Home   About Us               Contact       
Trinity Media Group - Refreshing Media and Entertainment
Media Broking Other Projects Media Consultancy Trinity Records Trinity Publishing Music Promotion Trinity Management

SLIM DUTTY

THE STORY SO FAR - ALBUM NOTES

Now here is one for true music lovers to add to their record collection, Slim DUTTY’s seminal debut The Story So Far is an urban classical masterpiece. His keep it real policy is emphasized by a vocal style that screams I’m UK, I’m here to stay and I’m proud. But that’s not the full picture with Slim DUTTY, he also writes highly thought provoking rhymes that tap into the psyche of the disenfranchised UK black youth. What’s more, Slim is so versatile that he can switch his style from the ghetto hymns of street hustling and murder to heart-warming tales of love and romance and still leave most UK rappers on the pavement. He has well earned respect in his hometown of Harlesden for his anti-gun stance taken at the height of a black on black gun epidemic that had gripped his community in 2002.

The socially conscious message of his first single for Trinity Records Blood Puddles - a call for the end to the violence was considered to raw for national radio - yet received endless love from pirate radio. Also, the release of the Blood Puddles video on urban music cable station Channel U received one of the highest numbers of requests for a debut and had various better known UK artists singing Slim’s praises.

The Story So Far is a highly introspective piece of musical social commentary and written as a testimony of everyday life on the streets of NW10. There is a menacing quality to the synthesised beats of the more hardcore tracks plus the gangsta – rap element of guns and violence that one can only expect of a gangsta rap album. However the twist with Slim DUTTY is borne out of a observation that is more concerned with the consequences of a violent lifestyle which he crafts into fables like a modern day Aesop.


 

     


Video

Look 2 Good (official release)
Party Wid Me
Blood Puddles

Audio
Look 2 Good (official release)
Interview
Album Samples - The Story So Far

Images
Image Set 1
Image Set 2
Image Set 3

Misc
Press Cuts (zip)
Biography
Look 2 Good Notes
The Story so Far Album Notes


And a warning to those music pundits with preconceptions of what a gangsta-rap album is supposed to sound like - beware for The Story So Far has much eclectic appeal and has lead to journalists of various news media unwittingly calling Slim DUTTY an R&B artist. To some extent this misnomer might arguably be justified for ‘The Story…’ encompasses a wide range of popular musical genre material from gospel to soul with many tracks remixed in garage, bhangra and dancehall versions.

The Story So Far is Slim acting as the perfect host and offering a little bit of something for even those rap music lovers that might prefer their ditty’s a little more on the cheerful side. Such as the comic relief proffered in ‘U should cum’, this is a light-hearted yet woeful tale on the pitfalls of nicking your mum’s car while she is off on holiday, don’t do it. Then again, there is the sexually explicit ‘dirty rap’ of Slim as the dick swinging stud elucidating the joys of sex in the darkly humorous ‘18 and Over’ which he describes as very loosely based on a true story.

Female rap fans out there are sure to appreciate more sentimental tracks like ‘Look 2 Good‘ wherein Slim’s smooth delivery adopts a more sensitive approach for a tale of ghetto romance. Even smoother still is the sexually charged slow tempo number ‘Get Paid’ a tale of naked ambition pitted against social deprivation, yet perversely ideal for making babies too. London Life is perhaps the track that articulates Slim’s political views incorporating socialist leanings, and paranoid conspiracy theories held up by one badass rap style, it is deep. ‘2gether We R 1Trinity’ is self explanatory it outlines the corporate strategy of Trinity Media and the direction that we are likely to see Slim take on album No2.

His ‘Don’t Underestimate True Talented Youth’ fam’ concept is idealised in the acronym DUTTY this track has a rock edge to it and is a warning to music industry heads not to underestimate the army of talented mixers, producers and emcees from all over the UK that helped make The Story So Far possible.

The aforementioned tracks express only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the thematic diversity of The Story So Far. This album is a phenomenon in the sense that it is the result of the cultural fixation of American music on British youth. But don’t get it twisted this is not UK rap music wanting to be American; this is UK rap saying we are your equal.

Back in 1979 when the Sugar Hill Gang’s ‘Rappers Delight’ made that first pioneering transatlantic rap crossing into the UK charts for the following decade a man’s rap credibility depended on his birth proximity to Brooklyn or the Bronx. But times have since changed and the geographical rap landscape has seismically shifted; now you have East Coast rap, West Coast rap and Dirty South rap sharing equal recognition. Fifteen years ago when Public Enemy were whipping up a political frenzy with a pro black assault on the rap world no one would have guessed that come 2004 a trailer trash white kid from Detroit would be recognised as hip-hops most famous ambassador. That is the beauty of rap as it is today the universal musical language of the oppressed.

So it stands to reason that given the right climate within the UK, largely considered to be America’s 51 State anyways, there should be nothing to stop a socially and politically conscious Black youth from our most multicultural city from prizing the global rap baton from the nervous and sweaty hands of Fifty cent and Kanye West.

ALL HAIL SLIM DUTTY. Peace