"In Gods Body"
Kojey Radical's latest EP
The music industry, as it has always been, is dominated by the wealthiest artists and labels. Smaller artists, and especially alternative and experimental ones, are oft suppressed by those with the loudest arenas. But in London UK, lesser known artists like Kojey Radical (aged 24) are making waves with a “no apologies” approach, reminiscent of Mos Def’s poetic zenith around the turn of the millennia. While the internet argumentatively polarized themselves over a Taylor Swift single, Kojey released his third EP in two years, “In Gods Body.”
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His latest offering, like his previous two, addresses social and spiritual questions unique to him. The listening experience Kojey offers is an enlightening, sobering one that pushes Afro-Anglo culture into the spotlight, in a way that UK grime is otherwise unable. Thoughtfulness and reason become core components to round out the militant vigor that runs risk of misinterpretation.
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Musically, every song on “In Gods Body” is distinguishable and unique. Kojey has no typical repertoire of sounds, but does seem to favor clean, isolated song composition. This structure is a rare thing in hip-hop, and it allows proper room for the resonating guitars, lingering violin chords, warbling sub bass, and vacant percussion to breathe within the soundstage. The result, is a clean, sibilant free instrumental that Kojey’s adaptive vocal has zero problem furnishing. Production is easily comparable to even some of the best modern production on the top 40 charts.
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Beginning with the first act of the album, so to speak, the imagery is overtly political. Kojey frames himself as, “a man of the people,” with no disillusions about the Utopia he once dreamed of, “my paradise is burning, you hate to see that I’m learning.” This leadership imagery carries over to “No Photos,” a title which already touches on the idea that Kojey is somewhat beyond his humanity, implying that he’s too holy to capture an image of, while also playing off the song’s anxiety. “Running through the city like it’s me,” Kojey is audibly exhausted, “please / I can’t breathe.” The song quickly turns up however, and we catch a glimpse of a bellicose Kojey who, “might drip his jaw in gold leaf,” and “clap first like police.” We get a sense of him almost as a prophet who “hear[s] angels calling” but cannot “tell nightmares from dreams,” foreshadowing more forlorn moments on the project. “Mood” seals the religious parallels of the preceding tracks with a heavy, impassioned one, as the EP title comes to life here, “either way I’m here forever in Gods body, I’m him.”
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One of Kojey Radical’s most exclusive attributes is by far his poeticism. His approach to verse and rap is very much like that of a poet, concerning itself with thematic consistency, structure and lineation, and the figurative, the middle of which is most notable. A good example of his lineative tact is on “After Winter,” “I’ve been so high through all / my lows, so I’m belligerent.” Notice how both lines function independently of each other, as to further detail the narrative he is building.
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“Super Human” introduces the voice of god, which is female, and voiced by Michaela Coel, subverting traditional godly gender preference, and race. “I’ve showed you my darkness / fed you my flesh,” she tells Kojey, playing with the idea of darkness, and how by shifting it into a holy role, it’s connotations become rewritten; an idea that resonates with Kojey’s qualification that not everyone is in enlightened-agreement with him. No matter how “golden and sanctified” he may be, he and others will still “get lost in [their] sins tonight,” which is okay, because Kojey will “meet [them] there.”
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The EP shifts focus slightly from here on, highlighted by “Love Intersection,” an energetic cacophony of 80s groove and retrowave vibrations that introduces the second sub-theme: love. “700 Pennies” approaches this interestingly, with a melodic chorus that states, “I just got 700 Pennies at my last show / but I’ma spend it all on you.” Kojey recognizes his lack of wealth here, drawing substance instead from the conflictive desire to provide monetarily, but completely unable, something he feels equally when it comes to his emotional ineptness with his significant other.
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The complications of the relationship in question reveal themselves on “Dynamite,” as her “words slice like knives.” Kojey reminds himself, ineffectively, that “men don’t cry nah / men don’t feel,” when it’s quite clear they do, and he does. The somewhat bluesy iconography is reproduced with a subtle saxophone breakdown/outro, that lends itself well to precede “Afraid Of,” a poetic ballad where the featured artist, Marti, with a Norah Jones esthetic, rhetorically comforts Kojey (and the listener) “what are you so afraid of?” This specific mention of fear, of being afraid, is distinctly angelic, holy, and it becomes clear that the relationship is closer to a metaphor for Kojey’s relationship with a higher power.
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Kojey Radical closes the album with “Icarus” and “Dystopia: In Gods Body.” While imagery has seemed exclusively Abrahamic up until this point, Kojey harkens back to the antique myth of Icarus, whom he identifies with, but has surpassed, by “having never seen the ocean.” When he goes on to say, “you made me question if god could be a woman,” it is playing highly off of the myth of Icarus, a story in which by disobeying his father, Icarus drowns, while (in this instance) a female god watches over. A female god for whom Kojey has written a voice, his own, for this subversive entity that coyly asks, openly, to the targeted Afro-Anglo audience, “I wonder if they know they are royalty / I wonder if they know they are speaking to a peasant with a pen.” In one fell swoop, Kojey accomplishes, by both exercising and downplaying his own conceptual talent, to make royalty, and the ‘divine’ enlightenment held therein, completely and readily accessible to those touched by his expression.
