Wiley – Evolve Or Be Extinct
Big Dada
In a world of rap superstars with carefully stage-managed online social media ‘presences’, Richard Cowie aka Wiley’s asinine tweeted observations reveal the E3 boy in all his hyperactive glory. Between dropping gigabytes of unreleased tracks and getting live on Ustream, the perceived gap between persona and person disperses like weed smoke from a bedroom window.
On ‘Weirdo’ from Evolve Or Be Extinct, the grime innovator’s eighth full length LP, Wiley reels off a list of things — from eating desert before dinner to talking about toasters on Twitter — that make him a ‘weirdo but not a bi-polar’. Yet if there’s one thing that’s defined Wiley in his career it’s his tendency towardS bi-polarity; a hyperactive veering between commercial ambition and ‘keeping it real’ that’s made him one of the most artistically interesting characters the UK has produced in the last decade.
Of course, Wiley’s story is also in large part that of grime’s, even while he’s still to fully capitalise on the genre’s belated mainstream ascendancy. It took a watering down of grime’s aggression, rawness and implied violence in order for it to break out of London’s East End and into the charts; replacing beats rooted in the psychogeographical alienation of being young, black and living in Hackney with the comparative facelessness of the commercial electro-bass sound. Yet despite a brief dalliance with mainstream stardom with 2008’s lumpen ‘Wearing My Rolex’, he never became part of the music establishment, and now kids like Chipmunk, Tinchy and Tinie Tempah have catapulted themselves into the spotlight using Wiley’s groundwork as a launch pad.
This has lead to Wiley’s preoccupation with the Machiavellian machinations of the music industry, which reached its apogee with his return to Big Dada and last year’s 100% Publishing. Thankfully, though, that strain of Wiley’s thinking isn’t really present on his new record, Evolve Or Be Extinct, which finds Cowie in full, existential flow, dealing with himself, his problems and obsessions, rather than the outside world.
And actually rather than falling prey to insular, weed-induced paranoia, Evolve Or Be Extinct is 45 minutes of joyful self-expression that revels in its creator’s eccentricity.In fact, this is a record defined by its idiosyncracies: with ‘Boom Blast’’s electro bass and hi-hats being pretty much the only concession to the dancefloor, we’re left with Wiley discussing home life and dating in wine bars (‘Link Up’) rather than girls wearing his Rolex in clubs. The title track, meanwhile, finds Wiley stretching his flows in unstoppable fashion. While the track is characteristic in its obsessing over its place within the musical landscape, it’s more joyful than that; striving for personal betterment and evolution instead of looking over its shoulder at the kids coming up from behind.
Evolve Or Be Extinct is far from perfect, however: skit ‘Customs’ is dull, ‘Scar’ falls flat and is directionless, ‘Miss You’ and ‘Only Human’ tread slower, R&B territory, and though neither are bad songs per se, they break up the record’s flow, rather than enhance it.
Closing track ‘This Is Just An Album’ (as you’d imagine from the title) sums up the record in matter-of-fact fashion, swapping fame-anxiety for more grounded concerns: “It’s crazy trying to make an album that you want to connect with so many people / but this is just an album that I done / I can’t live if the money don’t run / I’m the oldest son meant to take care of my Dad and my Mum / on top of that I’m a Dad meant to take care of the kids that I had.”
Evolve Or Be Extinct shows Wiley grappling with his musical contradictions, and it is, perhaps, these seemingly unresolvable conflicts that mean Wiley will never make a great album — but it’s also the reason why you’ll always want to hear anything new he’s committed to wax. Felix Petty
