FEATURE:
Spotlight
Ms Banks
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EVEN if she has released…
mixtapes before, including 2022’s Bank Statement, SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL is seen as her debut album. I am including Ms Banks in my Spotlight feature now, as this is a big moment. I have known about her music ever since 2014’s mixtape, Once Upon a Grind. Born Thyra Kigho Deshaun Oji in south London, here is one of our finest rappers putting out an incredible and accomplished debut album. Despite the fact in the past she cited Nicki Minaj as her biggest influence – given Minaj’s Donald Trump love, maybe that has dented her respect for Minaj -, this is a distinct and original artist who very much stands in her own lane. However, it would be great for her to hook up with Megan Thee Stallion or Ms. Lauryn Hill. I shall end with a couple of reviews for SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL. Before that, there are some interviews to cover off. Music Week discussed the road to making her debut album. In the industry for over a decade, this might be her biggest and most important year:
“You started releasing music more than 10 years ago – why is now the right time for a debut album?
“I’ve always wanted to release an album. I could have probably released one ages ago. I started having a breakthrough moment in 2019 and I was quite eager to [put an album out], but I always had a lot of people in my ear making me feel like I wasn’t ready. I decided I was just gonna put out an album because I’m so tired of this narrative of, ‘You’re never going to be ready.’ But in all honesty, I don’t really regret my timing, because I feel like I’m in a place where I can be my most authentic self. I’m quite vulnerable on the album, and I feel like it’s taken years of growth – like I’ve finally just circled back to who I truly am at my core.”
Why did you choose to partner with Believe for the record?
“I really liked my A&R there [Bridie Asare, A&R manager]. I feel like she understood what I was trying to deliver. I liked her energy a lot, and I also felt like they had other artists prior to me that fit in my world, and they’ve had success with them. So I thought it would be a good match. I feel like they do believe in my vision.”
What would success with this album look like for you?
“Number one is cultural impact. Something that is timeless, that other young Black female rappers can look at in 10 years and be like, ‘Listen to Ms Banks’ South LDN Lover Girl if you want to know what a good or great album should sound like.’ Also, hopefully, some chart success. It would be nice to have a debut moment on the Official Charts – I would love that. But hey, I’ll definitely take the cultural impact first”.
Finally, you’ve played shows with Nicki Minaj, Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B and more. You must have some memorable stories from the road?
“There’s so many! I really connected with Megan Thee Stallion. That was my first arena tour as a special guest, and it was amazing. We have a really good friendship outside of music, so we got to party together a lot after the shows and had a really good time in Amsterdam one night. She reminds me of myself, but from the US. She always says, ‘Banks, if I lived in the UK, you would be my best friend.’ I’m like, ‘You’re actually so cute, because I feel like we are similar in a sense, both tall, both Black,’ and I feel like she gets it as well. I’ve seen her go through a lot with the media and, as a Black woman, having her emotions or stories discounted and people not believing her for whatever reason. We had a good time just chopping it up. She’s also into fitness and she got me in that bag as well, which is cute, because when it came time to support on tour, I was arena-ready!”.
It would be great to see Ms Banks working on record with someone like Cardi B. However, I think one of the strengths of SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL is how Ms Banks does not pack too many collaborators in there. It is her voice and vision that is focused on. If some feel that her best work is still ahead, I do think that her album that has just come out is amazing.
Prior to getting to some reviews of SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL, there is one more interview to get to. Rolling Stone UK spoke with Ms Banks, who provided a track-by-track guide to the album. I have selected a few tracks to focus on.
“I really just wanted a strong start for the project. I took a lot of inspiration from Meek Mill’s ‘Dreams and Nightmares’ and Cardi B’s ‘Get Up 10’. I wanted something hard-hitting that captures you from the jump start and really build the scene of what a south London soundtrack would sound like in my mind.
‘WHY?’
I really just wanted to have a vulnerable moment and express the questions that go through my mind when I do sometimes feel down or defeated. I’m never the type to go through life being like, “Woe, is me” or, “Why me?” But sometimes I do question my circumstances. I always find a way to make the best of a bad situation and find a resolution and take accountability for my life where I can.
‘POV’
“Could you see my point of view, if I said 2 things could be true?” ‘POV’ is about the juxtaposition of being beautiful on the outside but having feelings and thoughts that aren’t so beautiful on the inside and seeing if a potential partner can accept you, flaws and all. Will you stick around when I’m not so done up? When I don’t feel so good? When you realise how much I need and how much patience I may not have… Can you? Will you?
