Big Conspiracy

Big Conspiracy is an album that certifies J Hus as one of the most influential artists in UK music.

A major step up for J Hus, and the first notable British rap album of the 2020s, Big Conspiracy was a well-deserved success, debuting at number one on the U.K. album chart and spawning several Top 40 hits.

Hus’s second album Big Conspiracy is the refined work of a man who’s emerging calloused and implacable from a tough decade, most recently a 2017 conviction for carrying a knife which cost him eight months and a string of festival appearances. Through it all, his music has swayed joyously escapist more than harrowing or politically charged. [Apr 2020, p.56]

The tension between invigorating, often exhilarating joyful music and disconcertingly bleak subject matter may be one hardwired into hip-hop tradition, but J Hus's innovative, genre-defying style and evocative, elliptical lyrics prove it can still be an intoxicating combination. [Apr 2020, p.107]

Big Conspiracy is Hus’s second chance – an album that proves he’s just as essential a part of UK music today as he was three years ago.

Full of unexpectedly bittersweet horns and electric guitar, his mellow confidence here eschews clutter and bombast.

His pivot toward interiority gives his songs a new dimension. His bars are simple, straightforward, and can occasionally lean toward fortune-cookie wisdom (“Get the bread, avoid the drama/You can avoid the feds but not the karma,” he raps on “Fight For Your Right”), but throughout the album, he seems to be growing more secure in himself.

‘Big Conspiracy’ never fully sits in one place, this ever-evolving puzzle with J Hus at the core. He wears many masks, but it’s often when these slip that ‘Big Conspiracy’ is at its most viral, and revealing.