NEWS
EVENTS
Rocks FOE gets gritty with dope as f**k visuals on new EP
RnB/Hip Hop | Friday 1st September 2017 | Alex
Rocks FOE returns to cult UK label Black Acre with new, eight-track project ‘Fight The Good? Fight’ — a dark, conceptual record built around the notion of “everything being an internal and external battle”.
A powerful lyricist and complex storyteller, Rocks’ sound combines hyper-fierce spitting with his own abstract beat sketches. Having released his impressive debut EP, ‘Legion’, back in 2015 — a raw, self-produced grime-rap hybrid — he has since remained dormant to the outside world, bar a quick-fire feature on Commodo’s ‘How What Time’ LP in 2016.
Written over the course of that period and entirely self-produced, ’Fight The Good? Fight’ digs deeper than ever before into Rocks’ psyche, drawing on both religious elements and his own life experiences for much of its lyrical inspiration. He talks money, love, confusion, happiness and ambition, addressing his demons and calling out bullshit along the way.
Musically, ‘Fight The Good? Fight’ also broadens his own horizons, with Rocks widening his scope to take in sounds from beyond the sprawling urban landscape of his home town of Croydon.
On the two tracks that bookend the record, ‘Nitty Gritty’ and ‘Into My Own Hands’, he flows at trademark lightning speed over crunchy rap beats, but it's on cuts like ‘Downpour’ and the wandering spoken-word of ‘Red Hand Of Ulster’ that he unmasks a new, more vulnerable guise.
Comfortable spitting acapella, off-beat or even in spoken word — over straight-up rap beats or woozy Commodo instrumentals — Rocks has long been considered one of the UK’s most compelling young lyricists, but on ‘Fight The Good? Fight’, Rocks comes of age proper.
Check out the video for 'Nitty Gritty' below.
