His delivery’s still somewhere between Kano and Dizzee –- always understandable, but true to the intonations and vocabulary of his native Bow, London streets. “50/50”, the album’s opener, is classic Wiley: aggressive but inventive, undeniably street, but still clever with words. In the furor over his lyrics it’s easy to forget that he’s also an accomplished producer, and though he does stay firmly within the now-familiar genre limits of grime, he’s still easily able to bring fresh sounds with almost each song. Ever heard the tune before?Īs might be expected, Wiley’s best when he forgets the posturing and just has fun.
#Playtime is over wiley rar full#
Playtime is Over is full of those familiar hip-hop boasts, you know, “I’m better than Hova” I’m destined for greatness, great wealth, bringing platinum plaques back to the projects. Almost as if he’s harbouring a strange sort of insecurity.
He knows it, but strangely, over the course of his three albums, the 27-year-old rapper has felt the need to assert and re-assert himself of this fact. But if there was to be one cornerstone of those artists who appeared on the Run the Road comps, it’s Wiley. Yes, there’s the mentorship and subsequent beef with Dizzee, still somehow cynically fueled on Playtime is Over, the otherwise calmly competent “Letter 2 Dizzee”. But if we were to judge purely on “The Avenue” we’d miss a heap: underground club nights, community radio shows, his own labels come and gone. The grandfather of grime, Wiley founded Roll Deep. So, in the midst of all this uncelebrated brilliance, where does Wiley fit in? Kano’s “London Town” - though it doesn’t compare to the best of his 2005 stunner, Home Sweet Home - is still a dark, propulsive (yet catchy) single that would fly on most progressive dancefloors. The broken glass production of Dizzee’s “U Can’t Tell Me Nuffin'” knocks Kanye’s similarly-named single out of the water one of the most uncompromising, brilliant rap singles this year. This is a shame, because –- as many critics have noted over the years -– this cadre of rappers has real skill, comparable to the most prominent MCs in America. When Dizzee declares, “There’s a world outside of the hood… There has to be more than this, man,” on the opening of Maths and English, it’s meant as an introduction to expansion.īut it’s increasingly clear that grime’s garage beats and aggressively ugly vocal affectations just don’t resonate with those who enjoy hip-hop, but won’t invest the time to understand music that’s in any way uncompromising.
More than ever, grime’s sense of disappointment at the seemingly insurmountable barriers to conventional success is becoming palpable. No surprise, but there’s nothing about-to-blow-up about this.
Along with Kano’s London Town, together they represent the most coherent exposition of grime’s now mature, multi-faceted sound for the American market. Both aim (again) to break grime out of the increasingly small niche it occupies in the hip-hop consuming public’s mind. Let’s compare Wiley’s album with Dizzee Rascal’s from earlier this year.
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