Maths + English

iTunes Review

The bastard child of at least a dozen musical genres, among them garage, two-step, drum and bass, hip-hop and ragga, the wildly confrontational UK genre known as grime has always suffered from something of an identity crisis. Yet if any performer seems capable of expanding grime’s audience beyond a small but fanatical core of UK-bound devotees it's the twenty-two year old prodigy Dizzee Rascal, whose first two albums caused a minor sensation amongst the American musical cognoscenti. The streamlined Maths + English is undoubtedly Dizzee’s most focused and accessible work to date. As always, Dizzee’s razor sharp flow impressively fuses serpentine Jamaican patois with mangled US slang and a compellingly gruff sensibility, but it is the production work that sets Maths + English apart from its more geographically insular predecessors. Dizzee seems to be making a conscious effort to move beyond grime’s sonic template with the southern-fried groove of “Real G’s” and the frantic, break-beat strewn classicism of “Pussyole”. On Maths + English the multi-talented Dizzee rascal proves himself capable of working in a multitude of styles; lets hope that the listening public is as open minded as Dizzee has proven himself to be with this release.