Hip-Hop Lives Here
Hip-Hop Lives Here
Abigail Morris, singer of The Last Dinner Party, has a burning question: “Isn’t this the best fucking festival in the world?”
It’s Thursday night at End of the Road, the beloved boutique festival that’s been held in the wooded Larmer Tree Gardens, on the border between Dorset and Wiltshire, since 2006. Although her question is rhetorical, and although the party is hardly even in full swing yet, Morris’ suggestion is met with a full-bodied response from the crowd that stretches back along the main Woods Stage.
Emily Eavis would probably like a word with this lot, but End of the Road has long cultivated a reputation as the worst-kept secret on the festival circuit. Despite its cartoonish, dow-nhome aesthetic (epitomized by an art-adorned woodlands walk and handmade-looking signage that looks like it was commissioned by Wes Anderson), the 15,000-capacity weekender has also long outgrown its folky beginnings.
That sense of excitement is matched the following day by reformed indie stalwarts Be Your Own Pet, who, exclaims wildly energetic singer Jemima Pearl, come to us “all the way from Nashville, Tennessee… and 2008”. The band supplement indie sleaze classics ‘Becky’ and ‘Adventure’ with politicised newbies ‘Hand Grenade’ and ‘Big Trouble’. “It feels so good to be back,” beams Pearl.
Fellow ‘00s blogosphere graduate Panda Bear, of Animal Collective fame, teams up with producer Sonic Boom for tedious audiovisual self-indulgence in an inexplicably rammed Big Top, before Marie Davidson puts in the graveyard shift on the same stage, showing them how it’s done. She draws a much smaller crowd, but everyone who came to End of the Road in a bucket hat shows up for her grinding, nihilistic techno, which blows away the cobwebs after Angel Olsen’s spellbinding set on the Garden Stage.
Appropriately, the Missouri-born star performs her wistful Americana under an eerily clear, near-full moon. “This song I wrote last night,” she teases, informing the audience that they’ll hear it first. Expectations duly raised, she then thunders into 2016’s grungy ‘Shut Up, Kiss Me’, her signature song.
That bombshell’s not the last surprise of the weekend. A mystery has hung over the late Saturday evening slot on the main stage, which is revealed to be a secret set from none other than indie superstars Wet Leg. It appears End of the Road does worst-kept secrets: one bloke down the front has brought his own chaise longue for the occasion.
“Hello – we are Oasis,” Rhian Teasdale waves to a crowd that seems to account for every punter on site. The singer apologetically explains she’s under the weather so “can’t give you my all”, but looks visibly thrilled to be back at a “special” festival: she and fellow founding member Hester Chambers formed Wet Leg here back in 2019 – atop the Ferris wheel, of course. What follows is a fittingly freewheeling set from a band with nothing to prove. By the time they inevitably close with ‘Chaise Longue’, kooks are dancing on the one down the front.
It’s a heavy moment, alright, though precedes a feel-good Sunday scorcher that sees Cameron Winter of recent NME cover stars Geese thank the Big Top’s healthily sized crowd for “staying with us in the sweatiest tent in the fucking festival”. The band’s Southern rock pastiche marks a mini ‘70s revival at End of the Road, as Picture Parlour’s Katherine Parlour graces the Folly Stage looking every inch the rock star in dark shades – indoors! – before she evokes the decade’s raw-voiced wailers, ably assisted by Ella Risi’s fabulously histrionic guitar shredding.
There’s more fretboard showboating from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard on the Woods Stage, while Ezra Furman hammers out ragged art-punk on the Garden Stage for what, she warns, might be the band’s final show. ‘Body Is Made’ gets a slow-burning makeover that renders its celebration of gender diversity, which Furman delivers through gritted teeth, all the more resonant. “Trans power!” she yells, concluding this magical get-together with a powerful sense of unity.
The best fucking festival in the world? Maybe – but keep it to yourself. This review will self-destruct in five…
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Isaiah Rashad does not hide behind metaphors on his latest album, It’s Been Awful. The title alone tells listeners exactly where his head has been. Honesty has always been central to Rashad’s music, from his breakthrough 2016 project The Sun’s Tirade to 2021’s The House Is Burning. Across his career, the Top Dawg Entertainment artist has carved out his own lane with hazy Southern rap, neo soul textures, and deeply personal songwriting that often goes far deeper emotionally than many of his peers.
Rashad’s previous album arrived after a difficult period involving homelessness and rehab, and this new record comes following another painful chapter in his life. Between relapses, fractured family relationships, and the invasion of privacy that followed the leak of a sex tape in 2022, It’s Been Awful feels like the sound of someone confronting everything at once. He wastes no time addressing it on opening track ‘The New Sublime’, where he raps, “Feel afflicted, falling over / Ask me who I’m fucking, I been fucking up.” The song dives into his fears around sobriety, his sister’s incarceration, and the emotional impact these struggles have on the people closest to him.
Themes of addiction and self destruction continue to run through the album. On ‘Same Sh!t’, a track carrying influences from A$AP Rocky and Skepta, Rashad references substance abuse directly with the line, “The pills, the blow, the ‘yac, the top,” while nodding to classic Lil Jon energy. ‘M.O.M’ captures the cycle of temptation and compromise as he tries to resist one vice only to replace it with another. Elsewhere, he speaks openly about the physical damage these habits have caused, admitting, “The doctor say that shit been fucking with my heart / but I can’t barely sleep / chasing money, love and all of the amphetamines.”
The emotional weight deepens on ‘Act Normal’, where Rashad examines generational trauma and learned behaviors passed through family lines, reflecting on “Acquired secrets / Learned to be the best at it.” Then on ‘Do I Look High?’, he strips away any remaining distance between himself and the listener with one of the album’s most vulnerable admissions: “Last time that I told you that I was clean, I was lying / I’m praying that my sister makes it home by Christmas morning.” The album’s brutally detailed storytelling may feel heavy for some listeners, but that raw specificity is exactly what gives the project its emotional power.
Still, It’s Been Awful is not consumed entirely by darkness. Rashad has spoken about music as something healing and transformative, and throughout the album he refuses to let despair completely swallow him. Inspired by artists like Prince and OutKast, the project carries a warm, sun faded atmosphere that softens the pain without hiding it. ‘Supaficial’ glides forward with bright trumpet accents while Rashad casually delivers lines like, “Where you going? You a junkie, you been way outside.” Meanwhile, ‘Happy Hour’ turns emotional exhaustion into something strangely melodic, pairing confessional lyrics with dreamy piano production. At its best, the album feels like Southern rap drifting through late night R&B haze during a summer drive with the windows down.
On ‘Superpwrs’, Rashad sums up the cycle he seems trapped inside, asking, “How I get sober, fucked up, then clean again, I don’t know,” before acknowledging his own disappearing acts from music with, “How you be rapping circles around n****s, but you don’t drop, I don’t know.” His skill has never been the issue. The real obstacle has always been life itself. But with It’s Been Awful, Isaiah Rashad delivers one of his most honest and affecting projects yet, making it impossible to overlook him any longer.
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