When our editorial team decided to put together a countdown of the best Australian albums of the decade so far, there was plenty of competition for the top spot.
In the end, one album stood out above the rest: Genesis Owusu’s exhilarating debut, Smiling with No Teeth.
“Genesis Owusu’s debut album represents a new blueprint of what hip-hop can be,” our initial review praised.
The debut album for Ghanaian-Australian artist Kofi Owusu-Ansah was politically charged, speaking to Owusu’s status as a proud outsider, rejecting assimilation in favour of creating a unique sound that broke genre stereotypes and expectations in equal amounts.
Critics lapped up Owusu’s album’s diversity, with it appearing on multiple year-end lists in 2021. Our review’s headline really said it all: “Genesis Owusu’s Smiling with No Teeth is the making of a music giant.”
NME also loved the album. “The Canberran artist defies the conventions of Australian hip-hop, personalising jazz-funk, punk and folk on his debut,” the publication wrote, going further to praise it as a “transcendent conceptual opus” in a four-star review.
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Smiling with No Teeth cracked the top 30 at its peak, settling in at number 27 on the charts.
Thankfully, the album received the praise it deserved come awards season. At the 2022 AIR Awards, it won Independent Album of the Year and Best Independent Hip Hop Album or EP; at the 2021 ARIA Awards, it walked home with four nominations and three wins — Album of the Year, Best Hip Hop Release, and Best Independent Release. That success continued with wins at the Australian Music Prize, J Awards and our own 2022 Rolling Stone Australia Awards, where it won Best Record.
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And Owusu is far from done.
He unleashed his new single, “PIRATE RADIO”, today.
Once again melding sharp punk production with hard-hitting rap, Owusu’s first new music in two years offers an unsettling glimpse of our broken-apart world.
“The rich are getting richer and us regulars are eating each other alive. Smoke-screened by paranoia-inducing culture wars and our own growing poverty. ‘There is no war in Ba Sing Se’ type shit,” Owusu says.
“Someone’s gotta sound the alarm and break the hypnosis. And that someone isn’t going to be the guy saying immigrants are eating your cats and they probably won’t have a billion dollars in their bank account either. If Elon Musk has no more haters then I’m dead.”
Listen above.
Check out our full 100 Best Australian Albums of the 2020s So Far list here.
