Album: Exodus 77

Just Time, Regal

The rap stylist Exodus 77 is Sean Reveron, a man with an exotic past and, judging by this debut mini-album, an interesting future ahead of him. Reveron grew up as a Venice Beach skate-punk, listening to US hardcore bands like Suicidal Tendencies, before relocating to Jamaica, where he roomed with Augustus Pablo, became a rasta and started toasting. A return to California to study African History at Berkeley immersed him in the Bay Area hip-hop scene of Digital Underground and 2Pac, after which he lost interest in music until a chance encounter with The Beta Band at a New York show inspired him to start rhyming again. Moving to London, he drafted the Stereo MC's in as producers and set about capturing his "alien flow" on the six tracks that make up Just Time. The result is the most compelling UK rap release since Roots Manuva's début. Blessed with a magisterial snarl that's equal parts Howlin' Wolf and Burning Spear, there's an assurance about Reveron's delivery that belies his novitiate status, while the rhymes project an inspirational pacifist rhetoric of commendable level-headedness: "Look in yourself, seek your own validation"; "Not afraid of dying, I'm afraid of not living". It may have taken him a while to get here, but the breadth of Reveron's experiences has clearly left him a wiser and more well-rounded man. Recommended.