Sam Davies

In the early noughties, Owura “Tony” Nyanin and Kofi “Teddy” Hanson were signed to Mike Skinner’s label and two of the UK’s most influential MCs – then they disappeared. Now reunited over a decade later, the pair say the world wasn’t ready for them.

In the first in a new series where we speak to musicians about their careers and experience using the Muso Mirror, we are joined by Spanish-British classical guitarist Carlos Bonell. Carlos has played on a Grammy-nominated album, worked with Paul McCartney, and is now a big fan of the Muso Mirror. He speaks to us from his home in a small village in the southeast of Spain.

This gig is part musical performance, part scripted narrative, part allegory of the themes addressed in his latest LP The Long Goodbye.

Over a decade since UK funky's initial peak, the growing popularity of percussive styles like gqom, kuduro and amapiano has sparked the interest of those who remember its mid-noughties heyday. As more and more artists begin to readopt the UK funky tag, some are declaring the sound as as ‘back’. But did it ever really leave? Or did it simply evolve? Sam Davies charts the genre’s history, and its enduring relevance to Afro-Caribbean music in the UK

600-word review of Icelandic producer EVA808's debut album

Two choices in the i paper's list of critics' cultural highlights of 2020. I went for a Zoom-based horror film and the global domination of UK drill.

Through the bad and rare pockets of good this year has provided, some albums in particular have clear places on 2020's soundtrack

They’ve suffered funding cuts, lost their home and been forced to limit their service. But the team behind Woolwich Service User Project — or WSUP — have kept going during the coronavirus crisis. Mark Osborn, one of its most dedicated volunteers, told SAM DAVIES how.

doesn’t talk much. He prefers singing. But in a rare word between songs at , he pauses to comment on the situation — on performing for cameras instead of fans. “At least it’s better than nothing,” he says, in a thick Nigerian accent which he seems able to turn on and off. He’s got that right.

Using little more than YouTube and their own instinct, this group reached an audience of millions without bending to the will of a major label or the media

A Motion Picture by Tarantino: words that, confusingly perhaps, accompany more British rap videos from the last five years than can be listed here. These are lavish visuals boasting wild concepts (a chase sequence in Plasticine stop-motion), brazen winks to camera (a rapper dealing in industrial shipments of cans of Coke) and star-studded casts (artists such as Potter Payper, SL and Dappy – yes, that Dappy). But the director responsible is not the Pulp Fiction auteur...

The Streets was never a solo project. Mike Skinner is often thought of as a one-man band: he started The Streets in the early 2000s and recorded his debut album, Original Pirate Material, in his bedroom in Birmingham, stuffing his wardrobe with duvets and using it as a vocal booth. Over the next decade, four more Streets albums were released, all of them written and produced by Skinner...

The rapper talks to Sam Davies about violent lyrics, Black Lives Matter and his unique Congolese/London lingo

“It’s a weird time in the world right now,” said MJ Cole on social media last week. “Let’s brighten things up a little bit and play some music… music isn’t cancelled.” Beneath the words was a clip of Cole playing the piano. He asked his followers to send in their own videos and promised to send a free T-shirt and his new album on vinyl to the person behind his favourite clip.
Cole seems happier than most in this period of self-isolation. For one, he lives alone, and has so far been able to se...