Young Fathers - Sirens

The police are on cocaine and they wanna know my name.

Album: White Men Are Black Men Too [2nd album]
Genre: Indietronica, Art Pop, Neo-Soul
Album Release: April 6th 2015
Length: 3:00
Producer: Young Fathers
Vocalist: Young Fathers
Label: Big Dada Records

Official Audio


Live in 2015

Charts, Streams & Sales

Spotify: 1,100,000 +
YouTube Music: 39,000 +
The Guardian's Best Albums of 2015: #9

Credits

Percussion, synthesizer, tambourine

Details

• 'White Men Are Black Men Too' is the second album from Young Fathers and features a move away from the alternative hip hop of their Mercury prize winning debut into a fusion of indietronica and pop. The group are made up of three vocalists, who interchange over well-crafted instrumentals to make an unpredicatable boundary pushing noise.
  
  Young Fathers music is comprised of grizzly, punk-infused rapping that's then blended with soulful harmonies in a way that's jarring but makes it stand out. They're a multi-ethnic trio that mix traditional black music with punk and electronica to create an interesting blend of styles that coalesce into a unique sound.
  
  The members of the band don't fall into stereotypical roles, it's the white man who raps, and the black guys are unafraid to wear their emotions on their sleeves. The three guys grew up together in the tough surroundings of working class Edinburgh where the typical roles, dictated by race and sex, were strictly enforced by an insecure culture. The trio found common ground in a want to rebel because they knew the expectations were largely performative.
  
  "We weren’t into the other side of hip hop, everyone being angry and calling each other faggots the whole time. We hated the aggression. Because we knew the guys who were doing it and it was all fake, it was all emulated. Most of them were middle-class boys."  [Graham Hastings talking to the New Statesman]
  
  Young Fathers have a closeness that comes from a friendship beyond music. In their promotional materials and live performances they seem quite cuddly, sharing microphones with lips separated by millimetres. It's intimate, even when the music is abrasive.
  
  

  

  Cuddly Young Fathers
  

  
  Ultimately, Young Fathers are a working class group who make music they love because they love making it. They don't have a appeal to the mainstream but have received acclaim from critics. They're also unafraid to tackle big subjects like race, class divisions, masculinity and sexuality in a way that isn't reductive.
  
  They don't lay the evils of society on the wicked white man because they know reality isn't so simple. Poor white people struggle. Black people are capable of evil. With their album 'White Men Are Black Men Too' Young Fathers acknowledge this fact when they could've parroted the popular "white men = bad" narrative. Being independent allows the band to express a nuanced truth in the face of a growing hysteria surrounding social justice.
  
  
• 'Sirens' is about the male victims of violence who are taken too soon "husband, a brother, a friend" and lays the blame on the media "radio's hyping up a little more" and the authorities "the police are on cocaine" for contributing to a culture that encourages toxic masculinity.
  
  
• Young fathers as a phrase is almost a contradiction in terms. To be a father is to have experience, it's a role a man has in relation to a child, but many young men become fathers before they've lived themselves. They have to learn on the fly.
  
  Young Fathers music is about the realities of being a man in a world they are unprepared for. To become a father is to become a man. Young guys think manhood is about bravado, but really it's about accepting the weight of responsibility that comes from bringing life into the world.
  
  

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