![]() The album’s centerpiece is “Lesley,” an 11-minute story-song about a pregnant girl who’s in an abusive relationship. On growing up fatherless: “Used to cry about my dad till my eyes burned / Nose running / You don’t know nothing.” On petty street feuds: “He told me it’s on when he sees me / I barely remember why we’re beefing.” On the assumptions he sees people making about young black men: “You see our gold chains and our flashy cars / I see a lack of self-worth, and I see battle scars.” On his brother’s incarceration: “I remember when you got sentenced and I was throwing up / It’s like they took a piece of my freedom when I had opened up.” (That one features his brother calling on a prison phone, offering encouragement.) On the wages of fame: “Depression when you make it, the pressure and the hatred / Your people talking about you, you can’t say shit / The moment that you ain’t it, the labels are looking for replacements.” There are skits on Psychodrama, and they all come in the form of a therapist speaking, urging Dave to think deeply about the situations he’s describing. Other things are happening now: road rap, UK drill, Dave. And now UK rap seems to be hitting a whole new era - a time when it finally divests itself from that whole pirate-radio dance-music universe, when it develops whole new post-grime sounds and aesthetics. Drake and A$AP Rocky started throwing Skepta on songs, and Stormzy became one of the biggest stars in the UK. When grime had its big resurgence a couple of years ago, things changed, and the rest of the world started catching up. After the initial grime boom faded, people like Dizzee and Wiley scored massive UK hits, rapping over cheesed-out EDM tracks, but nothing was happening over there that would make an American fan pay a lot of attention. But even Mike Skinner was part of that pirate-radio world. The Streets were always a distinctly lyrics-first proposition, more about storytelling than beats. And lyrics have always mattered in UK rap, too. UK-based rappers have made dents: Monie Love, the “Man’s Not Hot” guy. British-born rappers have had massive impacts on American rap: Slick Rick, MF DOOM, 21 Savage. That’s a simplistic pocket history, of course.
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