During his conversation with Alex Mistlin, he was noted to display a shy nervousness at odds with the confident brand of music he creates and the incensed performance he gives in the music video for “Hate“: “People feel scared to say how they really feel because in the times we’re living they get crucified. I’m trying to unlearn that bit by bit and be more myself“.

It seems like part of his agitation might also stem from his awareness of the change in direction that he’s taken and the response it might generate. For fans of the sweet and unchallenging tones of 2018’s “Ottolenghi“, “Hate” may be jarring and uncomfortable, but it’s a risk he’s willing to take and likens to the journey that Kendrick Lamar went on to conceive his lauded third album To Pimp A Butterfly. “When you’re young, there’s a charm to the fact that you’re a bit naive,” he says. “You don’t know what you’re striving for. It’s a balance because you don’t want to be too old to feel connected to the culture of youth that you’re trying to speak to. There’s a sweet spot in the middle, like Kendrick with To Pimp A Butterfly, where you’re naive enough to still be free-speaking, but considered enough to refine your shit.”

To compare “Hate” to the cultural heft of Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly would be lazy and remiss of me. Loyle is a British artist discussing experiences and traumas unique to him and should in turn be appreciated on it’s own level. However, I will say I’m excited to hear more from him as the new album and direction he’s taken becomes more apparent in the coming year. As judging by the brilliantly emotive video that Loyle himself co-directed for “Hate“, it’s going to be exciting.

It’s a bold and typically impassioned number from the South London songwriter who continues to push boundaries with every release. With fierce breakbeat percussion chopping in and out of the intro’s choral backing vocals like an impatient middle school drummer, there’s an immediate sense of bottled rage on the track that finally sets into it’s fiery rhythm with Loyles opening line “Let me tell you what I hate, everything I ain’t
Everything I’ve done, everything I break“.

Genius Lyrics notes that “Hate” is a “powerful and rage-filled track”, that “offers insight into what it is to be black, and the loves, seductions and hatreds of Loyle’s life. Loyle grittily exposes the experience of being trapped in racial profiling and the fears he faces“. In the video above, self directed by Carner and his co-director Greg Hackett, this sentiment is keenly felt. A tour de force performance sees the rapper become increasingly irate with a driver pulling up beside him until all hell breaks loose when multiple versions of himself appear in the car and begin to overwhelm him. It makes for moving viewing, a reflects the songs feeling of oppression well. Carner hasn’t said a great deal about the track as yet, but ultimately the mystique works in his favour. An obvious and bold side step from the often care-free and chill feeling on a lot of his previous work, the boy wonder from Croyden is back with a loud and abrasive boom that indicates an exciting new direction.