Slowthai shares the first single “Selfish” from his new album UGLY. It is scheduled for release on March 3rd. The theme of the album determines the extraordinary promo move that the rapper has chosen.
The press release reads very urgently, the occasion is extraordinary, the timing has to be right, a bit like a blackmail letter in a thriller. “Right now, slowthai is sitting in a specially built room with walls that are two meters high and completely mirrored on the inside. He entered it last night. Today he will spend the time there with himself. All of this can be seen in the live stream.”
And there he sits or lies or runs in circles. He smokes, writes, draws, dances, tries bottle flips and sometimes even talks. The whole old-school mental institution aesthetic gives the first clue: the new slowthai album is going to be personal. The live stream bears the title of the first single released at the same time: “Selfish”. In a sense, he’s the music video. At the moment (January 25, 2:15 p.m.) the live stream has been running for four and a half hours.
The album
His new album will be called UGLY. The acronym stands for “U Gotte Love Yourself” and has recently graced the rapper’s face, as the cover shows. The record is intended to follow a musical path that has been suggested so far, but which slowthai has never trodden so extensively. Although he continues to rap, it will be a punk rock album. He himself names punk as a major musical influence alongside hip-hop. He was certainly involved in the politicization of his previous work. He showed the strong anti-Brexit stance of his first album NOTHING GREAT ABOUT BRITAIN when he ‘held up the mirror’ to the UK during an awards ceremony by presenting a replica of Boris Johnson’s severed head on stage. Musically, the collaboration with Idles and Soft Play (until December 2022: “Slaves”) has openly shown that he has this side, but it was also noticeable on the 2021 album TYRON.
He describes his development towards the third album as follows: “The album is completely me – it’s about how I feel and what I want to be – it’s the logical end of my development up to now.” go into therapy and work on yourself. The mirror, which he wanted to metaphorically hold up to Britain and later used as a stage prop to show his fans that they are the great thing about Britain, he now points at himself. Completely surrounded by mirrors, he practices, as the subtitle of the Live streams, in patience and introspection. Right now the artist sees nothing but himself and the few props he brought with him.