This album wasn’t supposed to be. The veteran London rapper Nines has spent years claiming he’s about to retire. Maybe to trade up to movies, or slip sideways into trapping. Either way, does the man his mum knows as Courtney Freckleton truly want out? The feeling persists that if you were really going to drop the mic, an email might be quicker than making two 15-track albums in six months.
In this franchise extension of April’s Crop Circle 2, we find Nines in a comfortable holding pattern. From the opening track he rehearses familiar topics, whether his irresistibility to women or unfeasibly large bags of weed, and displays little desire to traverse deeper hinterlands.
It’s fine. With Nines’s engaging delivery and accessible tunes, Crop Circle 3 is equal to its two predecessors and the chart-topper Crabs in a Bucket. The long-threatened Bad Boy Chiller Crew collaboration Toxic is OK, although preferable are the irrepressible Daily Duppy, the dubby Max Elliot and the gorgeous Outro. Perhaps Nines’s gift and curse is that he knows he should change, yet much of his appeal is that he never really needs to – he always delivers.
