Ok first things first. This review is a bit late. My sincerest apologies to Lords of Nothing this is not a reflection on their work merely a reflection of my busy life. That being said the delay has caused something serendipitous to happen. As I’m sat here jamming to this EP for the umpteenth time, the sun has made itself known and shone light ( wahey) on this impressive effort to show it as the summer jam that it is. So it all works out in the end haha. (Really though I am sorry)
Lords Of Nothing are are an accomplished duo from Portsmouth, UK consisting of long time collaborators and friends Spitfire and Towa, emcee and producer respectively. Having a solid release like the earlier ‘Triple Filtered’ already under their belts I knew that the ‘Lucky Charms EP’ was gonna be another good one, but even I was pleasantly surprised at just how good it is.
Spitfire has really come into his own on this. Having been putting in a more consistent hard graft than most over the last year or so ‘The Lucky Charms EP’ finds him giving his most confident and comfortable display of skill. Always sounding like the kid who is having the most fun at the party, the sheer enjoyment that comes through in his style is refreshing when dropped in a world of angry rappers. Not to say he’s happy with every subject he writes about, just that he clearly loves his craft. I always get the sense he’s being more himself than a lot of rappers out there, and a lot of them could learn a lesson from Spitfire about this. Riding beats with individuality and character, with an old skool kinda flow he is one of the most recognisable voices in UK Hip Hop.
There are few producers like Towa. Not someone content with churning out a thousand beats of the same style, he has put forward a diverse collection of tracks with Spitfire during their history together. This has given them more variety of sound as a group than a lot of those out there. As I understand it Towa works exclusively with Spitfire. This is probably the reason they have been able to create such a consistently fluid duo. With his own unique take on Hip Hop production Towa is such an interesting producer. I found myself being constantly unsure of what would happen next musically on ‘Lucky Charm’s, even mid song. It’s so nice to be unsure and surprised nowadays with such a large bracket of producers making similar sounding products. I’m not gonna just sit here and write track one beat was blah blah, track two beat was etc etc because that would sell him short.
Overall this is a brilliant collection of natural and honest hip hop. No gimmicks, no fake fronts, no forced attitude just good tune after good tune. I genuinely enjoyed this from start to finish and I think you’d be robbing yourself not checking it out. Look out for more releases from these boys in the future, they re sure to only get better and better.
Words; Adam
Spitfire & Towa – ‘Nice Work’ [Promo Video]
Stream and download your copy of the DOPE ‘Lucky Charms EP’ here
Be on the look out for a Lords Of Nothing full album dropping early Summer. In the meantime look out for Spitfire’s self produced album ‘Pen & The Pads’ dropping on May 24th, featuring cuts from the likes of DJ Madhandz and the turntable don DJ Jabbathakut, the odd verse from Split Prophets member Paro, mixed by Towa , will be out on limited edition white label vinyl, CDs with hand tagged covers including poster of the original idea for the artwork and also 2 bonus tracks.
Here’s a taste for you
http://soundcloud.com/spit_fire_uk
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