Friday April 27, 8 p.m.
Daytrotter, 324 Brady Street, Davenport IA
With the Chicago Tribune deeming him “an artist who makes deeply introspective music that by turns can project a hazy, late-night vibe or a lighter, sunnier flavor,” the 21-year-old rap and hip-hop musician Kweku Collins headlines a Daytrotter concert on April 27, his most recent LP Grey praised by HipHopDx.com for its creator “effortlessly conjuring melodies that gracefully tread the line between spoken word and rap.”
Born into a musical family in Evanston, Illinois, Collins joined his dad on-stage playing African drums at the age of four, and as a teenager, transitioned to making his own music. In 2015, just weeks shy of his high-school graduation, Collins signed with Chicago's indie-rap outfit Closed Sessions, choosing to concentrate on music rather than accept an invitation to enroll at Columbia College. Shortly afterward, Collins released his debut Say It Here While It's Safe. The EP received much critical praise, with TheIndieBlender.com deeming it “extremely addictive,” and landed Collins inclusion on Pigeons & Planes' “20 Rappers under 20” list for his release that “plays like the sounds of a sunny haven.”
In 2016, Collins followed Say It Here While It's Safe with his first LP Nat Love, a work that garnered an 8.0 Pitchfork review, produced a “Pitchfork Best New Track” hit, and found Collins appearing in publications that included The FADER, Billboard, and the Chicago Reader. His nine-song LP Grey, however, has earned the artist the strongest reviews of his still-young career. According to ConsequenceOfSound.net, the album's “great new tunes” find Collins “charting some more melancholic territory with the same melodic lyricism that has drawn fans to his music.” And in praising Grey's “strikingly cohesive result,” Pitchfork called the work “rap on its own terms, its name an acknowledgment of Collins' own self-awareness and further evidence that the misfits can be some of the most liberated among us.”
Kweku Collins performs his 8 p.m. concert on April 27 with opening sets by Soultru and Sons of MARS, tickets are $10, and more information is available by visiting Daytrotter.com.
