British-Iraqi rapper, Kareem Dennis, aka Low-Key, burst onto the political scene in 2009 during the Stop The War protests against Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, quickly establishing himself as a unique and uncompromising voice within UK hip-hop. At the age of 24, he had recorded a Fire in the Booth for BBC 1Xtra that would go on to strike more than 5 million hits on Youtube. In the same year, he participated in a US speaking tour with the American academic, Norman Finkelstein – his lyrics at the cutting edge of political debate.
By 26, Low-Key had amassed a Facebook following of 180,000 people before he disconnected his account, bowing out from the scene altogether to focus on his studies, resurfacing some 4 years later, at first discreetly, then more emphatically, during the UK’s snap election of 2017, when alongside grime artists and rappers including Stormzy, JME, Akala, AJ Tracey, he put his profile to the task of getting out the youth vote for Jeremy Corbyn, an intervention that proved decisive nowhere more than in his own constituency of Kensington and Chelsea where it helped to deliver an extraordinary Labour victory.
One week later, there was the Grenfell Fire, and the same streets across his neighbourhood became the scene of catastrophe. Now all that he and others had learned, during the election, about their political power, found new focus. Low-Key’s new album, Soundtrack to the Struggle 2, reflects that journey of the past 2 years. Here, he looks back to that summer of 2017 in the company of Ashish Ghadiali, and considers its impact on his creativity…
