NEWS
Hak Baker releases debut album 'Worlds End FM'
10 June 2023
“Where would you go if the world was ending? I asked myself this question when I started putting the pieces of my debut album together. To the pub, to have it large with me friends one final time.. I would then have dinner with me family. Dinner has long been the place where we would magically all convene. I love them dearly. Then I hope by then I am in love. I would love to spend my dying moment with that person. Almost like a fantasy, why not perish within one's fantasy. To be loved one day. These are the thoughts and fanaticism that engulf My Album. To Exist, Love, to lose, to perish. ‘Tried hard to live, time to amend with me Master.” - Hak Baker
Hak Baker’s debut album Worlds End FM is a public broadcast of unity, protest and collective power, released today on Hak Attack Records via AWAL. Written through the prism of a pirate radio station when the world is on the brink of collapse (sound familiar?), the East End poet, musician, and spokesman for his community today confirms he is a vital, inimitable voice for those often denied one. Rip it up and start again is Baker’s message. The end of the world has never sounded so bold, imaginative, and thrillingly full of the glorious, chaotic wonder of life. Interspersed with skits from Connie Constance to Allan Mustafah aka Kurupt FM’s MC Grindah, as well as intimate phone conversations with his brother and best friends, it was Busta Rhymes’ Extinction Level Event that provided the unlikely partial inspiration for a suite of spiky, quintessentially British modern folk songs, and tells you something about the eclectic and unconventional nature of Hak Baker. Even set against Baker’s recent career achievements – co-signs from the likes of Benjamin Zephaniah, Little Simz, Skepta, and Mike Skinner, supporting Pete Doherty at the Royal Albert Hall after performing with him a mosh-swelling version of A Message To You Rudy on the Other Stage at last year’s Glastonbury – it is a gigantic artistic swing that recalls other iconic, high-wire creative accomplishments. The personal is political, and Worlds End FM stares modern Britain in the eye and says, we can do better by our community.
WORLDS END FM TRACKLISTING
Worlds End FM
DOOLALLY
Windrush Baby
Collateral Cause
Bricks In The Wall
Full On
Babylon Must Fall (MC Grindah Skit)
I Don’t Know
Run
Telephones 4 Eyes
Watford’s Burning (Connie Constance Skit)
Brotherhood
Luv U Bro (Big Zees Skit)
Dying To Live
Almost Lost London
The End of The World
Worlds End FM is a good lad, m.A.A.d City; or A Grand Don’t Come For Free for the extremely online era. “I thought it would be a good part of the armoury. I remember loving Busta Rhymes, Method Man and Lauryn Hill albums back in the day – the ones where they had loads of interludes that you wouldn’t skip because they were part of the experience.” Executive produced by Hak and Karma Kid and compiled from two years of prolific sessions with producers including Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey, Shrink and Misfits producer Ali Bla Bla, the record crackles as the genre dial is twiddled from rip-snorting post-punk to lilting roots reggae. Last month, Hak Baker released “DOOLALLY”, the half-rapped, funk-tinged plunge into the bleary haze of a triumphantly messy Friday night. Already on the BBC Radio 6 playlist, listeners are thrown into the narrative of Hak’s anarchic mind from pre-drinks to meeting the lads to the underbelly of London nightlife, with an equally beguiling video directed by Hugh Mulhern (Fontaines DC). Capturing Hak’s raw lyrical style that blends cockney dialect picked up from growing up in the Isle of Dogs, to Jamaican Patois from his mother and grandmother, Hak’s flow developed from his younger years as a Grime MC in B.O.M.B. squad. “We thought we was big, big boys, going to MC at these little clubs in Romford. Don’t forget that Moet cost 30 quid back then so we were having it large”, says Hak, having fallen in love with the guitar when, during his time as an inmate at HMP Portland, he won his first one in a prison raffle.
Hak Baker’s debut album Worlds End FM is a public broadcast of unity, protest and collective power, released today on Hak Attack Records via AWAL. Written through the prism of a pirate radio station when the world is on the brink of collapse (sound familiar?), the East End poet, musician, and spokesman for his community today confirms he is a vital, inimitable voice for those often denied one. Rip it up and start again is Baker’s message. The end of the world has never sounded so bold, imaginative, and thrillingly full of the glorious, chaotic wonder of life. Interspersed with skits from Connie Constance to Allan Mustafah aka Kurupt FM’s MC Grindah, as well as intimate phone conversations with his brother and best friends, it was Busta Rhymes’ Extinction Level Event that provided the unlikely partial inspiration for a suite of spiky, quintessentially British modern folk songs, and tells you something about the eclectic and unconventional nature of Hak Baker. Even set against Baker’s recent career achievements – co-signs from the likes of Benjamin Zephaniah, Little Simz, Skepta, and Mike Skinner, supporting Pete Doherty at the Royal Albert Hall after performing with him a mosh-swelling version of A Message To You Rudy on the Other Stage at last year’s Glastonbury – it is a gigantic artistic swing that recalls other iconic, high-wire creative accomplishments. The personal is political, and Worlds End FM stares modern Britain in the eye and says, we can do better by our community.
WORLDS END FM TRACKLISTING
Worlds End FM
DOOLALLY
Windrush Baby
Collateral Cause
Bricks In The Wall
Full On
Babylon Must Fall (MC Grindah Skit)
I Don’t Know
Run
Telephones 4 Eyes
Watford’s Burning (Connie Constance Skit)
Brotherhood
Luv U Bro (Big Zees Skit)
Dying To Live
Almost Lost London
The End of The World
Worlds End FM is a good lad, m.A.A.d City; or A Grand Don’t Come For Free for the extremely online era. “I thought it would be a good part of the armoury. I remember loving Busta Rhymes, Method Man and Lauryn Hill albums back in the day – the ones where they had loads of interludes that you wouldn’t skip because they were part of the experience.” Executive produced by Hak and Karma Kid and compiled from two years of prolific sessions with producers including Speedy Wunderground’s Dan Carey, Shrink and Misfits producer Ali Bla Bla, the record crackles as the genre dial is twiddled from rip-snorting post-punk to lilting roots reggae. Last month, Hak Baker released “DOOLALLY”, the half-rapped, funk-tinged plunge into the bleary haze of a triumphantly messy Friday night. Already on the BBC Radio 6 playlist, listeners are thrown into the narrative of Hak’s anarchic mind from pre-drinks to meeting the lads to the underbelly of London nightlife, with an equally beguiling video directed by Hugh Mulhern (Fontaines DC). Capturing Hak’s raw lyrical style that blends cockney dialect picked up from growing up in the Isle of Dogs, to Jamaican Patois from his mother and grandmother, Hak’s flow developed from his younger years as a Grime MC in B.O.M.B. squad. “We thought we was big, big boys, going to MC at these little clubs in Romford. Don’t forget that Moet cost 30 quid back then so we were having it large”, says Hak, having fallen in love with the guitar when, during his time as an inmate at HMP Portland, he won his first one in a prison raffle.