Staff Reviews

Speech Debelle - Speech Therapy

Review by Daniel Ross

Born to a middle-class South London Jamaican family, Speech Debelle’s genesis has been one defined entirely by herself, purposeful»

User reviews

• 9/10 by UnrealCity

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initial copies of the cd format (3500 copies) come packaged in a deluxe gatefold digipack. gipsy hill's speech debelle is unusually sensitive and articulate for a rapper, and more inclined to melancholy and pessimism than bullish breastbeating on this future urban pop classic. the childlike quality of her voice belies her often dark lyrical subject matter. the issues she raps about - her absent father, lonely hostel existence, grim inner-city conditions, romantic break-up, and her general struggle to deal with life%u2019s confusions. she has been called the lovechild of biggie smalls and joanna newsom. thanks to the diverse input of collaborators from outside the customary r&b / hip-hop territory, the settings for her lyrical ruminations on 'speech therapy' are vastly more interesting than most: tunng's mike lindsay, for instance, contributes the bricolage of clicky percussion, pizzicato strings and trumpet behind 'spinnin', and the wistful humming and acoustic guitar for 'live and learn', while australian producer plutonic lab devises both the weird, clarinet-laced setting of 'the key' and the haunting string-synth, glockenspiel and guitar arrangement for speech's duet with micachu, 'better days'. on big dada.
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