Orchestral strings got pulled into the streets in the grimy, adrenaline-soaked single, String Ting, by Wolf Richards. Not many UK rappers would be bold enough to drag strings to the centre of the mix, building a cinematic, ornate atmosphere around a hard-grooving UK hip-hop track, but even fewer carry the daringness Wolf Richards brings here. It pays off in spades.
String Ting runs on a tight, energetic 140 BPM beat, pushing feverish momentum into the natural laid-back swagger. The spiccato violins and cellos are woven into the beat rather than perched over it like decoration, giving the production a sharply cinematic character while keeping the raw hip-hop foundation intact. Yet, String Ting is so much more than a novelty of a genre crossover.
Richards’cheeky, wit-heavy bars make him an artist you instantly want to warm to, especially when he slips in the reference to UK rappers being pushed away from the radio waves because they refuse to posture and censor themselves into the mould.
String Ting isn’t Richards’ first swing into urban symphonic experimentation; the track follows four symphonic movements, plus two cinematic versions, pulling violins and cellos from that orchestral work into his UK rap and hip-hop sound, coining a genre that sits somewhere between the London underground and Viennese classical music, with the theatrical nerve of Little Simz, the barbed personality of Kano and the streetwise punch of The Streets flickering through its DNA.
String Ting is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube.
Review by Amelia Vandergast
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