‘Maddie’ & ‘Blame’ came as a joint drop from what could be a very strong rap duo in Deema & Kish!.

South London’s young stars Deema and Kish! collab on double release ‘Maddie’ & ‘Blame’. You may recognise them as members of Lewisham’s The Square crew, but both have embarked on solo careers. Whilst the audio was released last year, the duo have only just released the second visual ‘Blame’. As such it is a great time to look back at both singles because they are definitely interesting.

‘Maddie’

The first track to receive the visual treatment from the pair and my personal favourite of the two. The video to the track is good, but it had so much more potential due to the content of the song. Not every video needs to mirror the narrative of the track, but some do – and ‘Maddie’ definitely should have.

It is a tongue in cheek record exploring both Deema and Kish!‘ respective escapades with women and their comic perspectives on the events. Beyond it being funny, the duo show that they have real lyrical ability on a topic that could have otherwise become monotonous. Deema kicks the song off with Kish! following with his verse before Deema returns to close the track out. Whilst Maddie might have had the track named after her and been the main focus of Deema‘s first verse plenty of others get mentioned, especially by Kish!. This takes it away from an ode to a lover and closer in line to DMX‘s ‘What They Really Want’ – which also spawned the recent #dmxchallenge.

‘Blame’

‘Blame’ is an appropriate follow up to ‘Maddie’, it stays on the topic of women but with a bit of a different spin. To me it is a more shallow record, it loses the humour and narrative element but amps up the braggadocious nature. That makes the record more shallow as it covers ground that has been covered in that same way plenty of times before. It’s by no means a bad track, it’s just difficult to not compare ‘Blame’ to ‘Maddie’ when they arrived as a package deal. Objectively, ‘Blame’ is run of the mill in terms of content but with above-average production.

The video is good and the format arguably suits ‘Blame’ much better than ‘Maddie’. There isn’t a clear narrative line in ‘Blame’ so a more simplistic video works. The choices of location are also on point in the video with the editing only lending power to this.

The pair of tracks are interesting, and it’s clear which one my favourite is. But don’t let me steer you away from making your own decision, take a listen for yourself. Equally, check out Deema and Kish!‘ solo work as they are extremely talented and good at what they do whether they come together as a duo or not.