Ben Coyle-Larner is wrestling with himself. Literally, in the video for his new single, Hate, a song that sees him shelve his languid, confessional flow and nice guy persona in order to deliver lines such as “I tell you what I hate though / The same fellas getting bodied by the plainclothes” with genuine venom. The video sees a camera trained on Coyle-Larner’s snarling face as he drives down a largely empty stretch of motorway, while being jostled and harangued by alternative versions of himself in the back seat. It might be a rather heavy-handed metaphor but it’s true to the tone of the song and his new direction, one he doesn’t yet seem entirely confident in.
“The song was written in such a hateful place,” says the 27-year-old rapper, better known as Loyle Carner. The video, which he co-directed, “had to reflect that feeling of getting in your own way when you’re full of rage. You’ve got all these other people, all these other voices in your head, leading you astray or trying to push you to do the wrong things. It’s that internal battle.”
