Kobi Onyame – Protect Myself

Uncompromising, thickly produced grime from UK/Ghanaian up and comer Kobi Onyame. On a base level, Protect Myself is similar enough to the Wretch 32/Labrinth sonic aesthetic to set itself up as radio fodder, but goes in with a far more tactile viscerality. The basslines grumble with malcontent and the rhymes flip and trip with an impressive agility; Onyame seems keen to establish a sound that is resolutely his own, of his individual hand and crafting. The reedy synth middle-eight that snakes out of nowhere is a treat too, a neat blending in of new sounds to a genre that really is basking in its prime right now.