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Music

This Skepta Speech Put over a Minimal House Track Is More Inspiring Than Shia LaBeouf

“I ain’t never ever walked anywhere and needed to know what the square root of anything is, in this whole life."

This article originally appeared on Noisey UK.

Remember that “Sunscreen” song your mum used to like back when she still listened to Radio 1 on the weekends? The motivational spoken word one that really drummed home how you should always slap on the St Tropez when you’re on your hols otherwise you’d look like a fake camel skin handbag by the time you’re 43, but also worked as a handbook for living a happier life? Well, this new Skepta tribute track from UK producer Walter Ego is a bit like that song, except instead of resonating with Colin and Edith fans, this one is for the grime-consuming, post-austerity, Tory-hating, trippy house shuffling, debt-ridden youth of modern Britain in 2015.

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The song is just called “Skepta” and is essentially the man himself speaking with godlike realness and piercing clarity for about seven minutes over a trippy minimal house track. Touching hard on humorous jibes at the British education system—“I ain’t never ever walked anywhere and needed to know what the square root of anything is, in this whole life. I don’t need to know the square root of shit”—to pure introspective reflections on what it’s like to be constantly on the firing end of everyday prejudice—“when you’re walking down the road, and women are holding their handbags when they see you coming, and after everything they show on the news, I don’t even think it’s wrong for them to do that”—it’s basically like hearing a contemporary sermon on salvation but in Berghain on a Sunday morning.

Skepta fans will know this speech already: It's taken from a 30-minute monologue he recorded in his living room and published on YouTube back in 2012, but for anyone who doesn’t, here lie some concrete truisms that whip even harder over a bit of atmospheric UK bass. How much the North London MC knows about it, we’re not too sure.

Watch Walter Ego's track below, and the original Skepta video it's ripped from after that.

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