"Kano's previous single Typical Me was one of the only singles this year to have CLIMBED 10 PLACES from its initial midweek position of 34," it says. You can catch a whiff of desperation from the accompanying press release. Home Sweet Home surely represents the last roll of the major-label dice for grime - if this one doesn't sell, you suspect the A&R men will leave well enough alone. Record labels have thrown money at Wiley and Shystie, but their albums have remained nailed to the shelves. A chart invasion was duly predicted, but the mainstream public has persistently declined to clasp grime to its delicate bosom.
Here was a strain of UK urban music futuristic and innovative enough to challenge anything America could produce. The latter is a question plenty of people have been asking since grime first came to national prominence two years ago, via Robinson's peer Dizzee Rascal. "I know I've gone far, I think it's too far to turn back," he says, adding ponderously: "Sometimes you see me in a daydream, thinking could the underground go mainstream?" By the time you have heard Robinson bragging "I'm so ghetto I got banned from Heathrow", as if acting like a prat at an airport were something to be proud of, you are pretty convinced that reflection and soul-searching aren't really his thing.īut here he is, rapping over mournful synthesisers and violin, apparently beset with worries about the path his career has taken: from rising star of the cutting-edge garage sub-genre known as grime, to major-label signing.
They serve up the British MC's traditional, depressing litany: alpha-male hectoring, details of internecine squabbles likely to leave anyone not completely au fait with the garage scene shrugging their shoulders and gun-related braggadocio purporting to be clear-eyed inner-city reportage. That may not look particularly surprising on paper, but wait until you've waded through the previous six tracks. A song called Sometimes finds the east-London MC in reflective, soul-searching mood. A s it reaches its midway point, the debut album from 19-year-old Caine "Kano" Robinson offers up a shock.
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