East London rapper Unknown T has unleashed his highly-anticipated second mixtape, Adolescence.
The increasing success of drill music in the UK has raised some questions for Unknown T, an early adopter of the sound imported from Chicago’s South Side. “At the start it was like Bitcoin,” he tells Apple Music. “But around the time it started to explode, from 2016 to ’18, everyone was jumping on it. And me? A person that loves music, but also thinks like a businessman, I’m thinking to myself, ‘How can I adapt my product?’” On Adolescence, features including M1llionz, Potter Payper and M Huncho ensure a rhyme-heavy affair, but carefully selected moments allow the Hackney MC to explore growth. “GLEE” serves a warm, oxymoronic jam; “Tugman Vacation” employs a sweet sample-flip of Tyrese’s 1998 R&B hit “Sweet Lady”; and “Sweet Lies” offers a soulful guitar ballad. “As a child, I grew with positivity and light, and built up a passion for music,” he says. “But then you go through real shit. And faced with many different emotions as I was growing up, I just wanted to rap it out. It’s still the same, but I’m going back to the origin.”
Be sure to take in Adolescence below and to see Unknown T’s live performance of a few tracks from the tape, hit play in the video below!
