Generation Black TV - Live
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On Mitchtape 3, Birmingham polymath Mitch, shape-shifts seamlessly through grime, drill, garage and road rap. Out the gate, the crackling vintage strings of “Intro”, begins a kaleidoscopic record which weaves hard-hitting beats and bars immaculately. Two minutes in, Mitch is covering ground – painting scenes from his past, the YouTube boom of his track “Pagans”, the political reaction to the pandemic and documenting his rise to the top of his game – with sublime rhyme schemes: “Me to them there is no comparison/ Now they call me the talisman / Top floor Radisson / Can’t miss this train like Paddington / I can ping this ball like Ericksen/ But they won’t score goals like Sheringham.” And that’s only the intro.
“Shadeborough” and “Crossroads”, are both excellent teasers that have
whetted the appetite for the mixtape. The latter is a marvellous collaboration with Backroad Gee which flings down the gauntlet to the mosh-pit: “Now you gotta pay me racks if you wanna see me moonwalk on stage” – spits Mitch and the figures add up; since his acclaimed Mitchtape 2 in 2018, he has released gilded track after track, including notable co-signs with Kenny Allstar and DJ Target and a viral Tiffany Calver cypher.
Scholarly and savvy, Mitch raps across a gamut of touch-points: from Fidel
Castro to JK Rowling, Malcolm X to Martin Luther King Jr, Dad’s Army to the Sopranos, Joan of Arc to Noah’s Ark, Mozart to Ozark. “It’s Me Again” features the distinct delivery of Newham General, D Double E and contains shades of Mitch’s Jamaican heritage while garage influenced “Drill Drill” with Ashley Zeal states “This is Brum town, this ain’t Brazil”, harking to the city of his birth,
which is a foundation throughout the record. The concluding track “Forever”
states “if they don’t listen, you should shout more”, which sums up this
sensational mixtape perfectly.
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Words by Will Russell.
