The old-fashioned format of the studio album has found a home in UK rap. The reasons have nothing to do with nostalgia or sentimentality. MCs use albums to present a rounded portrait of themselves, a long-form adjunct to the release of singles and mixtapes. Ghetts’s Conflict of Interest is a good example from earlier this year. Dave’s Psychodrama is another, winner of the Mercury music prize for 2019’s best album.
AJ Tracey feints at following suit on his new album. The Londoner is one of UK rap’s big names (he teamed up with Dave on the 2016 grime hit “Thiago Silva”). Flu Game is his second album, following a vivacious but scattershot debut in 2019. It’s pitched as a concept album based around a famous basketball game in 1997 when Michael Jordan conquered food poisoning to lead his side to victory. But the concept turns out to be paper-thin.
The opening tracks give a polished, radio-friendly gloss to UK drill, the thriving but notorious sub-genre that has been condemned for its murderous imagery. Tracey’s version is cleaner-sounding in every sense. Drill’s slang turns up in his verses (“opps” for enemies, “bally” for balaclava), and there’s a guest turn from fellow west Londoner Digga D — a drill MC who is currently under a controversial court order banning him from rapping about gang-related violence. But no rhetorical blood is spilled in Tracey’s songs.
In “Anxious”, he raps about moving freely between mainstream and underground. Brooding basslines point to the latter, but clear, well-balanced production keep drill’s murkiness at bay. “Kukoc”, named after basketball player Toni Kukoc, is given a North American tilt by a guest appearance from Canadian rapper Nav. Vocal ad-libs buried in the mix resemble the medley of utterances and scatting patterned into the background of US trap songs in order to accentuate the lead vocal.
It’s a style designed for a crossover audience. In a sense, Tracey deserves it. He’s a smooth, limber rapper, a pleasure to listen to. But he doesn’t say much of substance. Routine displays of self-assertion prevail, while the basketball theme flickers weakly. The verbal ingenuity evident in playful rhymes like “popping off” and “beef stroganoff” is counterbalanced by face-palms such as “In my city I’m big, I’m grande/But my enemies come like Ariana.”
The album’s tracks slip into filler halfway through, before perking up with a shift into a bouncier mode. Guests multiply, such as Tracey’s tag-team double-header with the rapper MoStack on the house music-sampling pop-rap track “Dinner Guest”. A belated slam dunk takes place with the final song “West Ten”, a UK garage-inflected duet with the singer Mabel. A hit last year, it underlines Tracey’s talent — but also situates it in the singles chart rather than as an album artist.
★★★☆☆
‘Flu Game’ is released by Revenge Records