Loyle Carner finds purpose in love and family on hopefully !

Carner has never shied away from his sensitive side; tracks on his debut project Yesterday’s Gone (2017) featured musings on the sister he never had, his love for his mother and his disdain for lustful relationships. On hugo, Carner rejected his softhearted persona to unleash his righteous angst at the world, how it perceives him and his mixed-race identity, and how his newborn son is positioned in that world. Almost three years later, hopefully ! builds on hugo by taking an inward-facing look at Carner’s life and family and the ways they have changed – or stayed the same – since the record that came before.

It would be wrong to view hopefully ! as a step back into Carner’s comfort zone based on a surface assessment. The live band used throughout the record gives hopefully ! a relaxed and blissful undertone, enriching the feeling of sunbathing or watching a sunset that Carner’s repeated mentions of the sun craft in the listener’s head. Vocally, the rapper pushes his boundaries more than perhaps ever before. Carner tries his hand at singing on “lyin” and “strangers”, having previously left that job up to collaborators. It is pure and even wholesome, and it is hard not to feel like you’re sitting next to Carner as he sings a lullaby to his newborn daughter, whom he and his girlfriend welcomed into the world during the record’s recording sessions.

Carner also experiments with downbeat, lazier rap flows on tracks such as “in my mind” and “don’t fix it”, reminiscent of Earl Sweatshirt or Navy Blue. The latter uncoincidentally features on “purpose”, an affirmative track about the important parts of life keeping both artists motivated through life’s traumas and tribulations.

Carner wrestles with the weight of his own worries, such as on the titular track “hopefully”, which features a timely interlude from the late poet Benjamin Zephaniah on the conditions which lead to protest. Managing the anxieties of the outside world and the parental responsibilities of fatherhood at the same time is no easy feat, but hopefully exists in the individual moments that make it worthwhile. The first sounds of the opening track are a xylophone played by Carner’s son, while on several instances throughout the record the voices of children can be heard behind guitar strums and piano chords. A voice crack and chuckle on “hopefully” serves as a microcosm of the record’s purity, its imperfection and the beauty in our grounding in the love we foster. Fatherhood is often told as a story of how a parent molds their child, raises them and comforts them as they navigate through life. On hopefully !, Carner flips this script, showing how one’s children can instead be their comforter through times of anxiety, pain and trauma.