Slowthai opens Club To Club with anti-Brexit concert

Spotting a European flag in a grime concert might not be most common thing to see, but last night in Turin there were more than one of them waving under the stage from which Slowthai opened Club To Club 2019.
The Italian debut of the Brexit Bandit is a political statement to the United Kingdom - or rather a great “Fuck You ”-, which has chosen to leave Europe to isolate itself in the reassuring British everyday life that Slowthai tells in its rhymes in all its contradictions with a sinister lucidity.
It's not common in 2019 to see a rapper and a music festival like Club To Club exposing on such a political matter like Brexit, yet Slowthai did it convincingly in his own way: in an grimy and punk atmosphere, sweaty and bare-chested, with the sly and cocky smile on his face.

I said there’s nothing great about the place we live in
Nothing great about Britain
Sip a cup of tea whilst we’re spittin’
There’s nothing great about Britain.
Nothing Great About Britain

Tyron Frampton - aka Slowthai, twenty-four years old - grew up on the outskirts of Northampton, a town around 60 miles north of London where the Leave won, in an area known colloquially as Bush due to the wash of greenery that surrounds its suburban maze of low-rise homes and housing projects. Tyron was raised by his mother, whom he wants on the throne instead of the queen, and to whom he dedicated the tattoo he cares about the most: a Sorry Mum above the sternum, because "it is the phrase I have said the most in my life". Slowthai makes music that tells the story of a Britain that is largely overlooked, a country of misspent youth spent on council estates, in pubs and bookies. A country of abusive stepfathers and drinking problems, of boredom and stolen dirt bikes.
Nothing Great About Britain uses his hyper-local reference points to make universal arguments about class, race, the withdrawn ladders of social mobility and slippery slopes snaking down – but Slowthai’s gleeful charisma makes his a more complex offering than that. His style is a coherent miscellany of Brit fashion: there is a chav base (the tracksuits, the TNs, Burberry), a Grime shade that recalls the Casual style (the sweatshirts by CP Company and Stone Island) all seasoned in a mood punk, because whoever sends the Queen to fuck off cannot but have listened to the Sex Pistols. Slowthai's fanbase is just as diverse: from suburban kids that feel his lyrics capture the anxiety of Britain’s lower class youth, to fashion designer Samuel Ross of A-Cold-Wall*, graphic designer David Rudnick, and the Liam Gallagher.

I wear Nike, not Fila
Lean like Tower Pisa, I smile like Mona Lisa
T N Biscuits

On OGR's stage in Turin. Slowthai brought his charisma alternating punk mood (he divided the audience in two and made them scream to the first half "You Cunt!" and "Fuck You!" to the other) with more intimate moments, like when all the OGR public sat down on the ground before the closing and sang Northampton's Child cross-legged in the crowd. A concert dedicated to Brexit, or rather a concert dedicated to those who do not want Brexit, just like us.