(Virgin EMI)Now the country’s biggest rap duo, south
London rappers Krept & Konan should’ve won a Brit already just for their Croydon dessert restaurant’s name: Crepes & Cones. Ten years in the game, they’ve only managed as many albums as restaurants (one). Still, turning 30 hasn’t seen any diminution in their desire or form on this second try. You relish every syllable as their dizzying flow piles dazzling images, metaphors and puns on top of each other. Concentrate on Goat Level’s epic operatic beat and distorted, double-track vocal and you may think the pair had got a little self-important, but you’d have missed shoals of in-jokes and parochial references, culminating in their ridiculous but just-about-acceptable wordplay on cult footballer Héctor Bellerín (“I told the concierge to bell ‘er in”). The banger is I Spy, with its itchily nagging sped-up hook and a chewy verse from Headie One, while you’ll be glad to know D-Block Europe still uses so much Auto-Tune (on Tell Me) he sounds like a man performing unmentionable sex acts on a robot. The album ends with two knockout gut punches: a spoken-word mental health public service announcement from “Barking” rapper Ramz, and an impassioned eulogy, Broski. Their best yet.