Hidden Gem: Kano’s ‘Beats & Bars’

Selected by: Jesse Bernard

After the release of Kano debut album, Home Sweet Home, his star was deservedly on the rise. Released in 2004 via 679 Recordings, the LP was considered a canon in Black British music for its diverse, electronic soundscapes and Kano’s urgent grime flow, making it both a critical and artistic success. But this was just the beginning of his musical journey, traversing through a wide range of sounds, such UK rap, hip-hop, and even punk-rock.

Shortly after the drop of Home Sweet Home, Kano released his debut mixtape, Beats & Bars, in 2005. Although the album had placed him in the pantheon of grime artists at the time, Beats & Bars was the MC’s first foray into straight rap. Perhaps it was an indication that he didn’t want to confine himself to grime alone and that the mixtapes would serve as a conduit to the UK rap/hip-hop circles he was already mixing in.

K-A had already established a working relationship with acts like Mike Skinner from The Streets and The Mitchell Brothers after recording the remix to “Routine Check”—a satirical tale expressing widespread frustration at stop-and-search measures by the British police. He was still a teenager at this point and had quit his promising football career in favour of grime, which wasn’t the behemoth it is today. Football took second place in Kane Robinson’s life, and we—the fans—are grateful for the sacrifice.

Bars and flows aside, what makes Beats & Bars even more of a hidden gem is the beat selection, and it was evident from its title that the focus would be Kano flexing his ability to ride beats that leaned more towards rap than grime. His remix of Jay-Z’s “Dear Summer” was a standout on the 23-track set as it marked a moment in his career where he understood he hadn’t quite made it yet. “I’m addicted to the summer like a fiend that’s on the pipe and that’s why I ain’t fuckin’ with autumn / I don’t like drop tops because I can’t fuckin’ afford ‘em / See me in the GTi with B, listening to B.I.G and Styles P, just trying to get them Ps up,” he spits in a one-take freestyle. It was clear his rhyming structure had changed to suit the slower-tempo rap beats he was spitting over.

Kano always had an adeptness at creating heartfelt, introspective tracks that explored how he sees the world, as heard on earlier songs like “Sometimes” and “Typical Me”. But while his studio albums allowed him to be experimental and adventurous, the mixtapes provided a canvas for him to focus on lyricism. “Dear Summer” was the first of two tracks linked to a previous Jay-Z record and a sample of the “Greatest MC” demo, recorded eleven years prior in 1994. In 2010, Jigga claimed in an interview that Kano was one of his favourite UK MCs after bumping into him at Madison Square Garden. At the time, grime was growing a marginal presence among a small circle of US rappers such as Hov and 50 Cent, but it hadn’t quite managed to break through to any large degree. However, Jay-Z’s interest indicates that it’s certainly not a reach to suggest that Kano is your favourite MC’s favourite MC.

Another highlight came in the form of a flip of the intro from Destiny’s Child’s “Lose My Breath” on loop, which gave Kano another opportunity to prove that his ability to freestyle was the icing to his arsenal of skills. Between 2004 and 2006, it was the peak of commercialised rap, producing many classic hits such as “Damn!” by Youngbloodz, Lil’ Jon and The Eastside Boyz, and The Game’s “How We Do” and its influence on the UK would become reciprocal.

What Beats & Bars allowed listeners to see was that despite having what would soon be a classic album under his belt, the future was still far from certain for grime (although, he didn’t step away from grime entirely, as the tape featured a remix of “Mic Check” and a rock-inspired edit of the “Ice Rink” riddim). The project marked a transitional moment in Kano’s career and, more surreptitiously, it set a precedent for the rap he would later create on 2016 album Made In The Manor.

Beats & Bars was was one of the many mixtapes from the mid-2000s that set the scene for the UK rap landscape that now exists. More importantly, Beats & Bars is representative of an idea that the lines between grime, UK rap and hip-hop have always been blurred for top-boy spitters in the game like Kano.


Posted on May 24, 2021