Slowthai’s 3rd studio album ‘UGLY’ comes exclusively pressed to green and black vinyl LP, limited to 500 copies and hand-numbered to order.

The album cover is suitably up close and personal, with the camera zooming in tight on the left side of his face. The title of the album — an acronym for U Gotta Love Yourself — is freshly tattooed beneath his eye.

Musically, this new album may show a side of him that people haven’t heard before but he sees it as the fullest picture yet - and attentive listeners will have noticed this musical tendency before, on either his Mercury-nominated 2019 debut Nothing Great About Britain with the punk-rock gallop of ‘Doorman’ or a collaboration with rock band Slaves (now renamed Soft Play) on the track ‘Missing’. During radio sessions for his number-one follow-up album, TYRON, he covered The Verve and Elliott Smith. He is as ready to guest with Idles and Gorillaz as he is with Pa Salieu or Disclosure

“The first album was the sound of where I’m from and everything I thought I knew,” he says. “The second album is what was relevant to me at that moment in time, the present. And this album is completely me — about how I feel and what I want to be… it’s everything I’ve been leading up to.” 

Produced by Dan Carey at his home studio in South London and alongside frequent collaborator Kwes Darko, UGLY is a fluid combination of musicians including Ethan P. Flynn, Jockstrap’s Taylor Skye, Beabadoobee guitarist Jacob Bugden, drummer Liam Toon, and on the dark and woozy title track, his friends Fontaines D.C. “They’re men after my own heart, they love what I do, I love what they do. Together it’s amazing.”