This is UK duo Snakehips (aka Oliver and James). You might remember them from their chart stonker ‘All My Friends’, featuring Tinashe and Chance The Rapper, which hit the top five here in Australia and popped across the triple platinum line for sales in excess of 210,000 copies.
For their second chart helping, however, they’ve teamed up with former One Directioner Zayn Malik, who’s keen as mustard to cast off his boyband past and forge ahead as a serious artist on his own terms, making the music he wants to make.
‘Cruel’ heads right back to the stuff of the early ’90s (just the way the Snakehips boys like it, apparently), with plenty of good grooves and real percussion, over which Zayn provides his own brand of laid-back vocal.
Plenty to like about it. But will it receive the same level of chart attention as its predecessor? Only time will tell.
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