| Dizzee Rascal — Maths + English
If you’re anything like me, Dizzee Rascal has always been one of those artists that has been just barely “under the radar” — I knew he was there, I kind of knew roughly the sort of thing he did, and I knew he had a large following, but somehow I never heard any of his work and I never really bothered to find out.
So, when I saw the video for his recent release, "Sirens", I was worried. The song was amazing, and the video for it wasn’t bad either. I started to wonder if I had spent years in ignorance of one of the best hip-hop artists out there, and quickly put the album “Maths + English” on my wanted list.
Luckily for me, my fears were ill-founded. The album starts with a fairly mellow intro that might be considered ambient if it weren’t for Dizzee’s (I suspect exaggeratedly) heavy London accent. It was kind of boring, to tell the truth. I shrugged my shoulders — “its only an intro”, I thought to myself, “it’ll probably get better”.
Next came a track which made extensive use of some of the most over-used beats and samples in the rap world, and that had me rolling my eyes. Not a terrible track, but the triteness and predictability of it was draining the enthusiasm from me rather quickly. Luckily, it was followed by the aforementioned “Sirens”, which I’m still rather keen on.
Carrying on, I found little to distinguish the rest of the album. The vaguely jungle-ish stylings of “da feeling” and the laid-back bassline of “bubbles” were pleasant enough, but for the majority of the album I couldn’t help thinking that this was just another of those terribly, terribly mediocre albums that sell on the back of one really good track. The appearances of Alex Turner (Arctic Monkeys) and Lily Allen toward the end did little to help this situation, not that I had expected them to really.
It’s not a bad album, as such. But it isn’t the hidden gem that I was hoping for. If you’re already a Dizzee fan, or if you’re more of a hip-hop kid than I am, then hopefully you won’t have such high expectations or your ear might lend itself more to the subtleties that I might have missed and you might actually like the album. If, like me, you heard the single and are wondering if the album is as good as it suggests, let me save you the trouble. It isn’t.
“Maths + English” is in shops now. |
