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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.

Boy In Da Corner
by Dizzee Rascal


9.1

based on 28 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 118 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album

This is the debut disc for the 18-year-old London-based rapper (born Dylan Mills), who has been heralded by (among others) Uncut magazine as "good as any MC currently active on Earth."

LABEL:	Matador / XL
RELEASE DATE:	20 January 2004
DISCS:	1 disc
GENRE(S):	Rap, Electronic

NOTES: Original UK release 21 July 2003 on XL.

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

PopMatters

It is an album that can be loved as both an achievement and an experience, a document and a revelation; it is simultaneously a problem to be solved and a spectacle to simply witness.

100

Junkmedia

Corner's gutter low ends, amphetamine drum programming, and Dizzee's cockney slang-spitting place this record among rap's paradigmatic moments.

100

Uncut

The best rapper this country's ever produced, period.... Next to Dizzee Rascal everybody looks pale, uninteresting and irrelevant. [Sep 2003, p.98]

100

Mojo

Brilliantly original. [Aug 2003, p.106]

100

The Guardian

The most original and exciting artist to emerge from dance music in a decade.

Stylus Magazine

Most of Boy in Da Corner's most compelling moments come from this uneasy interaction between irrational youth and ultra-rational mechanized society.

Pitchfork

Dizzee's despairing wail, focused anger, and cutting sonics places him on the front lines in the battle against a stultifying Britain, just as Pete Townshend, Johnny Rotten, and Morrissey have been in the past.

Spin

The flow is straight-up alien: chilled-out and frantic at the same time, slightly breathless. [Feb 2004, p.95]

Village Voice (Consumer Guide)

His adolescent gulps and yowls are street-Brit with a Jamaican liquidity, as lean, eccentric, and arresting as the beats.

E! Online

It's as gripping as N.W.A.'s groundbreaking Straight Outta Compton.

New Musical Express

One of the most assured debut albums of the last five years.

Splendid

If Boy In Da Corner marks the beginning of distinctly British hip-hop, the genre's standards are already impressively high.

Neumu.net

Boy in da Corner defies genre in a defiant manner, refusing to be defined, refusing, even, to be dismissed.

The Onion (A.V. Club)

It all makes for a bleak spread, but Rascal rises up as a singular musical presence too brimming and perceptive to let the coarse world around him pass by untouched.

All Music Guide

Startling, tirelessly powerful, and full of unlimited dimensions.

Village Voice

When Dizzee thinks very deeply--worrying about growing up, about those around him who won't grow up, about dying before he grows up--he sounds like, what else can we call it, the real thing.

Los Angeles Times

A dance syncretism made of menacing beats skittering from dark dancehall to mashed-up jungle, super-warped bass frequencies, stark anti-hooks, and a voice that is the most authentic to emerge in years. [18 Jan 2004]

ShakingThrough.net

One of the most refreshing hip-hop records in quite some time.

CultureDose.net

On a level of pure listening enjoyment, Boy In Da Corner isn't quite an Original Pirate Material; but it does succeed in establishing that Dizzee Rascal deserves a place right at the forefront of the UK Urban movement.

Blender

His hard-edged, dance-inflected debut makes East London sound like the new Dirty South. [Jan 2004, p.108]

Launch.com

He hasn’t made a great album, but even Tupac never managed that; the bombed-out landscape of Boy In Da Corner burns instead with all the anger, confusion and messed-up desperation of youth.

Rolling Stone

If you want a vision of the future of hip-hop and techno, get this record.

Billboard

Adventurous listeners are in for a treat.

Dot Music

Delivering his lyrics in a breathless barrage, 'Boy In Da Corner' packs the energy flash of London MCing into its grooves and for that alone it deserves attention.

Entertainment Weekly

One of the strangest, bumpiest musical journeys we're likely to experience on record this year. [16 Jan 2004, p.68]

Playlouder

Not much here is too likely to blow up on the airwaves... it's too dirty, too ugly, too hard, and too Real.

Q Magazine

[A] strikingly stark and innovative debut. [Sep 2003, p.102]

Urb

Dizzee's production style is impressive.... His flow is urgent and coherent. [Mar 2004, p.109]

The average user rating for this album is 9.1 (out of 10) based on 118 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

ash p gave it a0:
'o all you guys chattin bout hip hop or garage and tryin to rate it by those standards better shh hut yuh muh', 'sikkkkkkkk album bruv 'sittin here' is a bad tune big up all my blazers!!!' 'standard dis album is big out here. no long ting straight up and down big' - to quote a few, do you know how stupid you sound seriously!

ryan s. gave it a10:
sikkkkkkkk album bruv 'sittin here' is a bad tune big up all my blazers!!!

Dan A gave it a10:
An AMAZING album. Dizzee Rascal is a great artist and single handedly got me into the Grime genre.

natahn a gave it a10:
it is the best

Blah Blah gave it a10:
My favorite album of all time

Rachel xxx gave it a10:
well wat cn i sey except FKIN amazin!!!!this lad has so much talent lv im so much!!!!!!!keep it up Dizzy bbe xxxxx

Michael C gave it a10:
This is nearly an impossible listen to get all the way through in the first listen. You will simply be over-whelmed by all of it at first, but slowly it starts to make sense, and reveals itself as being original and smart. Even though I love the album as much as I do I have a hard time digesting it all in one listen, you'll know what I mean when you hear it. There isn't a dull track on the album, they are all special in a serperate way. Dizzee's crazy amounts of flows puts him up there with the likes up Eric B, Tupac, Snoop, and Biggy, it truly is an amazing album, even if you don't like hip/hop you should still get this, in what i've found the "rap heads" have had a harder time grasping this album than the "rap haters" have. Do It! is one of the greatest songs of all.

Boy In Da Corner by Dizzee Rascal

Boy In Da Corner
by Dizzee Rascal