Hip-hop storytelling icon Slick Rick and award-winning actor, musician, and producer Idris Elba have joined forces on a brand new reggae/dancehall-inspired single, “Badman Era,” launched throughout all streaming platforms together with a putting music video directed by acclaimed British-Nigerian filmmaker Meji Alabi (Beyoncé, Wizkid, Burna Boy).
– Commercial –
The monitor serves as a bonus installment to Slick Rick’s VICTORY visible album, his first LP in 26 years, which dropped in June through Elba’s 7WALLACE label and Mass Attraction Data. Recorded at 7WALLACE Studios in London, “Badman Era” marks the primary official collaboration between the 2 cultural powerhouses, mixing their shared British roots and international inventive affect.
Shot on location at Brixton’s iconic Electrical Avenue market, the video channels the strain and swagger of late Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties London—a interval of profound social change for Black Britons. Speaker-box columns, classic rude-boy fashions, and vivid road scenes pay homage to London’s Afro-Caribbean tradition and sound-system heritage.
“‘Badman Era’ is fashion, power, and storytelling—rooted within the brotherhood between Idris and I, infused with the grit and glory of South London,” mentioned Slick Rick. Elba added, “That is truly who we’re and what we skilled in life—our influences have been us.”
The only continues the dancehall-flavored thread woven via VICTORY, the place Slick Rick tapped into his Jamaican heritage on tracks like “Landlord,” which sampled the basic reggae rhythm Far East, and “International,” which reimagined Dave and Ansel Collins’ 1970 hit Double Barrel.
Raised in a Jamaican household in South London earlier than shifting to the Bronx, Slick Rick has lengthy embodied the cultural triangle of Jamaica, the U.Ok., and Black America. From his groundbreaking 1988 debut, The Adventures of Slick Rick, to his signature style—Wallabees, Bally sneakers, Kangol hats, and double-rope chains—he stays a pioneer of hip-hop’s musical and visible language.
“Badman Era” is out there now digitally and as a limited-edition 7” vinyl via Mass Appeal.
