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Headie One: The Last One review – rueful memoir with party tunes attached
The north London rapper’s gritty honesty is his strongest suit on a guest-packed second album that juggles dance tracks with his troubled past
“Eleven jails, eleven free-flows, that’s why I look so tired,” he offers on this densely worded portrait of a life of time, studded with plenty of offhand pop references: “feelin’ like Ed [Sheeran] in the trap, had to plus, times, divide till it equalled”. This may only be Headie’s second studio album, but it follows a slew of mixtapes and collaborations that has meant that the drill artist, raised on north London’s infamous Broadwater Farm estate, has rarely been far from contention since Edna, his emotive 2020 No 1 debut dedicated to his late mother. The Last One mixes granular, rueful memoir with party tunes and non-drill work in an effort to consolidate his brief beyond street lore.
Or read this on The Guardian
