Introducing Klashnekoff

Klashnekoff is my favourite homegrown rapper. To call him the UK equivalent of Krs 1 or Public Enemy is not an unjust comparison. He's a hard hitting, uncompromising rapper who does street reportage, like nobody else ever has in the UK. He questions and rails against the establishment, hoodrats, his own community, our society, humanity and tries to give a positive example for misguided inner city youth to follow. His flow, imagery and metaphors is poetry in motion. For me he's the closest thing I've heard to a Linton Kwesi Johnson.

Anyway I'll stop gushing over Klashnekoff and simply say the proof's in his music. Check both The Sagas Of Klasnekoff (a compilation of his early material including the above, Murda), or this year's Lionheart: Tussle With The Beast.

Here's an interview with the Hackneyite that appears in today's Newcastle Metro ahead of his date tomorrow at the Other Rooms. And believe me this is about 5% of what he had to say... including how much he loves folk (coz 1960s folk is music made from pain and struggle)


KLASHNEKOFF

Darren ‘Klashnekoff’ Kandler is a misunderstood rapper. He’s the most politically and socially aware hip-hop artist in Britain but is often perceived as a gun-toting, gangsta rapper because of his nom de guerre and unflinching observations on inner city life.

‘The Kalashnikov is the tool that people use to fight their oppressors and it inspired me,’ says Klashnekoff, explaining the origins of his name. ‘The Kalashnikov is a revolutionary symbol, it’s a Malcolm X thing and represents liberation, equality and justice.’

These themes feature heavily on Klash’s compelling LP, Lionheart: Tussle With The Beast, which also clears up any confusion on where the Hackney-rapper is coming from. Klasnekoff takes aim at a society that values footballers over nurses, challenges hip-hop’s obsession with materialism, and offer alternatives to the live fast die young lifestyle, that has seen so many teenage boys’ lives lost to guns and knives.

‘I’m trying to do something a little different – relate my pain and bring knowledge to young people too,’ explains Klashnekoff. ‘Rappers today aren’t giving the kids anything back – if you listen to my album you’ll get something good from it, it ain’t no McDonalds crap.’

‘I’m not trying to be gangsta, I talk about society, responsibility, I talk about my ‘mumsy’ and respecting women’, he continues. ‘I’m trying to be the best human being I can be.’

Klashnekoff’s fire-and-brimstone delivery, his flow (hybridizing cockney and Jamaican patois like a latter day Linton Kwesi Johnson), imagery and passion, has marked him out as a homegrown hip-hop hero since the early noughties.

However it’s the critically acclaimed Lionheart… that has seen Klashnekoff move beyond the UK hip-hop’s underground and gain fans including Gilles Peterson and Rio Ferdinand. Joe Buddha’s production, drawing on 1960s roots reggae and soul, means Klash’s no compromise rhymes are softened by bright reggae horns, calypso and warm melodies.

It’s probably why Klash’s been dubbed the ‘rap Bob Marley’, when more apt comparisons would be the originator of conscious, politically minded hip-hop, Krs One, the ‘teacher’, or Public Enemey. ‘I’m trying to rep for the strugglers all over the world as long as you have a good heart and you’re down for some freedom,’ says Klashnekoff. ‘Technology is at its highest but humanity is at its lowest: we should be concentrating on feeding and housing people - that’s real and logical to me.’

‘If people can’t see what’s going on they’re in Happy Shopper mode and more concerned with the latest clothes,’ says Klashnekoff. ‘What I’m talking about isn’t that outlandish I want humanity to be in a better place. What’s wrong with that?’