Dear Life - Choong Family (2004)

I recently rediscovered this deep cut of soulful social commentary over melancholic UK hip-hop keys from one of Channel U's legendary crews

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The umbrella genre labelled ‘UK hiphop’ that flourished in the 2000s after two decades of slow, steady growth was one of my favourites, a guaranteed local source of philosophy and feeling. It was a wise precursor to the looser, trappier, glitzier UK rap scene that has since become an established part of the digitised global mainstream.

But due to timing, it never flew as high as it should have done. This difficulty seems in-part to be a function of timing. Because achieving commercial success throughout the first years of the new millennium required competing with grime in the bottleneck of show bookings, label investment and audience attention.

Grime was the predominant sound of British youth culture. Its nativism - the fact we could fully call it our own - meant that it gained the most hype. But for listeners seeking something from artists who weren’t driven by gun-fingers, stardom and financial reward alone, it wasn’t enough.

Sure, grime borrowed from American hiphop - the New Era baseball caps, narrative music videos and DJ-MC combinations - but it was so much faster and overflowing with regional accents, city-isms and island eccentricities.

I loved it, but I also sought more; the observational prowess, humility and slowness that sounded like it had reapplied expression coming from the other side of the Atlantic to a society that I lived in and could see and feel around me.

UK Hiphop gifted us this.

The likes of Roots Manuva, Klashnekoff, Skinnyman, Poisonous Poets and many more took the art and lifestyle of rapping super seriously. Social commentary of the highest calibre was normal.

Mixtapes and albums full of emotional, moody and uplifting beats created space for mature, deep-thinking performers who had come up through battle-rapping or spoken word poetry or road life infamy, alike.

And within this ecosystem, it bears remembering that Choong Family had bangers.

They were regular faces on Channel U, releasing a slew of video-accompanied singles including Pain Don’t Stop, Fall Back and Memory Lane. They later crossed over to up the tempo with Adrenaline, a grime heater which was remixed to feature legends Scorcher, Wretch 32 and Ghetto from The Movement.

One of my favourites of their songs - which I only recently rediscovered, and have played constantly since - was Dear Life.

It’s a deep cut from their 2004 debut album Higher Elevation. It is pure and peaceful introspection; a pen crying its heart out, writing a letter, pondering life, justice and reality. The keys are delicate, the bass line is smooth, and the chorus sung by vocalist Elizabeth Williams is the cherry on the cake.

Put on headphones, relax and enjoy.

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