Reading on mobile? Click here to view video
At the beginning of 2011, UK rapper K Koke, or Kevin Georgiou to his nearest and dearest, had managed to transcend his difficult upbringing on a north London estate to release two massively successful mixtapes (Pure Koke Volumes 1 and 2) and rack up more than 10m YouTube. That led to a record company scramble and a call from Roc Nation, then a meeting with Jay-Z. "He gave me some words of wisdom, humbled me down, yeah, it was love," explains K Koke of the meeting that got him signed. Then it all came crashing down. Koke was arrested for attempted murder on the basis of blurred security camera footage and kept in prison for seven months awaiting trial – a trial that only lasted one day owing to lack of evidence. It's hardly surprising then that the video for Lay Down Your Weapons – the second single to emerge from his forthcoming debut album, I Ain't Perfect, and premiered here – takes place in a prison and aims to reiterate that it's really not a nice place to be, despite the fact that fellow Roc Nation affiliate Rita Ora can be seen perched on the staircase having a bit of a singsong in a hat. Lay Down Your Weapons follows the template of recent UK hip-hop with an eye on the charts, by bolting a sky-scraping chorus on to ominous drum claps and delicate piano (see Professor Green's collaboration with Emeli Sandé). What elevates it, however, is Koke's raspy, passionate delivery, with his grim storytelling pouring out like one long stream of consciousness parable.
• Lay Down Your Weapons is released on 3 March.
