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Central Cee: Can’t Rush Greatness review – conflict and contradiction underpin justly confident rap debut
The debut album from the British star finds him rapping rings around even high-profile guest stars as he asserts his place at hip-hop’s high table
His record label seems at a loss to tell you who produced it, there are no lyrics to clarify the knottier moments of the rapper’s famously torrential flow; the details of some of the guest artists – the owner of the Billie Eilish-esque voice on Now We’re Strangers, or the potent soul vocal on closer Don’t Know Anymore – is also apparently classified. The production entirely eschews pop hooks in favour of intriguing details: the weird moment in Don’t Know Anymore where the pitch of the track lurches as if someone’s sped up the recording; the sudden shift in sonic texture midway through Walk In Wardrobe, where chattering beats and electric piano give way to thick synth chords, amping up the tension as it does. It ultimately feels like a very honest, realistic depiction of sudden-onset fame on an unimaginable scale, where, as Limitless puts it: “I’m living in a movie but I can’t press pause.” It’s filled with powerful specifics: the revelation that among the duties his wealth has brought him lurks the task of paying for his peers’ funerals; his struggle to sleep without what he calls “hood ambience” (“the sound of sirens”).
Or read this on The Guardian
