Just a few short months ago I witnessed Tinie, aka Patrick Okogwu, ‘tearing the roof off the sucka’ with a barnstorming Oxegen performance that brimmed with style and confidence.
Granted, his brand of UK Grime, polished with an American R&B veneer, wasn’t really my bag, although you couldn’t but admire his slick showmanship.
Tinie has timed his all-conquering run to perfection, hitting the UK No. 1 slot with the download only ‘Pass Out’ in February, while follow up single ‘Frisky’, also produced by Labrinth, kept the kids moving throughout his summer festival run.
Unexpectedly, his woefully titled debut Disc-Overy reveals a talent far beyond the copycat, Dizzy Rascal-lite, one-summer wonders we’ve endured in recent years.
What’s unusual is the breath of genres compacted into this concise album, with elements of grime, hip hop, R&B, electro and house present.
Also, unlike many of his vacuous, style-obsessed peers from the US, Tinie’s lyrics reveal a sharp-witted mind, with a keen ear for cutting rhymes and self-deprecating humour.
The pompous, ‘here me now’ style opener ‘Intro’ kicks off with the cheeky line “I’m an extra-terrestrial, came up out the fucking dirt like a vegetable”. It’s a serious/tongue in cheek declaration from this precocious kid from South London, yet closer in delivery to a George Clinton than his own contemporaries. The assorted range of styles passes from the thumping electro of ‘Miami 2 Ibiza’, featuring Swedish House Mafia, to the glossy UK-meets-US, Grime meets R&B of ‘Written in the Stars’, while the diversity of collaborators (Kelly Rowland to Ellie Goulding) shows his willingness to experiment.
Move over Kanye, Tinie’s coming to get ya!
KEY TRACK: ‘WRITTEN IN THE STARS’