Why aren’t Attica Blues household names? Their faultless blend of sweet soul songwriting and street tough hip-hop aesthetics should have propelled them firmly into the mainstream – the UK’s answer to the Fugees’ success story. Up there on the ’90s trip-hop-era Mount Rushmore next to Massive Attack and Portishead. And they’d agree.
“I thought this record was going to blow up and we’d become pop stars,” says poet and DJ, Charlie Williams, who, alongside super-producer Tony Nwachukwu and vocalist Roba El-Essawy, coined and minted a new sound in British Black music. The sound is as lushly orchestrated as any Bond theme, with a dusty record crate-sample-flipping ingenuity basically unrivalled on either side of The Pond. But, as the record dropped, tastes changed.
