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Underground > Radio & Music >

Sway

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:16 / 24.01.06

Sway, sometimes known as Sway DaSafo, is a "nice, fine, British-born Ghanaian boy" with a wicked sense of humour. He's a "producer and rapper all inna one", and definitely the most quotable MC I heard in 2005. Nobody is sure whether Sway is a British hip hop artist, or a grime artist, and he exploits that well, ridiculing people's desire to assign him to one or the other genre while working with plenty of people from both. Sway's mock-irreverent attitude extends to both himself – single 'Flo' Fashion' casts him in the role of a would-be ladies' man living off credit cards and loans until the bailifs come round – and others. His freestyle over 'Thief's Theme' by Nas sees him pretending to forget said rapper's name, before continuing:

"Sway, and I'm badder than Dennis the Menace
I went down to Queensbridge and saw Nas and his fellas
I'm trying to distract him: "Look, there's Roccafellas!"
While me and SAS is trying to get away with Kelis."

...And there's plenty more where that came from. Sway's well-aware of the underdog status British hip-hop still has, and somehow he manages to work that into his rhymes while sounding as confident and natural as any UK MC ever has. His humour and ingenuity with lyrics can't really be overstated - to pick just a few examples: "even if David Seaman was a priest he couldn't save me"; "rappers couldn't see me coming even if they was vaginas, with spectacles"; and the one about a girl telling him to come over to her place because there's nobody home, "but when I got there there was nobody home" - but you've got to hear the delivery to truly appreciate him.

Sway's debut album This Is My Demo is out at the beginning of February, but if at all possible you should also try to track down the mixtapes This Is My Promo Vol. 1 & 2 - the two volumes are available together as a double CD for just £10.

10:51 / 24.01.06

So what's on the album, Fly? Do you know? I might prefer the condensed version rather than the mix tapes.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:58 / 24.01.06

Amazon has this tracklisting:

1. This Is My Demo
2. Products
3. Hype Boys
4. Little Derek
5. Pretty Ugly Husband
6. Flo Fashion
7. Up Your Speed
8. Download
9. Loose Woose
10. Sick World
11. On My Own
12. Back For You
13. Slow Down
14. Month In The Summer

I can guarantee you that 6-8 and 13 are fantastic. And yeah, maybe I should have qualified the first post by saying only get the mixtapes if you don't mind using the skip button or listening to radio interviews etc.

11:46 / 24.01.06

I just wonder about anyone who rhymes 'Fellas' with 'Rockafellas,' and doesn't expect to get stabbed in the balls.

22:07 / 24.01.06

I listened to this and it sounds disappointingly like Ty to me. Am I alone in thinking that some British rappers just get more British or RP on record than if you met them in the street? I know that TY used to be a teacher, but it puzzles me with someone like Sway who admittedly has a good flow, just a really odd way of phrasing things.

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:52 / 25.01.06

I've never met a British rapper in the street to my knowledge, so I wouldn't know. Sway's mixtapes include radio interviews, spoken interludes etc, so I've heard his speaking voice - it's not really dissimilar to his performing voice.

09:24 / 25.01.06

Am I alone in thinking that some British rappers just get more British or RP on record than if you met them in the street?

In my experience, most people switch between lots of different styles of sppech depending on who they're speaking to. Most of kids I teach will drop all the yard talk and slang when they talk to me, for instance. I don't think you can generalise - i.e. Rodney P really plays up the patois in a way that a lot of American rappers just can't do IMO (something to do with the first generation links, I suppose), Roots Manuva is distinctly "British" in a completely different way. Sway is, I assume, just another variant here.

13:05 / 25.01.06

I guess you're right Illmatic. For me Roots Manuva just has a really lugubrious tone to his voice which, regardless of how 'british' he sounds, crosses many boundaries otherwise. I guess the patois is important to me in hip hop the same as it is in reggae and of all the american rappers I can think of the only one who keeps away from ebonics is Michael Franti and I can't really see him as up there with the greats.

To me Sway and TY have a clipped delivery that doesn't rest easy on the ear. I kind of appreciate the obscurity of someone like Dizzy or Sizzla which while great to listen to, unless you're from their particular area of the world, takes a while to decode. Gives it an edge of romanticism perhaps - although the subject matter for the most part is anything but...

14:34 / 25.01.06

Fly: a quick thought. What do you think of Sway's beats so far? Do you think if he ups his production it'll really make him stand out?

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:39 / 25.01.06

I think Sway's production is pretty good - 'Flo' Fashion' and 'Up Your Speed' wouldn't be the songs they are without their beats, and there's even better stuff on the mixtapes, eg both of the tracks called 'This Is My Promo' (1 & 2) - the use of the guitar motif on the first one in particular stands out.

(You can here Sway's singles to date here at his official website, by the way - silly me for not remembering that earlier.)

15:58 / 25.01.06

Beat to Flo' Fashion is the song as far as I can tell...good song though.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:52 / 20.02.06

Maybe you downloaded an instrumental version by mistake?

Anyway... The album This Is My Demo dropped the other week, and I'm enjoying it muchly. I would strongly, strongly recommend the title track to everyone, even those who might not have found some of his more... irreverent material to be their cup of tea.

On the mixtapes he talks about how he's not just a comedic rapper, and when I first heard that I thought "calm down, what's wrong with that?" - which I still sort of agree with, BUT once you hear 'This Is My Demo' the song, you realise where he's coming from - he CAN do serious and intense and dramatic hip hop as well as any, well, American. After the first two verses, you get this amazing bit where Sway recites the Lord's Prayer and an Islamic prayer simultaneously, one coming through each speaker, left and right, and then he comes back for a third verse which is all about religion and the tension he feels between these two different ones, which adds an extra dimension to the whole spiritual/secular pulled-in-both-directions tension you often find in rap. And the production on this one is arguably the best so far.