Two experimental worlds collide on Pressure, the debut collaborative album from Kenyan-British innovator mau from nowhere and genre-blurring producer hihi. A cross-continental meeting of minds, the record is a daring dive into alternative hip-hop, R&B, electronic textures, and Afro-soul—pulling listeners into a soundscape where contradiction feels like catharsis.
Though raised oceans apart, the pair found themselves in London, each navigating the intensity of unfamiliar terrain. In that chaos, they discovered a mutual affinity for the fringes of hip-hop—a shared sonic vocabulary that thrived in collage and tension. Pressure is the outcome: a record both chaotic and delicate, playful and profound. “A huge part of this project was playing telephone with a lot of the rap music we grew up on,” they explain. “Honouring a sound that’s been so formative for both of us as artists while still infusing our own unique styles into this story of diving into a new space, drowning, and doing our best to continue treading water.”
Across its 11 tracks, Pressure is a sprawling mosaic. The opener “here we are again” roars with Madlib-esque spontaneity, while “peace:war” slides into syrupy dissonance. “what’s all this then” spins melancholic absurdity through breakbeats and skewed guitar rhythms, contrasted by the soulful stillness of “let it pass.” Elsewhere, “portals” shimmers with escapist optimism, “e6” grooves with romantic ease, and “a_m_h” bursts into electric bravado, pulling Nairobi’s finest into an exuberant posse cut. The album’s emotional core hits on “Green hill zone,” where mau confronts mortality and love in a raw, stripped moment, before “miss you” and “silly” bring a tender close—reminders not to take life too seriously.
The beauty of Pressure lies in its contradictions. It’s at once an homage to hip-hop’s legacy and a disruption of it; a dialogue between two artists whose approaches couldn’t be more different, yet somehow converge into something seamless. It’s expansive without losing intimacy, eclectic without losing focus.