Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time to walk in the light of a potential future star for yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Making music is central to the coming-of-age story of the 24-year-old rapper, songwriter and producer Junior – whose real name is James Watkinson – who grew up recording a bunch of self-produced work while growing up in a summer cabin, being influenced by his surroundings to pen music about his career aspirations. Although he cites one moment where he got up on stage with Pharrell Williams as an adolescent fan as a definitive one in his career, Junior is becoming one of the best new kids on the block within the UK’s independent Hip-Hop and Grime music scenes for himself. He hails from a self-described “sleepy town” in Bedfordshire, located just outside of London, and his key influences include Jay Z, 90’s R&B and the supporting work of SBTV (An organisation based in London who promote emerging artists through their platform). ‘Lone Way Home’ is a fantastic new single by Junior, which was recently played by Tom Ravenscroft during a recent episode of The New Music Fix on BBC Radio 6 Music.
“I look at music as a way to summarize my life, treating every release like a chapter of a book, starting with my first project, ‘Adolescence’ to my most recent, ‘When A Flower Blooms'”, Junior explains about the statement of intent that he intends to fearlessly communicate on the fresh single, explaining, “On a journey to find my own sound and become who I am meant to be, I have had to walk a long way home”, in a press statement. The wonky soundscape of the track is clearly noticeable from the offset, with a Chill Hop-oriented backing beat comprised of fluctuating Synths and a hazy, psychedelic inverted guitar hook that feels playful and, all the while, Junior uses sharp percussion and a gently cinematic range of Hip-Hop instrumentals to ground himself and think carefully about his songwriting for the material. Vocally, his flow is not too unfamiliar to fans of Eminem or Mac Miller, where he matches a smooth and melodic flow to the offbeat tune of the quirky Hip-Hop backdrop. Lyrics like “From a small town/Breaking walls down, you can guarantee I’m a find way” talk about his ambitions to live an adventurous career despite a less than ideal living situation for his desires and wishes. His songwriting manages to feel intimate, while drawing and expansive. The result is a track that feels equally anthemic as it does personal, with his fresh percussion and his confessional style of lyricism standing out in a Hip-Hop world plagued by Meme-targeting commercialism. There’s no auto-tune here in that sense, but there’s simply an inspiring ballad about taking a leap of faith regarding your next big step in your career and, for Junior personally, revealing your ambitions when the Hip-Hop world takes a hold of you. It gets his personality as an open-minded and well-mannered rapper across nicely, while also establishing some relatable themes for his audience that takes influence from the mildly differing styles of Hip-Hop across the spectrum. This is a great showcase for Junior’s abilities to write, produce and record his own music all at once. This could be a star of the future.
That brings me to the bottom of the page for another morning! Thank you for reading all about what I had to say about Junior today, and I will be back tomorrow to go ‘retro’ with a new entry of our weekly ‘Way Back Wednesdays’ feature on the blog. We will be revisiting a classic 80’s Arabic Pop/Dance track by a Cairo-based musician who is largely seen as the godfather of Al Jeel Music throughout Egypt and Libya. In 2011, he condemned the actions of Muammar Gadaffi – his native country’s then-leader, against the Libyan population and issued a plea to the fellow Egyptians to help them.
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