South London’s own Greentea Peng steps back into the smoke with her second full-length, TELL DEM IT’S SUNNY, a record that moves like a mood swing. She’s still steeped in mystic rebellion, but this time, the edge feels a bit blurrier. It’s like she’s letting things bend instead of trying to break them. There’s less armor, more vapor - and it suits this set just fine.
That shift in stance hits hardest on “Stones Throw”, one of my favorite tunes on the album. Greentea locks into something celestial on this number, her voice folding between drum-and-bass pulses and haunting string motifs. Her lines are delivered with the weight of someone who’s seen her own undoing and decided to keep dancing anyway. It’s future-soul charged by ancestral memory. And from the first note, it’s clear: this is a high point, if not the peak, on this record. She moves like vapor across the album, hitting her stride again on “One Foot”, a track that feels like bluesy soul with a psych-rock backbone. It’s hypnotic - especially in the choruses, where Peng will probably channel Janis Joplin comparisons from most critics without asking for them. Her raspy alto smolders through distortion and delay, tracing her inner chaos with honesty without asking for a hint of pity.
Elsewhere, the song “TARDIS (hardest)” stomps through the fog like a soundclash sermon. Our sound “gyal” processes rage into poetry, standing ten toes down in her spiritual defiance: “There are no insecure masters / No successful half-hearters.” The vocal filters make it feel like she’s preaching through a megaphone on a hot summer night. TELL DEM IT’S…pivots into tracks like “CREATE OR DESTROY 432” and “Whatcha Mean” both of which bring the tempo up, but the flow wobbles a bit. The message hits—duality, choice, evolution—but the harder-charging beats leave her vocals exposed in a way that undercuts her usual confident cool. The moments are a nice shift in pace, no doubt, but not some of her strongest outings.
Entries like “Green” and her collab with producer Wu-Lu on “My Neck” find a better balance. Built like a diary entry chanted during a witchy seance, it snaps into motion with lines about pain, lust, and spiritual fatigue. The cut feels urgent without being rushed, just like another tense gem on the album called “Raw.” That number finds Peng leaning into synthy and darkly soaring trip-hop to air out emotional collapse and romantic failure. Her voice is a warm whisper on the collarbone one moment, then amped-up and coiled tight the next. She ebbs and flows, but she never lets go.
By the time we reach the album's end with “Bali Skit Pt. 2”, the smoke starts to clear. No words, just dubby echoes and melted thoughts. It’s a slow exhale after a late night/early morning journey through Greentea Peng's life - a blunt in one hand and regrets in the rearview.
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