Although Octavian might come out of territory renowned for grime – south London – the Anglo-French artist is a future-facing MC. His second mixtape confidently straddles not just the Thames (north Londoner Skepta figures on the previously released, ice-cold Bet) but the Atlantic, enlisting US guest rappers and reaching instinctually for trap beats on tracks such as Lit, rather than grime BPMs.
Auto-Tune smears his sing-song vocals, to the point where all this hybridisation might add up to a loss of identity. Somehow, Octavian manages to buck these anonymising tendencies. His pop melodies are destined to travel, but retain an unapologetic London attitude and an experimental flair; much here is insidiously danceable.
That’s the good news: that Octavian is his own genre, not afraid to drop gospel (opener Gangster Love) alongside electric guitars (on his excellent remix of SBTRKT and Jessie Ware’s Walking Alone). But the idea that he might be some sort of purist-baiting new school savant has yet to manifest in his lyrical work, which, while gruffly idiosyncratic, doesn’t have a great deal new to say. You’d be hard-pressed to fillet out a killer couplet in all Octavian’s musings on drugs, oral sex, romance and thug life. It’s how he delivers that convinces, not what he delivers.
