Stormzy - Gang Signs & Prayer

The Quietus

Stormzy, just like Kano, has fooled most if not all of us. The latter, prior to the release of last year's Made in the Manor, released a succession of tracks – ‘Three Wheel-Ups’, ‘Hail’, ‘Flow of the Year’ - that were relentlessly up-tempo and laden with swagger. We might then have thought that the LP to follow would be aimed primarily in the direction of the dancefloor. In the event, that album turned out to be one of the most emotionally vulnerable releases that a British MC has ever produced; and, if anything, on Gang Signs & Prayer Stormzy has reached even further into his own soul.

The 23-year old was riding a wave of the greatest possible momentum last year when he sharply withdrew from public view, for reasons that were unclear; it now seems, from various references on his album, that he was struggling with personal loss and a closely-related crisis of faith. When Stormzy re-emerged from the shadows with ‘Big for your Boots’, we could have expected a further succession of tunes in the vein of ‘Shut Up’. But what Stormzy has given us is as much gospel as grime – as much grace as grit. From some of his earlier records, we knew that he was given to sensitivity, but here he even weaves duets in amongst the festival anthems, singing proudly and gratefully as a recently-saved soul on Sunday morning.

Like the very best albums - and this, at the very least as far as his genre goes, is certainly one of them - the tracklisting is finely crafted. We're never allowed to rest too long with one of Stormzy's guises; one moment he's scowling on ‘Mr. Skeng’, the next he's lovelorn and melancholic on ‘Cigarettes and Cush’. He's bulletproof on ‘Bad Boys’, and then prostrate before the Lord on ‘Blinded By Your Grace Pt.1’.

Speaking of ‘Bad Boys’, it speaks much for both Stormzy's confidence and humility that he gives Ghetts the closing verse here – because, naturally, his guest lights it up with one of his best interventions since his spot on Wretch 32's ‘Ina Di Ghetto’. And as if this weren't enough, the track is laced with a mighty hook from J Hus, the anticipation of whose own record has just soared up a notch.

There are many rappers who reach for heartfelt songs to balance their harder output, but with Stormzy – as with Dave, his similarly introspective peer – it never feels forced. For ‘100 Bags’, an ode to his mother, he follows in the tradition of Tupac's ‘Dear Mama’, inevitably - and movingly - singing the chorus himself. He then renders Croydon - yes, truly - as beautifully as you will find it anywhere on record, his hymn to a town he is leaving behind accompanied superbly by Raleigh Ritchie on ‘Don’t Cry For Me’. This is a record of remarkable range and often startling beauty, crystalised on ‘Lay Me Bare’ – its stunning final track. There is fury at those who are family only in name, and there is almost overwhelming grief at a departed friend; and here, as everywhere else, the prose is visceral and vivid.

Like Kano's most recent record, Stormzy's debut is a Trojan horse: you come for the chanted choruses and then, in the most life-affirming sense, you end up in church. All great albums are marked by their texture, their variety; and here Stormzy roams between rave MC and repentant sinner, between (to paraphrase Dave) gentleman and gangster. It may be too early for most to declare it a classic, but only a few hours after its launch, it seems fair to describe Gang Signs & Prayer as a towering triumph.

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The Guardian 80

(#Merky Records)
Michael Omari is full of wit and rage on his swaggering debut

Several cycles on from its inception, grime has finally begun reaping its rewards as one of the defining sounds of UK youth, a fiercely local innovation with potentially global reach. Or it had been, until the Brits inexcusably decided to ignore the genre once again.

Following recent milestone LPs by scene elders – Skepta (the Mercury-winning Konnichiwa), Kano and Wiley – all eyes are now on the younger set. In anticipation of debuts by those still in, or barely out of, their teens – AJ Tracey, Novelist, Dave et al – the genre’s heir apparent is universally held to be south London’s Stormzy. On an interlude on Gang Signs & Prayer, Stormzy’s debut album, veteran MC Crazy Titch – who, in his 30s, admits he isn’t entirely sure what a hashtag is – reckons “Stormzy has to be [The Matrix’s protagonist] Neo… this kid has to be seeing the games in zeros and ones. It’s not normal.”

Related: Stormzy: ‘Respect me like you would Frank Ocean or Adele’

Pitchfork 76

Two years ago, Michael Omari stood on the stage at the 2015 Brit Awards, shoulder-to-shoulder with a who’s who of UK rappers. Clad in all black, the MC known as Stormzy rocked along with Skepta, JME, Novelist, Jammer, Krept & Konan and dozens of others, flanking Kanye West as he performed his Paul McCartney collaboration “All Day” amid a sea of white faces in tuxedos and cocktail dresses.

