This week’s highlight: Mabel’s new single with rapper AJ Tracey.

Suddenly there she was: Mabel. A fresh face in the pop world with her signature pop sound co-created by Steve Mac, the man behind Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape Of You’. ‘Don’t Call Me Up’ was a huge hit last year and its successor ‘Mad Love’ also achieved chart success. What Mabel’s new fans may not realize is that the brand she created through these hits is not at all the music Mabel originally made in her native England. The first time Britain was introduced to pop star and singer’s daughter Neneh Cherry, she wasn’t making pop music at all, but rather R&B. The hits we went through were for example, ‘Finders Keepers’ and ‘Fine Line’. Both are collaborations with British rappers and have seductive R&B production that fits Mabel’s sound perfectly. Listening to him today, it’s a shame he went the commercial route and abandoned this sound.

Until now because the old Mabel has returned. In her new single ‘West Ten’, Mabel Alabama-Pearl McVey, as the singer is called, collaborates with one of the most popular rappers in England at the moment. AJ Tracey has scored several top 10 hits there this year and scored a big summer hit last year with ‘Ladbroke Grove’. For now, Tracey’s popularity hasn’t gone beyond the North Sea, but perhaps Mabel can change that. In any case, ‘West Ten’ is a nice blend of British hip-hop and R&B that harkens back to an early phase of her career as a singer that is vastly underexposed compared to her more recent work.

(06/07/2020)