Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
FHM may have closed, but lad culture is as strong as ever, finding a new home in The Lad Bible and Unilad. The trend hasn’t quite found its soundtrack yet, but Tom Zanetti is here to fix that. Although he makes dance music, he’s not actually a producer, but a “vocal MC” (his own description – clearly recognising that calling himself a rapper would be going too far). His regular collaborator Ko Kane takes care of the music, while Tom takes cares of the talking. Coming from Leeds, the 27-year-old club promoter represents a new generation of the northern club scene, moved on from the days of Clubland and donk. His new video for You Want Me, a track which he’s been playing live since at least 2012, fittingly features the stars of Ex on the Beach and Celebrity Big Brother, and the “lad” you’d hoped never to hear of again, Dapper Laughs. It might seem out of date to those of us who live in a social media bubble where nobody wanted Brexit and all dance music sounds like Justin Bieber, but there’s clearly a big audience for this very British proposition.