Skepta - The Fork and Knife [2LP]

Skepta ends a seven-year wait for a new solo album with The Fork and Knife, pressed across two LPs on this UK import edition.

Plenty has happened since Ignorance Is Bliss. The Tottenham MC, whose Konnichiwa took the Mercury Prize in 2016, has spent recent years producing, collaborating and building a world well beyond grime. He has also spoken candidly about creative fatigue, a sense that art was losing its meaning in the age of algorithms, and about holding back until he had something honest to say.

This album is the result. It moves from London street stories to his childhood as the son of Nigerian immigrants, treating diaspora identity as a source of strength rather than struggle. Skepta raps, writes and produces, drawing on the full spread of British club and rap culture, from grime and garage to house and jungle. Gas Me Up (Diligent) carries over from his recent run of releases, while Secrets of Patriarchy takes aim at the attitudes people absorb as children.

The visuals around the record lean on 1980s Nigerian-British imagery, football culture and documentary realism, tying earlier generations of migrant Britain to present-day London.

For anyone who has followed Skepta since the pirate radio days, it lands as a deeply personal statement from an artist with nothing left to prove.