Album Review: Allday - Speeding

In Plato's ideal city, as conceived in his political masterpiece The Republic, music (or poetry; the two were synonymous) seen as suspect was to be banned for corrupting the minds of the young and impressionable.

If Plato had Homer in mind (or at least large sections of The Iliad), guessing at the man's thoughts on modern music doesn't seem like a difficult task. "Me and my animals like Ace Ventura / Your Coca-Cola areola that tastes like sugar", raps Allday on In Motion, a track saved with genuinely beautiful production from Japanese Wallpaper. Speeding is the South Australian's second album, and the theme, appropriately enough, is excess.

While many Australian rappers seem content to make music for lounging on Bondi Beach, or whose influences are the first three Tribe albums and not much else, Allday's music is in the here and now. If you close your eyes, you might even be led to think this was Tory Lanez or (maybe too optimistically) Travis Scott, only with strange references to a place called "Melbourne". This isn't to say that Allday's music is derivative; only that it's strikingly contemporary enough to be compared with those artists. All that remain, though, are the lyrics. "Have the pussy wetter than Gyarados", he informs us. It's Greek to me.