“The grime scene got a bit boring, so I thought I’d come and cause a bit of trouble,” chuckles Bugzy Malone, a 25-year-old Manchester MC named after the 1976 children’s gangster musical, who is more than living up to his T-shirt slogan and putting “Manny on the map”. In the six years since his first mixtape, he has scored two Top 10 EPs on his own label. His rapid-fire lyrics capture the pressure of inner city life with unusual frankness, as the genre’s trademark braggadocio is undercut with confessional admissions of loneliness, criminality, poverty and “psychological pain”, in which “the only thing heavy is the weight of the world on my shoulder”.
The rapper’s rise has been on the back of compulsive performances like the one tonight, in which one hand holds the mic as deftly as a comedian, while the other whips up the crowd. At one point, he sings facing sideways while jabbing at some imaginary foe: simple but effective theatre. A handful of early tracks are audibly less confident but they tell his story, before more recent songs demonstrate his progress and ability to blend a hard edge and pop sensibility. Walk With Me is ultra-quick but weirdly haunting. Moving, in which he describes seeing his mother break down over debt, is dark indeed, but the chorus (“I kept on trying but I just kept losing”) is super-catchy and relatable, and such tracks ensure he exits to chants of “Bugzy! Bugzy!”.
•At Newcastle Academy, 13 November, box office: 0191-260 2020. Mint Warehouse, Leeds, 26 November.
• This article was amended on 15 November 2016. An earlier version referred to the Albert Hall as the Royal Albert Hall.
