The glimmering guitars on the psychedelic “Full On” juxtapose the lyrical poignancy of “I’ve paid the cost for being poor” on despondent indie ballad “Collateral Cause”. Download the Qobuz apps for smartphones, tablets and computers, and listen to your purchases wherever you go. With cult British brands drawn to Hak’s warm character and also his grit and political stance, Hak has also collaborated with legendary photographer Rankin on his first HUNGER cover, Fred Perry and Levis.

It gives you a sense of ownership, because you’re segregated — this is where I’m from, so I must look after this place at all costs. Building on the street-level stories and bruised geezer confessionals of his output since 2017’s career-launching Misfits EP, World’s End FM takes the form of a pirate radio broadcast from the edge of armageddon. Sharing new single ‘Windrush Baby’ alongside the news, Hak says, “Windrush affected people in a multitude of ways. Horan’s emotional acuity, his musicianship, and confidence in his own instincts are there for all to see.It’s no surprise that Baker is passionate and animated when discussing the damage done by successive Tory governments to working class people across the UK. The fact Horan can then pull off “Save My Life”, a pacey Eighties thriller complete with jubilant sax noodling, is even more impressive. Featuring a voice note from his mother about the “loss of values” within British Black youth whilst addressing Hak, the song is a powerful ode to lost souls and the real motherland; Jamaica. After playing recent single ‘Windrush Baby’, he necks his bottle of beer and is quickly handed a new one.

East End troubadour Hak Baker announces his highly-anticipated debut album, W orlds End FM, an extraordinary creative leap tailor-made for an era of social inequity, internet addiction and post-pandemic disillusionment, to be released on 9 June 2023 on Hak Attack Records, AWAL. It’s not afraid to get dark, but there’s humour too – on record, as on the stage, Hak Baker is irrepressible. Early singles such as “On the Loose” showed an affinity for Fleetwood Mac bass grooves and California dreaming. I wanna slow down a bit, enjoy the sun and go to my country that has been left in tatters from foreign politics,” he says.The debut album from London's finest, Hak Baker - 'Worlds End FM' represents the war in Hak's mind, the culture war on the streets of London and the individual battles of his community - from his mother to his brother to his best friends. In the process, Baker bursts through reggae, indie, and post-punk, weaving in snippets of phone-ins from friends and family, which tackle subjects as serious as digital obsession, mental health, and suicide.

While it’s entirely authentic, there’s also a clear sense that Baker’s friendly, street storyteller persona provides him with a vital outlet. God only knows where this could go,” Niall Horan wonders on “Heaven”, the lead single from his third and best album. NME meets Baker and his bandmates in The Eagle pub three hours before his Friday headline show at The Great Escape. You Could Start a Cult” is a romantic lullaby crafted from soft acoustic guitar strumming, Horan’s warm timbre, and a Dylan-indebted harmonica solo.I’m an MC and poet all the same,” it is Hak’s rebel music and artistic integrity that sets him apart and puts him at the vanguard of British culture in 2023.

He fesses up to his own insecurities on “If You Leave Me” and reassures a friend on the brink of “Meltdown”. As Hak Baker sways and strums his way through the final notes of fan favourite track ‘Venezuela Riddim’, he’s met with a sea of colour. Despite the apocalyptic gloom of ‘World’s End FM’, it’s an album overflowing with love, spirit and unity. The pointed, Mike Skinner-isms of opener ‘DOOLALLY (Unreleased)’ and the angular rock of ‘Telephones 4 Eyes’ offer a brief window to what he is capable of, but these darker moments are few and far between, for the most part Baker falls back on that signature indie pop sound that threatens to deceive. Certainly, it sets him apart from his peers whose paramours appear to exist solely as a collection of body parts: green eyes, red lips, curved hips.

With his love of language stemming from a childhood of asking his mother what certain words meant, and being told to “go and look up in the dictionary”, Hak’s style and execution blends a combination of cockney dialect picked up from growing up in the Isle of Dogs, Jamaican Patois from his mother and grandmother and a flow developed from his younger years as a Grime MC. They] still dig up the earth, still pollute the sky, even though they have the ability to do otherwise: it’s insanity. It’s the straight-spine afforded by Hak Baker’s upbringing as a Caribbean-heritage, working class east Londoner – the muslim dad who always reminded him to look a man in the eye; the older sister who bailed him out of jail when his mum refused to; the hard-won, cross-cultural unity that he helped foster between the factions of white kids and black kids on the Isle of Dogs – that makes him the man that he is and suffuses World’s End FM with its humanity and warmth. This “sensationalised” character is present across Baker’s long-awaited debut record, ‘World’s End FM’. I think people get confused and they don’t really know where to put me,” says Hak, who remembers being nicknamed ‘Cockney’ by fellow black inmates in prison because of the supposedly confusing way he spoke.