MNEK

Still only 23 years old, MNEK has already clocked up an astonishing ten years in the business, having signed a publishing deal aged just 14. He already has an impressive 1 billion streams, and a Grammy nomination to his name. The list of people he's written and produced for along the way is hard to quantify - Beyoncé, Dua Lipa, Little Mix, Madonna, Diplo, MØ, Rudimental, Julia Michaels and Stormzy to name but a few. Today however marks the biggest moment in his career to date as he announces his long awaited and hotly anticipated debut album. ‘Language’ will be released on Virgin EMI on the 7th September. From within it’s opening minutes, you can sense the glorious, undeniable sense of purpose and of place to MNEK’s debut album ‘Language’; you could be stuck in the brilliantly gossipy toilets of a flash metropolitan nightclub or sitting on the top deck of the 55-bus winding toward Hackney Central on the mental school-run half hour. ‘Language’ is an effortlessly executed concept album that demands to be heard from beginning to end, looping effortlessly from one track to the next, with the type of grand sense of immediacy, giddiness and stroppy, flirty fun that we’ve only come to expect from MNEK. The underlying message of ‘Language’ is clear. It’s a brilliant imaginative and powerful statement from a man who’s been in the music industry for 10 years, with a weight of expectation on his shoulders. He acknowledges the wild industry pressure to deliver his debut album in ‘Correct’, and openly expresses the struggles of being an out, gay, Black man in this ever-challenging ‘Crazy World’. But ‘Language’ is playful too. Recent release ‘Tongue’ brings a blend of Bobby Brown’s creative peak reinterpreted through the technicolour glow and wit of RuPaul’s Drag Race, while ‘Colour’ is a fantastic skip beyond the rainbow of love’s possibilities. In fact, as a 45-minute whole, ‘Language’ is an album that constantly strives to subvert preconceptions, cleverly playing on its own extensive pop knowledge and reframing it as something brand new. But MNEK’s greatest skill on ‘Language’ – and there are many - is to make the strange sound familiar and old references sound fresh; to take the imagination of the underground and make it sound as if targeted straight to the bullseye of the mainstream. It’s stuffed full, hook after hook, hit after hit then sprinkled with the production tricks the artist has kept stored up his sleeve for a rainy day. A swift pitch-shift of a vocal, an urgent change of pace or cadence, a brace of acapella, the blast of a horn. Each is economically employed in service of the song, to make sure his debut hits the spot with each track, establishing a major new artist with a lifetime’s work ahead of him.