ALBUM REVIEW: Genesis Owusu – Struggler

Ourness/AWAL

Released: 18.08.23

Image by Bec Parsons

Genesis Owusu is fantastic at breakdowns. Breaking down lyrically across break beats, the closing points of his songs are usually their highest. Struggler’s speculative world stages a war between scuttling, panting “roaches” and Gods trigger-happy for judgement day, yet it sometimes feels like these most breathless of moments are just as sonically feared as they are revered.

Opening with the hum of bass guitar and existential barks, it is a little disappointing not to see the genre’s bellwether change course for less grazed grass. Not least because this album of the doomed young has an otherwise thrilling identity, full of red quasar beams, the extraterrestrial, and murky, nebulous futures like skin growths, unfortunately we see less of the warped and the new.