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‘You can’t wear gold without diamonds!’ Hip-hop legend Slick Rick on bling, British roots and his 26-year break

He is the rapper’s rapper, adored by Jay-Z, and once called ‘the most beautiful thing to happen to hip-hop’. So why has he taken so long to release his new album? And can we please see his diamond-crusted Virgin Mary medallion?

He is back in London, the city his family emigrated from when he was a boy, because he’s launching a new album, Victory, his first since 1999’s The Art of Storytelling, which featured an array of guest artists – including Outkast, Nas and Snoop Dogg – paying homage to one of hip-hop’s legendary figures. It rumbles in the background of Beyoncé’s Party, was covered in its entirety by Snoop Dogg – whose vocal style owes a considerable debt to Slick Rick’s – and Robbie Williams borrowed its lyrics on Rock DJ. His solo debut album The Great Adventures of Slick Rick was a platinum seller, spawning more heavily sampled classics in Hey Young World and Children’s Story, which subsequently formed the basis of Montell Jordan’s This Is How We Do It and TLC’s Creep, respectively.

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