A ‘Lil Birdy’ says that TE dness [@TE_dness] is back

TE makes his 2020 return to music with ‘Lil Birdy’.

‘Lil Birdy’ is the latest drop from West London’s TE dness. TE has been bubbling steadily across the past few years and is a name you should have seen around. Within the industry people definitely know who he is with him having collaborations with artists like Stormzy, Scorcher, Smoke Boys and more. Having had a big year in 2019 with the release of Full Circle he was due to end the year on a big high with a sold out headline show. Unfortunately, that has had to be rescheduled and he spent some time away.

Now back and with a hungry energy ‘Lil Birdy’ is the first of what I can only imagine will be a steady stream of tracks. The track samples the internationally renowned hit ‘Rapture’ by Koffee, but it, of course, gets a little flip production-wise. Producer Nifty Struggle hits the right balance of keeping that sample recognisable without it feeling like a straight carbon copy of the original track. Somehow it is both a tropically and trap-influenced reimagining of the beat, although the trap influence may actually more be down to the lyrical content.

This isn’t actually the first time TE has tackled a fellow Jamaican artist’s track. Back in 2014 he joined forces with E. Mak to cover Popcaan‘s ‘Everything Nice’.

The track, which has gained heavy playlist support on Spotify, hits all the notes we’ve come to expect from TE. On ‘Lil Birdy’ we, of course, get the trap talk, but he also gets into some detail about his time away. Clearly during that time he’s kept his pen game on point. The lyricism in this one is high, he has a particularly nice internal rhyme scheme when he says:

Beyond this, he has some nods to his other work like the aforementioned Full Cirlce as well as his track ‘Back On My Sh*t’.

‘Lil Birdy’ is a nice return to form for TE, and for those paying attention, you will know he’s got a project on the horizon. On the opening he says “April’s coming” and whilst it’s true that April is coming he isn’t referring to the month so much as he is referring to his mixtape series. Clearly, in 2020, we can expect a third entry to the April Showers series. It will be interesting to see what TE pulls out for that one as he is off the back of a masterpiece of a project so the standard he’s set is extremely high.

You can stream ‘Lil Birdy’ track here.