It was an important moment for British hip-hop and grime in particular. For years marginalized as too violent or “gang related” and mostly shut out from Britain’s biggest pop music awards show, the heroes of the London underground had snuck in through a back door propped open by an American iconoclast. To say it had a profound effect on Stormzy—and the entire underground scene—would be an understatement.

It also marks the jumping-off point for Stormzy’s bum rush on the pop charts. The overwhelming success of “Shut Up”—the original video has now over 48 million views and the single bundled with “Wicked Skengman 4” cracked the charts—indicates a new paradigm in UK underground hip-hop. On radio shows and YouTube channels, in low-budget videos surrounded by the neighborhood squad, young MCs battle each other with pre-written “freestyles” spit over well-known beats. And it’s obvious why Stormzy has emerged from the scrum with a crown on his head: His booming voice and charisma are infectious and his 100-watt, silver-toothed smile lights up the screen.

Stormzy brings this battle rap mentality to Gang Signs & Prayer from the get-go. Opening track “First Things First” was intended “to be a punch in the face,” and the hyped-up grime rippers like “Cold” and “Big for Your Boots” are full of dire warnings to lesser rappers that might consider challenging his supremacy. But while he’s made a name for himself battling, it’s clear that he’s set his sights on something bigger: Stormzy fancies himself a crooner. He spends much of Gang Signs & Prayer going back and forth between clapping back at lesser rappers and serving up the “Stiff Chocolate” of smoothed-out Quiet Stormzy.

He goes full-on gospel on “Blinded by Your Grace, Pt. 1,” forgoing a protective autotune armor for a gentle—and pitchy—prayer. He gives it another go on “Velvet,” which also features NAO, singing declarations of love to his “princess.” It’s all painfully earnest, yet despite the cringes his croon inflicts, these moments feel essential to the ethos of Gang Signs & Prayer.

Both hard and soft, belligerent yet spiritual, Gang Signs & Prayer reveals a vulnerability belied by his 6-foot 5-inch frame and menacing glare. Even as he barks boasts on “First Things First,” he admits he’s battled depression, and he follows up the horn blasts of “Mr Skeng”—a scathing screed against doubters and dickheads—with “Cigarettes & Cush,” a tender recollection of a doomed relationship featuring Kehlani and Lily Allen. He presents these parts of himself unapologetically, juxtaposing the gang signs of his youth with the prayers from his Ghanian single mother, which quite literally grace “100 Bags” in a touching ode to her love and influence.

This dichotomy is fully realized on the album’s final track, “Lay Me Bare,” a syncopated confessional peppered with a chipmunk’d vocal sample and mechanical trap hi-hat. He bleeds for five straight minutes, admitting his brief retreat from the spotlight in 2016 was a crisis of faith that left him depressed and isolated. He relives the pain of running into his absentee father, whose first words in years are to ask for a handout rather than forgiveness—the one moment where his otherwise plaintive delivery is infused with rage. Even his catharsis is violent (“Grab this gun and aim it there/Shoot my pain and slay my fear”), taking a street-wise approach to conquering his demons.

Stormzy’s biggest hits to date have all been testosterone-charged badman anthems, but he's also trying to reveal an artist with more than one dimension. It doesn’t always work—it’s hard to ignore the shortcomings of his singing voice, and the otherwise relatable lyrics on “Cigarettes & Cush” are mired by a trite composition. But from the themes to the production choices to the sequencing, it’s a remarkably well thought out debut from the ascendant 23-year-old MC.

Even more impressive, Stormzy’s rapid rise to relevance comes independent of the major label/commercial radio industrial complex. It’s hard to imagine a major putting out a debut LP from a hardcore battle rapper with a song like the smoochy “Velvet,” but maybe that’s the point—he doesn’t need them. He’s thus far made his living playing shows, releasing Spotify singles and low-budget YouTube videos, and hyping his favorite artists on his Beats 1 radio show, #Merky. And almost exactly two years after Kanye snuck him in the backdoor at the Brits, he strode into the 2017 ceremony on the red carpet, glad-handing with Bradley Walsh and cheesing for the cameras in a crisp Burberry suit. And when Ed Sheeran brought him onstage to debut his verse on the “Shape of You” remix, the crowd’s fervent reaction proved he was anything but backup.