “salty”. Datkid and Mylo Stone are not cut from the same cloth. The inherent skill they’ve invested in the project resonates pervasively from start to finish with a boom. From its fantastic opening, it sets off like a wind-up toy car, acting as the perfect teaser for what is to come.
Don’t Get Caught is a phonetic masterclass filled with incendiary metaphors and a lyricscape characterised by a wordy consonance, chiselled by Datkid’s production techniques, which germ the complexity of its sound. There’s a megabyte of something missing here, but it’s an incredible album on Stanisland Magazine‘s weekly playlist.
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