Clash / Adidas Print Project – Wretch 32 / Tottenham
Author: Miguel Cullen
Submitted on: 29 Jun 11
Category: Soundboys
This area, like the Tottenham Three of 1985, built up a rep it didn’t deserve. Kids in Tottenham today live at a healthy remove from the Thatcherite racial simmer, insulated in worlds of music inherited from their parents, holding out for the next reggaeton rave at Latin Groove or bumping Albanian hip hop on the basketball courts off the A10. Albanian kids are practicing Somali they learn from their mates, and Colombian Daddy Yankee fans are getting MC tips from their yard-inspired grime cousins.
At the top of this story is Wretch 32, a rap mixtape phenomenon from the Tiverton Estate, who’s so overworked when we meet that his voice has gone. He hasn’t slept for two nights, we hear, maybe going some way to explain how his halo endures to the level of near-3.5 million views for this year’s YouTube hit, Traktor. He was raised the son of the main soundman on Phoenix Sounds; “In our small house there was a room just for his speakers” he tells me laughing. When we meet two knee-high kids in school blazers come over and say ask if he remembers their brother. He smiles at touches fists with them and turns back to me.
Hang an anonymous left off Tottenham High Road and you’re in Seven Sisters Market, plastered with kitsch madonna icons and chalked signs for Colombian arepa pastries. Here rising reggaeton star Duvan, 23, tells us about how to get your perreo on in London: “For north London reggaeton you’ve got Tropicana in south Tottenham, Latin Groove in Archway where we’re having an album launch, Mango Bar – then south London it’s about El Peñol and Congas. Once they have a drink, English girls can grind better than Latinas to it. Rapping to reggaeton here is cool cos you have the influences from grime and Jamaica.”
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