Raf Riley - Now that's what I call gangster beats!!

The reason I know anything about Raf Riley is purely because I checked out his Twitter profile. He popped up on my "Who to follow" list and by accident I decided to check out his profile. 

I was so shocked that not many other people have heard about him. I thought this lad would have tens of thousands of fans on every platform. But it was so shocking that his Facebook profile only has like 560 likes, 3000 plus followers on Twitter and like just over 5000 fans on Soundcloud. I came to the realisation that wow, this lad is really underground. So I decided to go do some research on him. 

Turns out this north London bloke has worked with some big names in the Electronic scene. It is quite impressive that he has worked with both Labrinth and Diplo. Diplo even commissioned him to remix Usher's Climax and then go on to release his Dog Unit tracks off Mad Decent records imprint The Jeffree's. Not bad for a lad that's only in his early 20s hey. But lets move on to his music shall we. 

I was pleasantly surprised when I listened to his track King Henry's Hustle. It was so bizarre that I could not help but just fall in love with it. I have never heard anything of the sort. I must say that I have really started to warm up to this whole idea of Trap, even though Raf classifies his music as Gangster Beats. His music really took me back to my hip hop roots and made me fall in love with it again. 

I was very excited to see that his EP Now That's What I Call Gangster Beats was available for free download off his website. Needless to say I jumped on that wagon and downloaded it asap. It was definitely a good decision on my part. The EP has been on repeat for the past couple of hours and I have not gotten sick of it yet. 

With infectious guitar riffs in the opening track Wunn!!, awesome bass and synths lines in The Liquidator and awesome drum sampling in Gunshot, it has definitely been an EP that has caught me off guard. Caught me off guard in a very good way. 

Raf Riley is definitely an artist that has such a bright future, he has everything going for him. I am looking forward to seeing what he can come up with in the future because I know it is going to be massive.

You can purchase his Dog Unit tracks as part of The Jeffree's Volume 5 off Beatport. 

Check out Raf on Facebook, Soundcloud and Twitter