Fresh Voices in Hip-hop: Ghostpoet

It's been a while since a rapper who sounds so tired sounded so exciting.

Ghostpoet, the 24-year-old MC from Islington, North London, via the concrete-clad environs of Coventry in the UK's Midlands, rhymes with a lethargy usually more associated with sloths addicted to hot milk and sleeping pills.

Pacing his bars a beat behind the beat, he's not racing ahead to recount decadent tales of excess success. Instead he raps about the everyman's everyday. On the laid-back and leaning-forward “Cash and Carry Me Home” he bemoans the relatable predicament of drinking too much with too little money and having a sore head the morning after.

The first single from Ghostpoet's Brownswood Recordings-released debut album Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam features hung-over, weary rhyming as hypnotic bass keys pound out a water torture rhythm and alluring bottles of liquor spin cruelly around his trilby-hatted head in the video below.

Download Ghostpoet's first EP The Sound of Strangers, which features alternative popstress Micachu and a rejig of A Tribe Called Quest's “Electric Relaxation” here.