Raskit

He hasn’t sounded this vital in years.

Under the circumstances, the obvious thing to do would be to make a Boy in Da Corner redux, as if to remind everyone who was there first. Instead, Raskit is a sparse hip-hop album that attempts to re-establish Rascal not as a pioneer of grime but simply as a superior MC to his peers and followers.

On his sixth outing, grime’s first mainstream MC exposes pretenders to his crown. If 2013’s The Fifth was a rare, guest-heavy misstep that polished off rough edges to brazenly target a transatlantic audience, Raskit junks its predecessor’s egregious schmaltz for marauding bass and spartan trap backings.

Along with his obvious verbal skills – which have never been better – it’s this kind of easy charm and humour that sets Dizzee apart from his rivals.

The 32-year-old's always-phenomenal flow is now matched by weighty content.

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.

If you’d pretty much given up on Dizzee Rascal sounding energised and vital again, Raskit should give you some heart. Figures like Stormzy can pick up the baton and carry on making grime crossover, but Dizzee is still just a rascal and doing his own thing.

That a lane can exist for a veteran like Dizzee to return to his roots while the new generation is still innovating solidifies how exciting of a moment this is for grime.

For his sixth album, Dizzee Rascal doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel. Still a top notch rapper in his ability to unleash verse after verse on his listeners, his style and production does tend to grow a little predictable at times. So do his vocal talents outshine the production or does he too fall into its pitfalls.

Bloated at 16 tracks, it could have been a genuinely strong EP that formed a platform for Dizzee’s return to the sound he helped birth. Alas, whether fairly or not, he appears to disagree with the notion that he should have to take time in reintroducing himself.

The first half of Raskit is some of the most hard-nosed grime you'll hear all year, as well as some of Dizzee Rascal's strongest material since Boy in da Corner. Unfortunately, things go downhill fast shortly thereafter...

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