As 2018 winds down, one genre-fusing, pigeonhole-eschewing movement has surely dominated the year. The melting of trap aesthetics and old-school emo is one of modern music’s most fully-formed, modernist approaches. Spanning everything from the underground cultishness of Wicca Phase Springs Eternal and GothBoiClique, to mainstream-baiting chart stars like Juice WRLD. The British answer to those Stateside success stories is surely worstworldproblems.
This South London rap collective landed on our proverbial laps via a tweet from recent NME Radar stars itoldyouiwouldeatyou, declaring their debut tape “the EP of the year right here”. They might have a point, in fairness – ‘TAPE ONE‘ is an ever-mutating slice of aesthetic wizardry.
Comprised of producer and singer nomorewillroam, brutality-first rapper teenslasher91 and deranged poet gargoyle, with ‘TAPE ONE’ also featuring the more reclusive tb_rip and blackhole, Worstworldproblems’ production talents see their debut release segue through dark and twisted lead single ‘NAME_PASSWORD’, via chilly darkwave and synth-pop, and more ambient, exploratory works. It’s the sound of a collective fully-formed – one that, at such an early juncture, are more assured than many prospects with two or three times the experience.
Visually, the group pull from similar dark and gothic territory to the likes of gothboiclique – the collective that once was home to Lil Peep – but there’s also a grime edge to proceedings, be it that South London locale, or the English lilt to their shared vocals. Lyrically, meanwhile, they call upon the lovelorn sentiment and fired up aggression of trap and drill in equal measure.
It’s a sonic concoction which presents worstworldproblems as that most exciting of prospects – a group taking a new musical movement, and pushing it into ever-stranger climes. 2019 won’t know what hit it.