Men… are not controversial?
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[5.83]
Thomas Inskeep: Good new rapper from Manchester makes a good biographical track. He’s got a good flow and a good producer, so let’s see where he goes from here.
[6]
Micha Cavaseno: Rappity rapper doing a lot of soul searching, darting around without learning to land on a beat in a proper flow, but never actually connecting all of these pseudo-poignant observations to anything cohesive. Not to mention this beat sounds like it got made on Game Boy Camera. Oh, and grime is not English hip-hop, you speng.
[4]
Alfred Soto: His flow is okay, and the production squonks in typical grime fashion, but the wealth of biographical details don’t achieve poignancy.
[5]
Iain Mew: It largely sounds like Bugzy’s talking things through with himself while the car stereo burbles away, and it’s compelling with it. The calm openness sounds naturalistic in a way that can’t be as easy to achieve as he makes it sound, and he’s interesting as well as reflective. The only thing holding it back is that the narrative drive centres around the time he attacked someone, and that section shatters the reflectiveness to start an outside argument that he’s never going to win — maybe the point, but if so the picture his words paint isn’t clear enough to show it.
[6]
Scott Mildenhall: Ambitions of “put[ting] Manny on the map” seem sightly belated — Martin Platt’s got a cheese stall there! — but in rap terms they are undeniably justified, Joe Hart’s efforts withstanding. Malone isn’t misguided in his mission; he’s a skilled storyteller, peppering half a book’s worth of autobiography with outlines of Moss Side history, and Mr SnoWman’s production is a great match for it: moderately grim, with quiet stress. What comes next, with the imminent and eminent possibility of a top 10 album released independently — potentially outdoing Krept & Konan and JME’s feats — will be interesting.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: Not triumphant so much as hard-won, not hard-won so much as still getting there: a track that creates tension by being unassuming.
[7]