‘SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL’
The title track… whew, where do I start. This really is the glue to the project, inspired by two very true stories that are very close to home. On this track, we focus on romance crimes and domestic violence. South London girls tend to have a bad rep but all the girls I know from the ends have always had soft heart under a hard exterior. Due to not being shown what real love is, sometimes we fall in traps and end up giving the best parts of ourselves to people that don’t deserve it. No matter how tough we come across, most of us just want to love and be loved, the right way.
‘HEALING’
Keeping the afro/amapiano vibes high, ‘HEALING’ is a standout track for me. Coming to a close of the project, it’s like I’m having a real realisation of all the things I may need. I’m looking for all these things to make me feel better, whether it’s love or success. Within that, I realise the grace God has had in my life. I remember the day I’ve made this record, I just felt depleted. I don’t believe in writers block, but I just couldn’t come up with anything to really portray how I felt. Me freestyling on the mic is how the hook came to be and the rest was history”.
If you are unfamiliar with Ms Banks or only have heard her earliest work, I would urge you to check out SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL. It is a stunning album from a modern great. I am going to move to Shatter the Standards and their opinions on SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL. I am not sure if I have a standout track from the album, though the title track might be at the top of the list at the moment:
“Twelve years is a long time to call yourself an emerging artist. A mixtape in 2014, an EP, two more tapes, a number-one slot on the UK Hip-Hop and R&B Charts, opening for Cardi B, a MAGA Minaj co-sign that started with an unprompted tweet and ended with a spot on the NickiWrldTour, a BRIT Awards performance filling in alongside Little Mix, a Queen’s Jubilee set with Duran Duran and Nile Rodgers, a Fire in the Booth on 1Xtra that still gets cited as one of the best the segment has aired. All of that, and no album. Ms Banks, born Thyra Oji, raised on Walworth Road in Elephant and Castle to a Nigerian father and Ugandan mother, took her time. SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL carries the weight of a career’s worth of unspent material, and it sounds like someone who decided that if the debut was finally coming, nothing would stay buried.
The album’s first words are a woman staring in a mirror and seeing a Black woman staring back. “Second generation,” she raps, “but first place for the cream.” Her nan came over and paved the way, and if the line don’t work, the trap won’t work, the lights won’t work. She doesn’t want a blue-collar shirt. The streets turned her into a thug, but all she wanted was to love. Two songs later, “Catch You Lackin’” picks up the same geography and sharpens it into pure menace. She grew up in South and it made her a soldier, she rolls with the youngers and fucks with the olders. And then the title track shows you what those streets can actually cost. A girl named Rih holds a gun for her boyfriend while he dodges the feds. She takes a cab to the West End to meet a friend, leaves the bag with the strap in the backseat, and gets arrested before he even makes it home. A second story follows a man called Jack with untreated mental health issues and weed-induced psychosis. He kills his girlfriend Pam, her mum, her nan, and her dad. The song closes with a line about migrants not being wanted in the United Kingdom. Banks recounts both stories in full, without commentary, letting the facts carry the horror.
On “WHY?,” she points the question at the whole system. Why is she more at risk in labour due to race? Why is she told it’d be better if she was light-skinned, that she’d have more global appeal? Why was a woman found dead in her house while police stayed outside for twenty minutes after neighbors called? The track runs as a series of questions with no one to answer them, and the refrain boils it down to seven words: stressed out, worked up, diamond in the rough. “WORK HARDER” picks up the thread. Sampling Layyah on the hook, “It’s hard being a woman, let alone one that is Black,: and Banks turns the verse personal. What does she say to her little sister when the workplace isn’t fucking with her? She went to Spain and her only souvenir was watching her brother sell sunglasses at the seashore. Banks declares she loves her country but wonders what happens when it doesn’t love her back. The upbeat “4C” flips the same anger into something brasher. Hair 4C, no BBL, no filler, she wears her Afro like a crown and calls out the lip filler trend with the confidence of someone who has settled the argument for herself. “POV” unsettles that confidence by asking a partner whether he’d still love her in the morning with no makeup, if she stopped doing music, if the stories he heard about her turned out to be true. She wants to know if two things can be true at the same time.
Scattered across the LP in different moods, the love songs pull in several directions at once. “NO LOVE” is the coldest of them—she only wants sex if it comes with a Rolex or big checks, she watches men like movies but doesn’t entertain them, and the hook asks what type of villain breaks hearts in the streets, while interpolating Shyne’s “Bad Boyz.” “S.O.S” is almost the opposite. “He feels like home,” she writes, and if they mess up they can do it over. “THE ONE” admits she doesn’t want to be alone. Those two positions, charge it to the game and please don’t leave me, exist on the same record without anyone picking a winner, and that honesty is the point. “IDK” brings Zinoleesky for a lighter cut about physical attraction that might be something deeper, and “WAR OUTSIDE” with Strandz poses the simplest version of the question: would you ride for me? The range between these songs is wider than most UK rap debuts would attempt, moving from transactional sex talk to quiet need within a few tracks.
