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“Glastonbury , I need some socks!” It’s the sort of cry that usually goes up from the marketplace around 5am on the muddier years, rather than from the West Holts stage mid-Saturday afternoon. But after asserting so firmly that there’s nothing great about Britain – it was even the title of his debut album – Northampton rapper Slowthai is learning the hard way that the UK can do summer pretty hard when it wants.
“Those things are hot!” he says, abandoning his plan to climb into the crowd barriers and returning to a stage that he quickly discovers is a hundred foot hotplate... and he’s barefoot. Swapping his trousers for socks, Slowthai piles into his set of ruined East Coast fuzz rap – full of drug-dealing confessions, odes to ketamine and anti-Boris diatribes – dressed like a scrawnier David Beckham billboard ad and aided by a similarly tats-out wingman. As a visual spectacle, it’s as stripped-down and minimalist as his beats.
Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019Show all 83 1 /83Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A woman dances with LED hula hoops on the second day of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Babymetal perform on The Other Stage on day five of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Festival goers warm up prior to the gates opening at 8am on the first day of Glastonbury 2019
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Festival-goer Penelope Gwen dances with LED hula hoops on the second day of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Performers engage with festival goers during Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Revellers watch as Liam Gallagher performs on the Pyramid stage during Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A reveller dressed as the television character Ali G poses for a photograph during the Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Actor and musician Jeff Goldblum performs with the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra on the final day of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 The Langa Methodist Church Choir performs on the Pyramid Stage during Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Olly Alexander of Years & Years performs on the Pyramid Stage during day five of the Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Performers engage with festival goers during Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Laurie Vincent of Slaves performing on the fifth day of the Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Revellers attend the Glastonbury Festival of Music
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 The crowd reacts as US singer Mavis Staples performs on the Pyramid Stage on day five of the Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A revellers dressed as a spaceman walks throught the site at the Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Revellers walk through a campsite at sunset during Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 American band The Killers perform the Saturday headline slot at Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 American band The Killers perform the Saturday headline slot at Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Liam Gallagher performs on the Pyramid stage on day four of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Janet Jackson performs on the Pyramid Stage on day four of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Maggie Rogers performs on the Other Stage during Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Fantastic Negrito performs on the Other Stage during day four of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A reveller drinks water as she attends the Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 14 year old festival-goer Flower Sykes from Cornwall tips a hat filled with water over her head to cool down, during day four of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A festival goer sits under a rainbow coloured umbrella during Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Revellers wait to watch The Proclaimers perform at the Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A festival-goer holding a sun parasol poses on day four of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Festival-goers wearing bikinis pour buckets of water over each other during day four of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Festival goers enjoy the hot weather during Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Revellers enjoy the bonfire and fireworks in the Sacred Space at the end of the first day of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A man wears an LED face mask on the second day of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Festival goer Jo stands among a tree feature as she arrives on the first day of Glastonbury 2019
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A festival goer drinks from a beer bong prior to the gates opening at 8am on the first day of Glastonbury 2019
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A man in a pig onesie receives his wristband for the weekend as the gates open at Glastonbury 2019
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A collaboration billboard between Led By Donkeys and Cold War Steve is unveiled at the top of the park on the first day of Glastonbury 2019
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A man carts a wheelbarrow full of provisions for the weekend as he arrives at Glastonbury 2019
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Festival founder Michael Eavis takes a selfie with a festival goer as he greets arrivals to Glastonbury 2019
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A woman dances with LED hula hoops on the second day of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Tents at the campsite on the second day of Glastonbury Festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A man arrives armed with his ReadyBed on the first day of Glastonbury 2019
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Festival goer Glammy Glitter wears her bejewelled Glastonbury hat as she arrives at the festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Arrivals cart their provisions for the weekend to their campsites on the first day of the festival
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 England fans watch on at Glastonbury
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Sarah Adey and Jack Watney marry at Glastonbury on Thursday 27 June 2019
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Festival goers eat ice-cream during the Glastonbury Festival in Pilton, Britain, 27 June 2019.
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A reveller stands proudly so people can admire his colourful headgear
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 An overview of the scenes at Worthy Farm on Thursday 27 June, 2019
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Sheryl Crow serenades the crowds on a sun-soaked day at Worthy Farm on day three of Glastonbury
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 George Ezra performs
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Bastille frontman Dan Smith performs on the Pyramid Stage
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Festival-goers watch Bastille perform at Glastonbury 2019
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Bastille frontman Dan Smith performs on the Pyramid Stage
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A festival-goer takes a drink in the West Holts area
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Crowds gather to watch Stormzy perform on the Pyramid Stage
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Stormzy performs in the headline slot on the Pyramid Stage on day three of Glastonbury
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Arcadia unveil their new stage design 'Pangea' during day three of Glastonbury
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 Arcadia's new stage design, Pangea, at Glastonbury Festival 2019
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Best pictures from Glastonbury 2019 A festival-goer carries an illuminated umbrella through the Arcadia area
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Too trap and US-influenced to fit comfortably into grime, Slowthai aspires to be our one-man Public Enemy , exposing the social injustices and streetwise realities of a country driven to the dogs by austerity.
His onstage mayhem doesn’t quite match the menace and anger of his music and message, though. He caterwauls an awful a capella “Wonderwall” between tracks, instigates a “circle of friends” for “Doorman”, evokes the love-in spirit of Glastonbury and even ends up wearing a rainbow propeller hat for “Mayhem”. It becomes tricky to take his politicised schtick too seriously, particularly when his attacks on Theresa May are buried pretty deep in “North Nights”, his drug antics are writ large over much of the rest and he seems to get most angry over the biological processes of intercourse on “Why You Wet”. He even stops “Inglorious” to dedicate it to the loss of someone we’re certain he refers to as “Nanny Bum Bum”. But Glastonbury pours a little Hennessey on the ground for her anyway.
His ramshackle 45 minutes are padded with intentional false starts, but nonetheless the set buzzes with malcontent. “Polaroid” comes on like a minimalist rap remix of Outkast’s “Hey Ya”; “Drug Dealer” is all brutal rap barks about his inescapable place in the underworld over deep dub growls of noise. The closer, “Psycho”, even comes drenched in Hitchcock strings and beats like a kitchen knife through a shower curtain. Seems Slowthai is better heard and not seen.
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