As a thirty-something I too can dazzle the kids with my knowledge of all things "street" and like that ultra hip dude and possible future Tory leader David Cameron I'll always be "keeping it real" chez Drums and shouting out a "big up" to all the "massives" in the area.
Or perhaps not.
SWAY on the other hand is unlikely to be in need of any more of a leg-up. If the testimonials on the press release for his single 'Download' are anything to go by everyone from the tabloids and broadsheets to the music press, Radio 1 and the MOBO Awards are in delirious rapture. Mind you their job has been made considerably easier by SWAY'S canny knack for self-promotion and his ability to stay independent until such point as the musical powers that be had become convinced that they had stumbled across a raw talent.
With such blanket coverage of adoring fans across all relevant media I can't help thinking that SWAY spent considerably more time marketing himself than actually making any music. And I'm always amazed every year at how the predominantly white and middle-class media believes itself to have miraculously discovered a young black talent from the inner cities and how it then presents the talent in such a way that it suggests that the media alone - and no-one else - has the sole means by which people can escape their humble surroundings.
Mind you reading between the lines it would appear that SWAY is only too aware of the media game and seems to have started a musical career primarily as the most direct means by which he could exploit his own commercial potential. Which rather begs the question: where is the love of his art in all this relentless commercialism?
The blurb delights in outlining SWAY's masterplan during his independent days in a tone that has the temerity to suggest that nobody had ever thought about making demo tapes as a method for bringing their music to the attention of a wider audience. Duh. His label debut release includes the line "People don't wanna pay for CD's, now every other household's got PC's / They download on MP3's, people please be reasonable./How'm I gonna make my G's if you've got my album before the release?"
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In other words now having signed to a label and having relinquished control of the production and distribution of his product SWAY is worried that his assets are going to be ripped off by music pirates. Unsurprisingly SWAY'S paranoid lyrics are accompanied by a hip hop/grime/drum and bass backdrop that just about manages to carry some semblance of a tune.
The net effect of reading about SWAY is to render me completely indifferent to his music. The net effect of listening to SWAY'S music is to render me completely indifferent to his music. Maybe I'm too stuck in my ways and perhaps too cynical about the machinery that drives the unveiling of The Next Big Thing but everything about SWAY just reeks of London-centric press hyperbole gone into witless over-drive.
SWAY will never be discovered by the public. He will be systematically forced upon you through every media conceivable until you relent.
Which will no doubt suit SWAY and his masterplan just fine, thank you very much.
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