Ghetts - Ghetto Gospel: The New Testament

The Guardian 60

(Caroline International)

Ghetts may be one of grime’s original players, but he has never accrued the celebrity of his fellow trailblazers. That’s partly because he dodged the late noughties grime-goes-pop phenomenon – the one that provided Skepta and others with a selection of misguided Top 40 hits – but also because his reach has never extended beyond the genre. He hasn’t mined his personality online for laughs like Big Narstie and Lethal Bizzle, nor has had his profile been boosted by co-signs from grime stans such as Kanye and Drake. What the east Londoner lacks in populist nous, however, he makes up for with a serious commitment to the sound – and, judging by his second album proper, a strong conviction that grime is a vessel for more than just threats, braggadocio and the airing of personal grievances.

On Next of Kin and Window Pain, he suffuses tales of street violence with empathy, using multiple perspectives to combine brutal detail with feeling.