None The Wiser

On 2021’s *Free Game*, Sam Wise gave out the goods gained across a prolific five-year run with five-piece rap collective House of Pharaohs. Follow up *None the Wiser* sees the Londoner take an even greater leap towards enlightenment. “I think it’s easy for music to come from a desperate place,” he tells Apple Music. “Desperate for likes, for views, money, attention…but this comes from a very raw, honest, and courageous place. For me, this EP is monumental. I’m always creating—but I develop by testing things out, it’s trial and error, so I still feel none the wiser.” As Sam tells it on opener “Guess Who’s Back,” his vibration is carefully crafted to reach as many people as possible. On bright production from kadiata, Jamo Beatz, and 808Charmer, the Kennington spitter gifts a suite of exploratory rap anthems and sweeps through a spectrum of emotion. There’s no end of excitement (“Chattin’s”), gratitude (“Thankful”), and clear-eyed reflection (with Nigerian alté star Maison2500 on “The Game Is the Game”) offered here in bouncy lifestyle rhymes and languid flows. Yes, the slick talk continues to pour out effortlessly, but with new learnings added to the mix, *None the Wiser* readies a new phase for one of the UK’s most prominent indie rhymers. “2018 was probably the last year of what was the normal. 2019 was a buffer year. And 2020 was really a reset,” he says. “So after *Free Game*, I was listening to music, going through my own stuff like, ‘Wow, I need to put this frequency out and share it with the people.” Read on for a track-by-track guide to his new EP. **“Guess Who’s Back”** “This track approaches the fact that I haven’t dropped in a while, so here’s some light flair for \[the fans\]. What I love most is all the different elements: You’ve got this soulful sample, you’ve got the hip-hop, trap drums, it almost goes drill, and then it’s back to trappy again. And I’m putting on an old-school rap flow, like, ‘We’re fully certain, it don’t need confirming/My passport Brit, but my car is German.’ It’s lazy, it’s offbeat. I love that.” **“Thankful”** “I feel like we’re in such an uncertain time because of how fast technology is evolving, our behaviors are changing, and there’s so much drama going on in the world. A state of gratitude is a great tool against some of that suffering that by default we have to face as humans. You can’t say one day, ‘I’ve got gratitude,’ and then live your life. Gratitude is a practice. And it’s a process, it’s ongoing. I think the word ‘practice’ is dope as well. It reminds that gratitude is something that needs exercising. And the more you do it, you adjust your lens to seeing things differently.” **“Chattin’s”** “This track was made by \[British producer and rapper\] Charmer, who I’ve got a good rapport of making music with, primarily with his crew, 808INK. He’s an incredible producer, and we’ve made a song that you can’t really compare to anything else of mine. I really liked the journey of my verse in particular. And the topics that I cover. I think this is a sick balance of the key things that we love in hip-hop: heavy production designed with care, and charismatic rhymes from the artist—with a nice level of sophistication and finesse.” **“Coupe:Humble”** “I get excited when I reminisce on how pure we made this. I had just dropped *Free Game* at the start of 2022. And I’m back in the studio and with \[British producer and rapper\] kadiata, creating new stuff, and he had this crazy beat. He’s really a genius with the production. It sounds like grime with a hint of trap—a really sick dynamic between the two areas that I take influence from. The drums go *boom, boom, boom, boom* before the one \[beat\], and that’s what I started writing to, so I come in like: ‘But, but, but, wait!’ How am I starting a song like that? That’s the stuff I love, it’s like taking the piss with the \[song\] structure, in the best way.” **“The Game Is the Game” (feat. Maison2500)** “‘The game is the game’ is a phrase you can read in so many ways. To me it means: ‘Get on with it.’ Just do it. Acceptance is also a very important factor. There’s a level of acceptance that comes with knowing what you can and can’t control, which brings me to an old lyric of mine: ‘I took control by letting go. I know that\'s hard to grasp.’” **“Fever”** “Man, this is a special track to me. In terms of the structure, how I’ve done the hook, I’m proud of being able to write something that has such feeling. I love my music to have that magic in it, and this record has that. I love music that’s introspective, but not in a demeaning way. ‘Who’s going to love me if I don’t love myself?/Who’s going to trust me if I don’t trust myself?’ They’re genuine lyrics based on what I’ve been going through and how I’m feeling about my movements. And kadiata closes it out with the keys, which we decided to keep clean, with no speech or extra production around it.”

Sam Wise is a student of the craft. A rapper who wants to have input on every area of his art, he’s able to blend sober observations with hilarious