Akala, The Edge

The streets gave birth to hip hop, and the streets are where it lives. But the corporate world stole rap. Now Akala's stealing it back. 'Garbage' is how Kingslee 'Akala' Daley, 22, describes 'what was once, not that long ago, the most charismatic, enigmatic, energetic, lyrically creative music on the planet', because it has turned into a reflex idiolect for plastic players with false values and arid imaginations, who know the price of bling but the value of nothing. With his debut album, 'It's Not A Rumour', released April 24 on Illa State Records, Akala attacks a lazy, retrograde rap scene from all sides, intent on moving it both forward and back into what it was in the first place – a generational voice for change, empowerment and salvation, for himself, his people and for the streets. 'It's Not A Rumour' is an album that crystallises everything that's gone before it and smashes through current rap conventions. It draws on a spectrum of influences from balladry and soul to trance, punk and far beyond. You’ll hear echoes of Jay-Z, Curtis Mayfield, Sil Austin, Naughty By Nature and cult NY folk band The Honey Brothers. You'll also hear Akala shift into a territory unfamiliar to rap: elemental guitar rock built on distorted chords and thundering drums. Check the adrenalised new single 'The Edge' (out March 27) to hear rap break through the wall and bear-hug the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Music hasn't been this gregarious since Aerosmith & Run-DMC, or Public Enemy & Anthrax.

What you're really hearing here is the sound of hip-hop's most engaging new imagination expanding into a full album. On 'This Is London', Akala takes off where The Clash's 'London Calling' left off - check that chiming guitar intro - and lifts the lid on the grimy cheek-by-jowl of the capital. On 'Stand Up', a incendiary Van Halen-style riff soundtracks a call-to-arms for every UK ghetto: Moss Side, Longsight, St Paul’s, Toxteth, Chapeltown.

For 'Yeah Yeah Yeah', Akala samples doomy, Black Sabbath-style guitars and attacks modern fakery in all its forms. On the sublime 'Hold Your Heard Up', he lays down a hard-lived autobiography over a rolling Isley Brothers soul groove.

But it's on 'Shakespeare' where Akala busts out the level of lyricism that skyrockets him beyond the reach of any contemporary. Over the grinding breakdown of Tomcraft's trance smash 'Loneliness' Akala spits lyrics that bend the laws of street linguistics from slang to poetry to science and back again into the manifesto for tomorrow's hip hop.

It is, like he says, 'Shakespeare with a nigga twist.' Akala