THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Rizzle Kicks’ new album, Competition Is For Losers, features a dynamic collection of 14 tracks — including the singles Javelin, Gumdrops and New Sport — showcasing the duo’s newly refined sound. Marking their first album release in over a decade, they delve into themes of evolution, growth, and maturity.
The project sees them return to the pop music space sober, both in love and equipped with life lessons, self-awareness and self development they’ve built on separately — all the while retaining their sense of humour that always set them apart from other artists.
“We allude to the fact that we acted off the cultural encouragement and the reality of the time,” says Jordan “Rizzle” Stephens, speaking on behalf of bandmate Harley “Sylvester” Alexander-Sule. “I think now we’d like to believe that we’ve distanced ourselves from those just through experience.”
Themes on this album include sobriety: “Not in a prescriptive way. But more like we did a lot of crazy stuff, but now we don’t,” and paternity. “Not just with Harley becoming a father and all the growth that comes with that role, but also in a larger sense as we get older we feel a responsibility to share our wins and our failures.”
A sense of values comes through on the album, with less of a black-and-white perspective that people often hold when they are younger, before we have had our worlds shattered, and had to put them back together. Most importantly, the music is undeniably feel-good, clearly coming from a more sustainable, happy and healthy place.”
