DELS (photo by Rosie Maisie Willoughby)
"The future of UK hip-hop" is a pretty tough title to live up to. But it's the one that's stuck with DELS (Kieren Gallear)—the hotly-tipped rapper and MC who emerged in 2011 with his intriguingly off-kilter debut album GOB. Now, the Big Dada signee is back with "Burning Beaches," a melancholy, downtempo cut featuring the British singer-songwriter Rosie Lowe."Burning Beaches" is off his second full-length, Petals Have Fallen, and came together while DELS—who is also a filmmaker—was working on Rosie's music video for her debut single "Right Thing." "I loved her voice, and at the video shoot I thought she would be perfect for the song," DELS tells us. "I wrote the chorus with her voice in mind." On the remix front, Falty DL (whose Hardcourage album is one of DELS' favorites) shifts the focus entirely to Rosie's vocals, grounding the track with an elastic wiggle of a sample that sounds kind of like a sneezing cuckoo. Good stuff.DELS' Petals Have Fallen is out November 3, 2014. Pre-order it on Ninjashop/Big Dada or iTunes@MichelleLhooq