For at least 15 years, Chunky has been the unofficial voice of Manchester’s underground club scene: a toasting host in the old tradition, but with a soft humor and musical demeanor that eschew the usual macho trappings of club MCs. He dips and bobs over hip-hop and grime with the same ease as drum’n’bass and leftfield techno, and his nasal soundbites and cheeky aphorisms—about rude basslines, the price of a bag of weed—are often the sound left ringing in clubbers’ ears as they make their daybreak journeys home.
Manchester has changed a lot since Chunky started spitting, with billions of pounds being pumped into the construction of new glass-and-steel monoliths throughout the city center, driving locals out and luring yuppies with a penchant for noise complaints in. And while the city’s cultural baggage still swings heavy—Factory Records, the Haçienda, those Gallaghers and their legions of parka-and-square-haircut acolytes—the hum of envelope-pushing electronic music has remained constant. With Somebody’s Child, the rapper-producer’s most substantial solo effort to date, Chunky slots into a rich lineage that runs from A Guy Called Gerald to Anz: one that emphasizes character, charisma, and, sometimes, just being a little odd.
In spite of where it was incubated, Somebody’s Child feels removed from the open hustle of the club or the itch of the afters. Instead, those nighttime influences arrive like solar flares, sparking aurora in scatters of color and light: The production is spare, particulate, and trippy, led by a kind of childlike curiosity that matches the gentle intimacy of Chunky’s vocal delivery.
He skips between metallic shards on “RNS,” rants over the sofa-slumped bassline of “GNG,” and claws through a foggy gloom on “Meh.” Opener “YES I” doubles as a mesmerizing stream-of-consciousness manifesto that leaps without hiccup between stage shows and Rosa Parks, Napoleons Dynamite and Bonaparte, shoulder barges and rounds of cards. He weaves candid interviews with younger family members between the broken dancehall of “Long N Strong,” collapsing the aloof, tinny percussion arrangements into moments of homely intimacy. In doing so, he applies the same qualities that have helped him warm up crowds in the dance, nudging them to move to the front, fill out the space, connect with strangers.
This freeform approach does have its limitations. There are sketches that feel like they’re still in the draft stage. The jazzy bop of “Giv U,” a tender dedication to his mother, struggles to hold up the golden weight of Lemn Sissay–esque lines like “If I could’ve chosen, know that I still would’ve made you my mam/Woulda stole, woulda killed, woulda found an excuse/To still go and make you my dukes.”
But it all, eventually, leads back to the dancehall, whether in the slick delivery of the slinky-hipped “@Me” or the dubwise ambience of “Spare the Rod.” Somebody's Child is every bit of Chunky distilled: soaked through the fine silt layers of thousands of hours helming booths, spinning records at the afters, sinking deep into YouTube rabbit holes, and then breaking bread with his family the next day.
