Three years after his breakthrough with hip-house anthem Down on My Luck, Vic Mensa has apparently scrapped one album on the way to this debut – clearly aiming for the kind of grand rap statement that, a la Kendrick, unites the old and new schools. His candour about depression and drug addiction is arresting, as on the Pharrell track Wings, where pills turn him into “an armoured truck riding the rink”; woman trouble is amusingly, vividly rendered on Gorgeous, as he courts someone who “can detect a bitch from an eyelash”. There are also some brilliant production flourishes, such as Homewrecker turning Weezer’s The Good Life into a boom-bap ode to his baboon-bottomed girlfriend. The trouble is that the timbre of his voice is a little colourless, and audibly draws on the intonation of others: the laconic astonishment of Big Sean, the conversational musicality of J Cole and Common, and the jazzy hectoring of Mensa’s beef target, Drake. He may need another three years to craft a voice of his own.
