The Cause of Doubt & a Reason to Have Faith

“It’s classy rap, with poignant, metaphorical and political lyrics** The result is a disillusioned and urban hip-hop track.**  The Cage undeniably recalls the period of confinement that we have just gone through, we hear about capitalism, anarchism and racism”. Les Inrocks

 “A talented Visionary, his poetry channels the fierceness I first heard in Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, but with a prowess found in today’s best hip-hop”  NPR

 “Ragged and raging poetry from the fierce folk singer, think Jamie T and Frank Turner with a proper bee in their bonnets.” NME

“Scuffed, sharply drawn street-poet blues.” Sunday Times

 L.A. Salami ‘s new album ‘The Cause of Doubt & A Reason To Have Faith’ is OUT NOW.

The LP  sees Lookman explore experimental ground, touching on a bit of everything from rap to psychedelic folk, and sultry grooves which venture into extended hypnotic jams. This isn’t the music of a virtuoso: it’s explorative, daring, meditative and wild.  Lookman describes the inspiration behind his new album,  “I love the deliberateness, cleanness and colour of modern music, but I also miss the complete chaos of old, like some Captain Beefheart and Velvet Underground records, or even 90s HipHop records with the peaking 808s and static compressed vocals al la Wu Tang, or blues records like Robert Johnson’s. Somewhere in there is the carnival I’ve been searching for. This entire album could very well be a love letter to Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground.”

Lookman began writing poetry at a very early age, which then evolved into writing lyrics and he taught himself the guitar aged 21. Fostered from birth, Lookman was periodically re-united with his birth mother from the age of 5, which he describes as being emotionally confusing, “I find it rears its ugly head consistently in my life, and music became one of the easiest ways to release that pressure valve every so often.”

L.A. Salami’s two albums to date, ‘Dancing With Bad Grammar’ (2016) and ‘The City of Bootmakers’ (2018), have seen the London-based artist present a singular vision. His evocative, poetic lyrics span everything from grand existential questions to vignettes of everyday life as well as the affairs and anxieties of modern Britain.