“ME & YOU (OUTRO)” is the song the rest of the project has been protecting. Banks addresses herself as Tyra, her real name, and walks through her childhood on Penborough Estate—doing crime, smoking blem at ten with her white friends Tommy, Danny, Chelsea, and Alex, shotting a little weed. She and a friend shared a birthday and butted heads because they were both Aries. Then the song arrives at the disclosure everything else was circling:
“There was a night that he touched you
That time in Dad’s house, mentally and physically, he fucked you.”
She instructs herself not to talk about the taint of being abused, to become a shadow of yourself with nothing to lose. She labels the men who do this sadistic and adds that they treat you like a statistic. And then the track turns. She speaks directly to herself—“Yeah, Thyra, all the things you used to dream about, you live it, Thyra—and closes: “You done it, Thyra. I’m proud of you.” The specificity of those names, those streets, that abuse, lodges the song somewhere you can’t shake it. It is the most unguarded moment on any UK rap debut in recent memory. SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL is a strong debut from someone who could’ve made a passable one years ago. Banks spent a decade in the conversation as a rapper. This LP proves something bigger. She’s a writer with range, nerve, and the willingness to say her own name out loud when it counts”.
The final thing I am including is a review from CLASH. Even if SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL does have its heart in the U.K. Rap scene, there are new elements and layers to this album. Spoken word finding its way in. There are many more albums to come from this monumental talent. Someone who is inspiring so many others at the moment:
“Ms Banks – real name Thyra Kigho Deshaun Oji – has never shied away from having bold opinions; whether that’s advocating for equal pay for women, young black men’s mental health, or explicating what it means to be a second-generation African descendant in today’s myopic world. With a clean, clinical style that blends homegrown rap and R&B with Afrobeats, long-gestating new album ‘SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL’ toes the line between commercial-leaning bangers and communal confessionals that dig deeper into her psyche.
The title track ‘SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL’ opens the album as it means to go on, a slowed-down Afrobeats groove laced with samples and idioms that hit harder than the music first lets on. If heard in a café or from a car with the window down, you wouldn’t be wrong for thinking it was another calming rap number, but once you tune in to the caustic lyrics, you’ll find an angst-ridden cautionary tale of addiction and the how some are more predisposed to a life of crime than others. The track ends with a charged diatribe against anti-migrant sentiment, Ms Banks’ pride in her upbringing lifting the number above the usual radio fodder.
The album sticks to Ms Banks roots in the UK rap scene but sees her explore elements of spoken word, either by herself or through samples. Banks embraces the role of storyteller and how it can rouse the disenchanted. It’s these zoned-in, real-life and politicised moments that gives the project its heft – take the ‘Intro’ which ends with a news briefing of when Diane Abbott receiving a death threat from a powerful Tory donor.
‘Catch You Lackin’ hits like a warning shot, a heavy drill-inflected number where Ms Banks shuts down her detractors with the cool, unflinching confidence that has defined her earlier repertoire. The track ends with a touching 30-second rumination questioning what it means to be loved, contemplating whether she, or other South London girls like her, have actually ever been taught how to give and receive love. This moment halfway through the epitomises the duality of this record; the raw introspection and classic, club-honed sound that’s become her signature.
Ms Banks ensures ‘SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL’ is a powerful paean for young black women. The song ‘4C’ relates to the curls and texture of Ms Banks’ hair – the curliest of curls on the spectrum – and how she’s found strength in her features. Referencing how other women get lip fillers to gain Afro-centric features whilst black women are racialised and vilified, Ms Banks layers whip-smart lyricism over propulsive dancing beat: There’s poetic pride in this anthem.
‘SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL’ strikes just the right balance between feel-good anthemics and a bracing origin story birthed in the streets, between moments of confrontation and playfulness. It’s a premise we hope Ms Banks builds on as she progresses and evolves, peeling back the layers even further. For now, the album affirms Ms Banks as a true voice from the streets”.
We have some amazing British Rap/Hip-Hop queens that you should know. Alongside a modern great like Little Simz are Ivorian Doll and Cristale. I feel that Ms Banks stands with the very best. SOUTH LDN LOVER GIRL confirms that she is a major talent. It is exciting to see…
WHAT comes next for her.
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