With a sound that will draw in fans of Kae the Tempest and George the Poet like a moth to a flame, the visceral with uninhibited candour single, Defective by Design, from r.a.g.s. and tee fisher is a gravitational force in and of its hip-hop self.
Experimentalism was in no short order in the chilled wavey lo-fi outcry of poetic raw emotion. While the title gives a few clues as to what the lyrics allude to, there’s no preparing for the intellect in the wordplay, which finds profound new ways to illustrate the frustration of feeling as though you were always fated to live a life bookended with mental cognitions that will always lead you down the wrong path of perception and action.
r.a.g.s. started his musical journey by learning Indian classical keyboard at age five; he took his immersion in the music world a step further by enrolling at Leeds Conservatoire studying jazz and learning how to produce his own music. His debut single effortlessly distinguished him as an artist who will never leave authenticity by the wayside. Naturally, we can’t wait to what lingers in his obscure pipeline.
Defective by Design hit the airwaves on August 28; stream it on Spotify.
Review by Amelia Vandergast
