Bugzy Malone - B Inspired

The Guardian 80

(BSomebody)

Related: Grime MC Bugzy Malone: 'When you're from outside London, you'd better be special'

Manchester’s Bugzy Malone has finally finished his first full-length record, which is big news because Bugzy has the authoritative, articulate presence that haloes only the best grime MCs. “I paint pictures with words,” he rapped last year, and it’s not a boast. Malone’s canvases reveal parallel worlds of poverty, physical and mental hunger, rage turned inwards and out, lives undervalued and thrown overboard – sink or swim, ride or die. Whether his true-life crime yarns are verifiable to the last word doesn’t matter because every bar is delivered beautifully at confessional pitch, with a preacher’s punch and sprinter’s pace.

Sun Aug 19 07:00:13 GMT 2018

The Guardian 60

(B Somebody Records)

This is only his debut full-length, but Bugzy Malone’s life is already worthy of a three-act biopic. A charmed early childhood was ripped apart by an abusive stepfather and subsequent divorce and poverty, leading to prison as a teenager, followed by an embrace of grime with a proud Mancunian accent that sent him into the upper reaches of the charts. From the title of B Inspired downward, Malone casts himself as a kitchen-sink life coach, saying at the outset “please believe me, you can beat depression”, something he has conquered on every level, from psychological to economic. Considering how far he has come, his assertion that you can “live on the street and make it a castle” on sweeping garage ballad Ordinary People is genuinely inspirational, as is its tale of finding a northern identity where “there was Stone Roses and Oasis, but when they were big we were still babies”.

He’s at his best when telling piquant details of his struggle: “I had money buried on a golf course back then, and it never got spent” is a film noir in a couplet, the domestic abuse is spoken about plainly, and passing references to trainers and video games keep everything rooted in reality. Die By the Gun is a Kendrick-style bit of storytelling about a hit job gone wrong, driven by a serpentine flute, while Separation is a simple and affecting tale of losing a friend to a jail sentence, complete with refreshingly workaday descriptions of the drug trade.

Fri Aug 17 08:30:12 GMT 2018