Kid Acne – ‘FRESH TO DEATH’ – the remix EP on limited edition cassette
Still telling all wack emcees to sort their life out, up North superhero Kid Acne stays ‘FRESH TO DEATH’, a remix compendium on limited edition cassette following 2019’s heroic hip-hop jargon-buster ‘HAVE A WORD’. His entertainingly innate ability to make the everyday psychedelic, and conversely the far-out comfortably familiar, made ‘HAVE A WORD’ a hit with BBC 6 Music’s Gilles Peterson, Nemone and Gideon Coe, and lead to DJ Magazine claiming that “UK music needs more Kid Acnes in it”, in facing off against featured UK headliners Juice Aleem and Juga-Naut, and crossing swords once more with cult rap clansmen New Kingdom.
On hot pink TDK you now get seven remixes of ‘HAVE A WORD’ wisdom from trusted acolytes and esteemed allies, continuing to twist the pop culture streams of consciousness. Hashfinger absolutely bullies ‘STAND TALL/STAY GOLDEN’, Theorist gets pseudo-celestial for ‘OTE FOR NOTE’, and Chemo takes ‘UNEMPLOYED GODS’ down glum sepia-toned streets. King Kashmere typically reaches for the outer limits to reach the ‘BUBBLEGOOSE EMPIRE’, with Norm Oddity and Percy Filth aiming for exotic astral vistas to confirm the mantras of ‘YOU GET WHAT YOU’RE GIVEN’ and ‘IT IS WHAT IT IS’. Nappa gets ‘NICE WITH IT’ as the symphony brings the tape to a close.
‘HAVE A WORD’ reunited Kid Acne with LEX, after the ‘LEXOLIUM’ series back in 2001, and 2007’s LP ‘ROMANCE AIN’T DEAD’, celebrated as “an injection of stoopid Steel City freshness”. An instantly distinctive back catalogue of DIY, post-Millennium hip-hop, has gone from playing in ‘RAP TRAFFIC’ and pouring ‘COUNCIL POP’ to leading the charge of ‘ATTACK THE MONOLITH’ as part of B-boy outsiders MONGRELS. The Yorkshire cunning, speak your clout and dedication to hip-hop’s essence has run parallel with his stalwart status within the international Street Art movement, having painted large-scale murals across continents and exhibited extensively over the past two decades. The new album tied in with his latest solo exhibition, also called ‘HAVE A WORD’, which took pride of place in Sheffield.
