Straight off the mark, if you haven’t heard of the name Ed Sheeran, then 1) Where have you been? and 2) I guarantee you will be hearing a lot from this man very soon. I am not even going to try and categorise his sound, there are elements of hip hop and grime fused with folk, indie and pop creating a musical poetry that should not be confined to one genre.
On January 9th Ed released No.5 Collaborations Project and it quickly creeped up the album download charts, eventually knocking Rihanna off the top spot reaching number 1. Now I first discovered Ed through Twitter, I kept seeing his name mentioned by DJ’s, other artists and good friends. Seeing his name cropping up all over the place I decided to invest and after my first listen to the album, it was obvious why he was getting so much hype.
The No.5 Collaborations Project sees Ed working with lots of big names in the Grime scene, with tracks including; JME, Deviln, P Money, Wiley, Mikill Pane, Ghetts, Random Impulse, Sway, Wretch 32 and Dot Rotten. Each track showcases his incredible writing skills and vocals, over the top of fantastic production by Jake Gosling taking deep bassy elements from grime and fusing it with harmonies and soft dreamy sounds. Now if you are relatively new to grime or have never really given it a chance then this EP will definitely make you reconsider your views. I have always liked grime, especially JME and P Money, so hearing them on tracks in a different setting makes for some fantastic listening.
I won’t go into every track as with the line up you can see this EP was not taken lightly, however I would like to quickly mention Radio, a track in which both Ed and JME talk about their love of making music for the love of making music. It’s easily my favourite on the album, it feels so real, telling it as it is, plus JME has incredible flow (which is common throughout all of his music). The other track I would like to highlight is Family featuring P Money. In my opinion P Money is a highly under rated artist within the music scene and deserves much more respect for how good he really is. Family has such a soothing bassline that literally echo’s through you and you can’t help but let the music take you away.
Shortly after the success of No.5 Collaborations Project Ed signed a 6 album deal to Atlantic Records so expect to hear a lot from this super-talented young guy in weeks to come. To find out more information or to pick up your copy of No.5 Collaborations Project head to his website.
Stand-Out Track: Radio feat. JME
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
