The 24-year-old Northampton rapper has become the voice of a generation with witty, striking snapshots of working-class lifeThe 50 best albums of the yearMore on the best culture of 2019Britain has found itself experiencing Shakespearean levels of tragedy: abject poverty, international tensions, rich men plotting their domination. Staring down the barrel of another period of austerity, only a working-class artist could create the state-of-the-nation treatise needed to make sense of it. Enter Slowthai, who pilfers from rap, punk and garage to depict every shade of a wretched nation.
Fittingly, throughout his debut album, the 24-year-old rapper plays the Shakespearean fool. In the Bard’s plays, the fool was a savvy servant who danced circles around those of a higher social standing. They were the one to provide wit in bleak times, and so in Nothing Great About
Britain, Slowthai wryly evokes the forgotten parts of the country through snapshots of working-class life: tea and biscuits, hiding drugs, fallouts with a stepfather, EastEnders’ Phil Mitchell. From the album’s eponymous opening track to the so-quick-you’ll-miss-them barbs at the prime minister (“I run my town, but nothing like Boris!”), his punk spirit ridicules the country’s gatekeepers. The album art visualises Slowthai’s intent in a striking tableau: people watch from an estate and union jacks limp over the balconies, as a naked Slowthai grins like a maniac, locked in medieval stocks. The self-proclaimed King of Northampton suffers with a smile.