With his new single “Grandmas Kitchen”, Kainine doesn’t so much drop a track as he does release a scent. You hear it immediately—not a sound, but the olfactory ghost of chicken foot soup steaming up a windowpane, a warmth that seeps through the cracks of a brutally cold narrative. The East London artist has built a world here where the ambient comfort of a grandparent’s love coexists with the chilling pragmatism of having to “whip flake” to survive.
Kainine lays his life out like a disjointed map. One street leads to a “broken home,” another to “years on the wing,” and a third dead-ends at the threat to “find your house and burn it down.” It’s a brutal geography. Yet, cutting through it all is this one, unshakeable memory of a kitchen. It’s less a flashback and more of a psychic anchor, a reminder of a life that was once simpler, grounded. For a moment, I stopped thinking about the beat and instead remembered the peculiar, dusty-sweet smell of the inside of my own grandmother’s spice cabinet. It’s an odd detour, but this track inspires them.
The delivery is key. There’s a laid-back, almost conversational cadence to Kainine’s flow, which makes the violent, high-stakes storytelling all the more arresting. He’s not shouting his ambition; he’s stating it as a fact born from necessity. He needs a mansion to escape being a “broke savage,” and the music itself—conceived behind bars—feels like the most potent form of that escape. It’s a rebellion waged not with a weapon, but with a memory.
This song doesn’t ask for sympathy; it simply presents its evidence. A life of harsh realities, measured in ounces and prison sentences, all of it underwritten by one unwavering vision. It leaves you wondering what part of your own past still smells like home, even when you’re a world away from the stove.
