Raskit

The 32-year-old's always-phenomenal flow is now matched by weighty content. [Sep 2017, p.112]

Raskit is a risky album. Luckily for the man who made it, he has the skills to make the risk pay off handsomely.

Ironically, despite the phalanxes of American producers involved in the album, it actually sounds less desperately transatlantic than The Fifth, possibly due to Dizzee’s enjoyment in using parochial British expletives like “bloody” and “knackers.”

Raskit junks its predecessor’s egregious schmaltz for marauding bass and spartan trap backings. They amplify a biting double-time flow his nearest rivals would readily trade jaws for, Dizzee slaying his competition on Focus and Wot U Gonna Do? and literally eating them for dinner on Space (“Can’t find enough time to dine on rappers / All these MCs are looking like tapas”). There’s depth, too.

He hasn’t sounded this vital in years.

For just a few moments [on "Slow Your Roll"] there’s an unmistakeable sense that what’s already a decent album could have been a whole lot better, could have been inspirational. [Sep 2017, p.50]

As well as this angrier, more focused lyrical approach, some of the arrangements on Raskit are pleasingly minimal.

Grime at its best is defined by its steely economy, which makes Raskit’s rambling length and diluted focus frustrating. As a platform for Dizzee's flashy lyrical dexterity, Raskit does more than enough to shift the bitter aftertaste of The Fifth. With more of the laser-eyed focus that marked Boy in Da Corner, it could have been a triumph.

He is clearly putting the time in on Raskit and not short-changing his considerable talent as a vocalist.

Raskit--his sixth album--is the veteran MC’s back-to-basics response, some of it predictable but much of it riveting.