Summery Hip-hop Nostalgia
With a penchant for the comedic, hip hop's new face on the scene Akira the Don is certainly making waves and with this double A side release you're certainly given a well rounded taster of what this man is capable of.
'Oh! What a Glorious Thing' is a track that's high on life and low on the gritty. With Jack Johnson style rhythms and laid back rapping it's pop hip hop that should garner some big play on the radio. Being such a summery tune it'll be the perfect nostalgia track to think back on this summer's frolics as the nights draw in and get colder. How can you dislike a song that is just so happy and so thrilled by the mere fact of being alive? The only downer is the slightly cheesy addition of children's backing vocals but you'd have to have a heart of stone if you let that turn you off.
If that is just too much niceness in one go then 'Boom! (Smash Stuff)' will bring you right back down to the dark and dirty world we live in. Sampling Elastica it's a grimy tale of trouble on the streets and is bursting with so much gangsta style hip hop you'd swear this was a track from a New York based artist.
You're not going to find a more inventive and appealing hip hop artist than Akira the Don and on the basis of these two tracks his debut album 'When We Were Young' is going to be one of the releases of the year.