Swan Song

Not Funded By Creative Scotland is Darren McGarvey’s final album as Loki: a scorching critique of Scotland’s arts establishment, a 17-track album meticulously crafted exploration of McGarvey’s own backstory, and a farewell, of sorts.

McGarvey has made a name for himself as (Orwell Prize-winning) author of Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain’s Underclass (originally published by Luath Press, then Picador), and The Social Distance Between Us: How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain, and also as a social commentator with podcasts, tv shows, and newspaper columns (with the Daily Record) as well as earlier writing for us at Bella (read his archived articles here). 

But it was as a hip-hop artist under the name of Loki that McGarvey made his name and established his place as an angry, super articulate, spokesman for the underclass, the marginalised and the forgotten of Scotland with searing lyrics, beats and music across two decades. You can listen to his back catalogue at Bandcamp here.

In a world of specialisms and specialists, McGarvey is the quintessential lad o pairts drawing, possibly unconsciously (I’ll have to ask him) on the Scottish generalist tradition. Throughout McGarvey’s career his defining features have been raw honesty, truth-telling and authenticity, and this album has these qualities in spades. The sleeve notes state: “Loki’s final project acts as both a fierce rallying call for greater inclusion of working-class perspectives in culture and a heartfelt love letter to the local hip-hop community that embraced him as an unknown over 20-years ago.”

But I think a further defining feature for McGarvey is the notion to resist standing still. Having overcome personal and social circumstances this is not a ‘growth’ mentality in the bougie sense but a restlessness and commitment to change. This, I suspect, is what has driven him to shed the Loki persona and move on. But you would be confused and wrong if you thought that the new mature, ‘dad’ version of Loki had lost any of his righteous anger. Instead, the album is filled with finely tuned barbs at establishment Scotland, combined with fine production, choral additions and brass and strings upsetting your stereotype of hip-hop as a genre, and Loki is, in his words “still coughing-up phlegm from the nineties”.

Asked about the change and the departure Darren said: “I took the moniker of Loki as a wayward teenager. It gave me a chance to create a new identity, a bit like Jim Carrey’s character Stanley Ipkiss in The Mask. As time went on though, and I got more known in the scene, and deeper into alcohol and drugs, I became stunted emotionally. Loki represents a part of me that’s frozen in time. A kind of psychological stasis. He’s an entity I summon when unavoidable conflict arises and I require a different set of tools and skills to navigate it. Loki is less considered and cautious, quicker to rise to the bait, and views every battle as a zero-sum equation. It’s my character’s defects personified. Defects I have to become willing to let go if I want to grow – the album models a way out of toxic masculinity without being twee or perforatively woke. It engages the listener through aggression, anger, trauma, mirroring listeners, before showing a path forward to self-awareness and resolution.”

On the album the lyrics deserve a second and third hearing with rich layers of meaning and word-play you don’t get first time round. The themes of drugs, poverty, male suicide, and the failures and traps of contemporary left culture are explored and ripped apart, but so too is McGarvey’s own trajectory with a wry sense of humour: “some people say I’m arrogant … some people say I’m egotistical and I understand but with all the talent on display I don’t think I get enough credit for how humble I am …” (Adult Rapper).

A few tracks stand out for me, though there are no fillers.

Made in Pollok is a beautiful elegy to McGarvey’s hometown with a serenading brass accompaniment “cunts will jump you for your chuggy” – “The old days weren’t as good as you remember them, trying to recapture your youth staring at the pendulum”…

Don’t Jump is a rallying cry to desperate men, and a personal epiphany.

A Freak Manoeuvres is a love letter to the hip-hop community and to the Vic bar.

Progressive Overload is a testimony to hypocrisy and performative screen culture (‘hot takes don’t feed the homeless’) and an attack on contemporary leftism (‘just cos I think you are pricks does not make me alt-right‘).

If McGarvey’s progression is a testament to his tenacity and his ability to stay true to his roots, whilst also allowing for deep change and development, it stands as a metaphor for the possibility for wider change in Scottish society.

The essential ingredients are brutal self-honesty and reflection, hard graft and vulnerability, traits that are often difficult for any of us to embrace or explore. McGarvey is to be celebrated not lionised, and he is at his best when in dialogue with others not just himself, but the culture of Scotland too often tells you ‘don’t you get above yourself’ or suffers from Tall Poppy Syndrome.  For once we should celebrate one of our own who’s done well despite adversity and is challenging us on numerous fronts, not least political orthodoxy and male entitlement.

The challenges are laid out by this album. Who and what is Creative Scotland for? What sort of clandestine/unspoken sifting is done that excludes and marginalises working-class voices from funding and promotion? What is the function of fashionable cultural norms that operates as a mechanism to filter-out the politically unacceptable? What is the damage done by a ‘social distance’ between those in power and those with lived experience?

In a country deeply entrenched in ‘psychological stasis’ the level of self-honesty at play is refreshing. It would be contradictory and hypocritical to be uncritical of McGarvey’s output, but this is a moment of appreciation of a life-work in progress, and an album that represents a body of work from a (still) marginalised art form.

If this is a Swan Song it is one worth listening to.

Not Funded By Creative Scotland is available on Bandcamp for digital download and vinyl pre-order. This final release from Loki encapsulates McGarvey’s 20-year journey in hip-hop while cementing his legacy as a fearless advocate for genuine inclusivity in the arts. 

Official Website: darrenmcgarvey.com

Comments (4)

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  1. Statan says:

    Can you do MC Shogun next, if he’s out of prison yet?

  2. Statan says:

    One thing’s for sure – films about musicians rarely have happy endings, and the ones with happy endings tend to have very unhappy middle bits.

  3. Leslie Cunningham says:

    Brilliant! I must check out the album, and Darren McGarvey’s other work.

  4. Wul says:

    McGarvey is a highly aware commentator, very articulate and excellent at encapsulating the issues of our time and putting them in context.

    I remember him (on these pages?) 4, 5 years ago maybe, warning us that young working class men were increasingly turning towards the alt-right because the left offered them no political home and no forum to discuss their concerns. He was spot on.

    He’s got on my wick occasionally with his criticisms of the pro-independence movement, but he was probably accurate (f**k him ; ) ).
    Rap ain’t my cup of meat, but if I listen to his music as urban poetry set to music then I find I can get into it.

    Good on him. God knows we need some good Scottish thinkers and critics to gain influence and exposure.

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