Life Ain’t Easy - C.S & Estizz (2019)
An older-younger collaboration from the hot summer of 2019, this is south London pain rap at its most heartfelt and hopeful
Back in June 2019 I’d been writing about the dovetailing rise of U.K. rap and drill music for a few years. During the same period I was a youth worker in south London. I would design and deliver educational workshops with groups of teenage boys and girls at schools, youth clubs and studios, often using local music as a prompt for discussion.
When the video for Life Ain’t Easy appeared on the Pacman TV YouTube channel, I immediately recognised Estizzy, the young voice behind the song’s pained, soothing hook. We’d crossed paths briefly at a secondary school some years before, where I found him to be a calm, honest and likeable presence among his group of friends. On discovering this song, I could hear his personality shine through in his lyrics, which combine to produce an auto-tuned cry for empathy that cuts between verses from Peckham rap veteran C.S.
I love the interplay between the artists’ younger-older perspectives and wise simplicity of the song’s message. It’s the type of release that is easily glossed over in the frantic, saturated internet age of mass music marketing. But UK rap doesn’t get much purer than this: a hardened yet hopeful window into life in the gentrifying shadows of the English inner-capital. I still listen to it every couple of weeks.
Produced by Katmandu, it features on C.S’s 2020 mixtape, Nothing Ain’t Nice.
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