Manga Saint Hilare has been dropping tracks from his forthcoming project “Make It Out Alive” for a few weeks now, with features and production coming from Izzie Gibbs, Silencer and Trooh Hippi.
The latest from this run of new material is ‘Thoughts & Prayers’, which features Novelist on the guest verse and is produced by Prem.
Novelist opens up the track, bellowing out a mantra that goes: “I’m here and I’m un-replaceable; original, still un-remakeable.” Novelist’s words are always picked carefully to ensure maximum impact upon delivery, and here you could imagine his opening lyric being the rallying cry to a legion of supporters on their journey to finding inner peace.
Thick keys and a righteous bassline make up the instrumental, ringing out from the speakers while we wait for the rest of the vocal. The beat sounds like a cut from the soundtrack to Drive, the keys roasted by the heat of UK summers gone by.
Manga arrives with an assured opening line that details how the relentlessness of life nearly got the better of him, the peak of the track coming when he notes the difficulty of securing peace of mind and a stable mental state in a world that, for the majority of people, is set against them from the very start.
“Thoughts & Prayers” is a genuinely striking track, as Manga Saint Hilare, Novelist and Prem bring each of their styles to the table, mining the best bit from each and porting it into a single song. The usual structure of grime tracks and their features are thrown to the wayside, with the two emcees just letting the message that they want to get across take precedence.
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