Songer is a new English Rap artist creating passionate interest at home, and he shows us why with his New Zealand debut performance.
James Songer is just 23 and he has four albums and close to a score of singles in under five years. He was born and raised in Wokingham near Reading. This places him outside the stronghold of British Rap which appears to be London.
He has garnered a lot of social media attention resulting in sell-out shows in recent times.
The reputation preceding him highlights his densely packed Beat Poet Rap, delving into personal areas of depression and anxiety, the death of a close friend, intimacy as well as a healthy helping of braggadocio.
In an interview with NME in March of this year, Songer has said 
“I think everyone has a responsibility to call out discrimination and inequality wherever they see it, full stop. You can never lose track of the fact that this is black genre that I’m in love with.”
It is true it took some time for white America to have a meaningful presence inside it. Possibly the Beastie Boys were the first to do it successfully.
Rap and Hip-Hop have been dominant music genres in the United States since the Middle Skool rise of Run-DMC and Public Enemy. It has outsold Rock for many years, and the white audience has become much larger than the black.
Black audiences have a history of doing this. They turned their backs on Blues, Jazz and Jimi Hendrix as their social, civil rights and political situation evolved.
A big cheer goes up for Songer, aided a little by his DJ who has stoked the expectations with his mixtape in the interval.
Songer has the accent of a young black man who has grown up in the UK. That’s the image you get listening to his records as well.
He looks like the Bob Dylan that adorned his debut album in 1962, all boyish charm.
Opening song is Skala, title song to his latest album. Inspired by his dog, it is a playful and affectionate song.
He has the confident stage manner of a seasoned professional as he races off with a medium pace Rap flow. He is earnest instead of being detached and cynical. All overseas artists tell you how much they love coming to New Zealand. Songer seems to do it with humility as he mentions the thirty hours it took to get here.
Sunrise and he changes pace to medium fast. Vanity covers insanity/ All my issues be flooding the page. Rapid-fire patter and it’s coherent and clever. Approaches the express pace of Eminem. He has a lower register voice with that pronounced accent as mentioned before.
A lot of the DJ backing is dance-friendly electronic, which could be described as English Garage.
Music gets stripped back to its rhythm elements in songs like 4.59.
That’s Money and he gets to strut and posture like a Snoop Dogg.
One song addresses the pain of a close friend dying and does achieve some genuine catharsis in a confessional sense.
There are several Drum’n’Bass backed songs, Endlessly being one of the best and getting a huge reception.
The encore track is where he sings of his young legacy. People tell me I’m ahead of my time/ Just the way I feel.
Who Shot Scott
Auckland Rap artist Who Shot Scott is opening the evening’s entertainment.
He is Zaidon Zee Nasir, and he was a refugee from the age of two, as his mother and him fled Iraq for Moscow. Eventually they found their way to New Zealand and a permanent home in exile.
Nasir works as a Hip-Hop producer and beat maker, but it was the departure of a close friend and musical collaborator which prompted the rise of his current alter-ego Who Shot Scott.
The young audience are quite subdued and introverted at first, as if we are at a Senior School prom night. The Ministry of Sound are playing the main auditorium Spark Arena, which may be siphoning the energy initially.
It does not take long for Shot Scott to turn on everyone’s motors. He is adept at working the audience. Behind dance-oriented DJ House beats, he sets the evening in motion.
The second song comes from a victim’s perspective. Why you wanna take my life from me? He has a medium pace flow.
The next is introduced as venting some past relationship trauma. He starts by proclaiming he’s as sensitive as fuck. Then launches into a fraught and aggressively toned Rap where sensitivity is thoroughly trampled underfoot. Could be the funniest song of the night, and he taps some of the energy of the Led Zeppelin classic of the same title.
Follows that with much slower rap which could al
Follows that with much slower rap which could almost be a ballad in this context. Tell me why I fell in love in the nighttime?
Buggin’ has only been released the previous day. The audience respond like a switch has been thrown and they become raucous and hopped up.
I Just Stopped Giving a Fuck winds up the tension. All I need is a Gucci and a Hoochie like Karreuche/ Make all these beats and then cash in on the bling/ Arab money is a fabulous thing.
Cynical more than nihilistic. Cutting black humour.
Songer’s debut in New Zealand reveals a supremely confident Rapper with a lyrical literary talent to match. We experienced why many music pundits are picking him a winner.
Rev Orange Peel
Photography by Leonie Moreland
Songer
Who Shot Scott