Representin’ the 01865
GTA – Wanna Be Myself
Phoenix Down Music – Digital release available: iTunes UK /Amazon.com USA
A hiphop crew out of Oxford? You better believe it. GTA are a couple of lads making sharper waves than the Brasenose Mens’ Eight on the Isis during Torpids. They’ve already played support gigs for KRS-One, Amp Fiddler and Flavor Flav, and they sure sound like someone’s gonna pick them out of the City of Dreaming Spires and put them on a really big stage.
Perhaps being native of a smaller, slower town that isn’t Manchester, Birmingham or London has rubbed off on this crew… GTA’s soul-sampling intelligence is a bit of a change from the usual UK brand of gritty/grimy hiphop.
Their unusually sunny disposition and catchy beatmaking reminds me strangely of some of the Pacific-infused groups out of New Zealand, artists like Nesian Mystik and Tha Feelstyle.
MC Chima Anya has a dayjob as a junior doctor, so it makes sense that their home-made video for Wanna Be Myself is possibly the first hiphop clip filmed in an NHS hospital, with additional scenes taped at Cutteslowe Park in north Oxford. Chima Anya’s partner in rhyme is Ineffable, and he’s a trained accountant (all the better to count the loot when these guys finally make it big).
They’re working on an album, and their first EP Love is Here is available via Paypal, linked on their myspace page.
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[...] last year we talked about Oxford hop hop crew GTA. We quite liked their unashamaed Thames Valley accents and soul-sampling [...]
[...] the next chapter in the story of the hip-hop boys from Oxford, GTA, who we’ve mentioned a few times on the blog. MC Chima Anya has now moved to London, where he’s working in a children’s [...]