Ayar is Here With His New ‘Keeping Up With The Neighbours’ EP

British rapper and songwriter Ayar has been laying low all year, but before 2019 is over, the East London native of Nigerian heritage is excited to release his brand new project titled Keeping Up With The Neighbours, being his fifth project in the last three years.

Ayar is known for his great storytelling, smooth jazz instrumentation, vivid lyricism, deep cut samples, and rap sensibilities. His hard hitting rap records about growing up and trying to survive in London tackle difficult themes of love, hate, family, growth, and the black British male experience.

Keeping Up With The Neighbours EP stems “from me dwelling on situations being dictated to me, because I was trying to keep up with my surroundings”, according to Ayar. The 6-track project opens up with the almost autobiographical ‘Puddles’ about the rapper‘s growing pains in East London, closing with ‘Sovereign’, which sees Ayar coming to terms with his current life. The rest of the EP sees Ayar learning how to look up instead of staying down.

Speaking about the inspiration for his Keeping Up With The Neighbours EP, Ayar says, “The inspiration for this project came from me really pondering on how, because I’m trying to keep up with my surroundings, I’m ultimately being dictated to by whatever situation is in front of me. In the 1936 book, ‘The Next 100 Years’, Clifford C. Furnas writes that the phenomenon of ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ is descended from the spreading of the peacock’s tail. Perception rules a lot of people’s lives in a negative and positive way, something I thought perfectly summed up where my thought process is, at the moment”.