To “send someone to Coventry” is to ostracize them, cast them out, and cut them off. The origins of the phrase are unclear: Most date it to the English Civil War of the 1600s; one writer suggests it’s a reference to being “hanged from a covin tree.” Either way, the gist that lingers is of the post-industrial West Midlands city as an unwelcoming, unforgiving place. On his debut mixtape, Pa Salieu draws a more nuanced picture of his hometown—a place of violence, but light and hope also—and takes his stand for a generation of marginalized young people.
Last October, the British-Gambian 23-year-old had 20 shotgun pellets picked from the back of his head after a drive-by shooting put him in hospital. Three months later, defiant, he unleashed “Frontline,” a taut, wiry slice of UK rap that detailed his brushes with violence growing up in the Hillfields suburb of Coventry. The track promptly blew up—and the industry cogs spun into motion. Salieu toured the UK’s rap radio shows, laid down freestyles, and saw his name appear on line-up after festival line-up.
Send Them to Coventry was originally penciled for early summer, just in time for the live dates. What happened next is, by now, a familiar tale: a delayed release, canceled bookings, and months hunkered down in the studio. The pause, Salieu has since said, was a welcome one. He took the time to develop his craft and to consider new ways of blending his love of Gambian folk music (he frequently cites his auntie, who performs as Chuche Njie and is sampled on “B***K”, as an influence) with his regular teenage rotations of Tupac and Vybz Kartel.
Salieu’s Gambian heritage and embrace of the West African inflections in his speech have made for comparisons with J Hus, but the more relevant association would be the way he’s emerged with his own distinct mode of expression. Salieu flows in the space left by scattered drums and is acutely attentive to not only the meaning of his words, but the sound of them, too. On “My Family,” he trades punchlines and plosives with fellow breakout star Backroad Gee; the track pops and fizzes with a menacing, stop-start energy. Seemingly throwaway lines like “Chitty chitty, bang bang, four-door dinger/Ting go ‘clap’ tryna hit them figures,” manage to squeeze cartoonish references, paper-stacking aspirations, and Salieu’s own real-life trauma into a tight handful of rhythmic syllables. It’s in these deft moments, and his broader artistic flourishes, that Salieu releases himself from the UK rap mold that early admirers have squeezed him into.
Combining elements of dancehall, Afrobeats, hip-hop, and grime are now par for the course in the UK’s saturated rap scene, which can make it difficult to innovate. Pa Salieu makes it look easy. On “Over There,” he bends the pitch of his voice to inhabit a cast of characters and skips from trap trills to baile breakdowns without missing a beat. “Betty” packs all the lyrical braggadocio of road rap, but the track’s lean, skittish drum rolls, and Salieu’s playful delivery—dancing between a half-sung flow and full-throated proclamation—round off the sharp edges and transform it into something else entirely. On “More Paper,” he mourns the death of his best friend over gentle rimshots and a synth line that could have been lifted from Clint Mansell’s score for Black Mirror’s “San Junipero.” He channels Youssou N’Dour’s rich harmonies on “Flip, Repeat”; the offbeat stabs of “No Warnin’” and picked guitar on “Block Boy” nod to canonical West African pop.
This is an extraordinarily assured first offering from a young artist capable of surprising at every turn. The result is not so much a foreboding portrait of a forgotten, boom-and-bust city, but an invitation to a place and people unduly ignored—and an introduction to an artist who won’t be. Not so much sent to Coventry, then, as visiting voluntarily.
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