Get the latest gossip

Berwyn: Who Am I review – should be on the national curriculum

With devastating directness, the Trinidad-born London artist depicts his struggles with UK immigration, fusing visceral poetry, dark humour and a crackling R&B croon

Thanks to the “hostile environment” and a lack of correct papers when moving to London from Trinidad aged just nine, the 28-year-old singer-producer was essentially a non-person until recently. That kind of rough-tongued poetry is everywhere, painstakingly depicting Berwyn’s constant scrabble for cash and stability, the false but necessary promises of escape offered by intoxication, and that endlessly human desire to belong to something or someone. Crucially, the ferocity of Berwyn’s talent and the piercing beauty of his crackling, folk-R&B croon mean these heavy topics are never a burden.

Get the Android app