SHAZAM

First making waves on the UK grime scene as Young Dot, the man now know as Dot Rotten has gone through some changes. While he’s always been a rapper, his old alias was probably best known for his production skills. Since 2007 he’s been banging out mixtapes at a metronomic rate, his focus shifting with each successive release. As he made increasingly frequent excursions from behind the desk to in front of the mic, a new name was required. As a Londoner born and bred, why wouldn’t he choose to base his new identity on sad-faced, chain-smoking Eastender Dot Cotton?

In any case, it seems that the transformation is paying off. Rotten’s single ‘Are You Not Entertained?’ got playlisted by Radio 1 and did good business in the R&B charts. Follow up ‘Overload’ seems set to surpass to his previous achievements. Pilfering the instantly recognisable piano line from Robert Miles’ 1990s Euro-house hit ‘Children’, the track is a concerted grab for the mainstream that doesn’t airbrush out Rotten’s underground roots. Expect it to be everywhere very soon.

For an artists as prolific as Dot Rotten, the next step has to be an album proper. However, there are a few differences between making an official release and launching mixtapes.

“The album is near enough done,” he told Contactmusic. “I’m always in the studio anyways making music working on different stuff. From now until whenever the album drops, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing to keep the underground scene happy. All my mixtapes have been original material, so many class them as albums anyways. The difference for me is that in a mixtape you can say whatever you want. In an album you have to make sure everything connects and every track connects and the relevance from track to track. More about the whole architecture of building the album. Albums have to be looked at from a world-wide point of view to make sure everyone can connect with it.”

AUTHOR: Huw Thomas