Dave has slowly become the best rapper alive

The Boy Who Played the Harp by Dave — Review

Top song: Marvellous

Rating : M — Masterclass

It’s been almost 10 years since I initially penned “Rap Isn’t Fun Anymore.” Interestingly enough, I also wrote a very Carlton Banks coded conservative scolding on why the Migos should stay out of trouble…original…and unfun. The piece was earnest (and correct) but misguided. I was critiquing from the outside, treating symptoms like they were the disease. I mistook spectacle for the art itself.

I knew that I had to stop writing about rap and get back to rapping if I was going to make a contribution. But times change. I no longer have the goal of being a famous MC, and so I can finally listen to rappers with unadulterated ears. No more, “I would have said this…”

Dave is actually saying much of what I would have.

The current state of rap is off putting. It has felt “off” since Drake vs Meek Mill. That beef marked the algorithm’s direct participation in the merit and framing of music. Ironically that same engine was used to take Drake down by Kendrick Lamar and Pusha T, but that’s for another day. The headline here is that Dave has slowly, quietly become the best rapper alive.

The best lyricists are strangely only acknowledged by mid west emo fans and Fantano’s YouTube comments. The best falls on deaf ears. In a world where Chance the Rapper will never live down his first commercial release, Earl Sweatshirt’s laureate-level artistry goes unnoticed and The Clipse and JID are only granted short moments of cultural pop…Dave, generally considered a top 2 MC in the UK, shows up with an album built for slow sipping Bas Armagnac and flirting in dark corners of posh pubs. What I hear here is different.

Dave has a signature sound for albums, markedly different from his incredibly marketable singles. Hip Hop/Rap, Dancehall, Grime…they’re acknowledged but on display here, the noise has fallen away. This is a tight album of 10 tracks drenched in dark tones, James Blake’s syrupy vocals and reverb are the connective tissue. Unexpectedly, this is album is less dramatic and less cinematic than his previous Psychodrama. The space that creates becomes the albums strength. At its core we still find an adept, analytical Dave wrestling with broader social inequities as normal. He’s improved again. The difference here is that the album lands more like a snapshot of a journal rather than another concept piece. Here we find multiple narratives — a young love burgeoning expertly assisted by Tems on Raindance, a phenomenal back and forth centred around legacy with Kano, and a very catchy track from Jim Legxacy.

Dave arrived quietly while everyone else has been screaming into the void for attention. No gimmicks. Less theatre. Just precision and depth. It’s confident and stands on its own.

The Boy Who Played the Harp isn’t rap as entertainment. It’s rap as testimony. Dave dissects his own psychology with polished honesty. Prior to this album, he could never be accused of dodging uncomfortable relationships with religion, family amid fame, racial identity/heritage. But here, he’s landed the hardest trick in rap: being vulnerable without showing weakness in the game.

Every line serves the larger architecture and we find a rapper happy to take a less is more attitude when required. Ironically, given the beat selection and flow patterns this album with a different accent and more screeching bravado would fit nicely in Meek’s catalogue.

The offering is bars, storytelling, and cultural critique that stands with the strongest on TPAB.

Given the above, I can safely say with confidence that Dave is making the music that every rapper should aspire to. Quietly having the career and restraint that most could learn a lot from. Not the most commercially successful, he’s been there and it seems likely to do so again. Dave has bested that, he’s made an album that is the most complete. At 27, he’s proof that elevation and accessibility aren’t mutually exclusive.

This is what maturity sounds like in rap. And it’s (marvellous) to have an album available that isn’t focused on what turns off the productive society nor bores the collective mass whose default setting is “sex, drugs, violence”. The Boy Who Played the Harp makes rap fun again, because it can be all things to all fans.

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