All right, first things first, I've been putting in the work

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts.

17/03/17 : Gang Signs & Prayer - Stormzy


Our third visit with Ol' Stormzy and it's safe to say it's not aimed at me, but I can at least recognise the man knows what he's doing, so I will admire some of it, but definitely not love it.

Yeah, it's really not aimed at me, but he certainly knows how to put over a track - he has strong cadence and powerful delivery. He also works well with other artists, although I wasn't expecting to see Lily Allen pop up. There's a decent amount of variety across the album, but none of it hits the spot for me and 58 minutes was definitely a bit too long for my liking.

We're at #4 in the charts this week on his third week of an impressive 67 week run, with it having peaked at #1 in its debut week becoming the first grime album to top the chart - so yeah, we're going to see someone other than Ed at #1 very soon. The rest of the top five are obviously Ed, Rag'n'Bone Man, Ed Again and Laura Marling (a new entry that I would much rather have listened to) and we have one more new entry in the top ten for a Soft Cell/Marc Almond best-of (#7).

Wikipedia tells us it's his debut album and features guest appearances from Wretch 32, J Hus, Ghetts, Kehlani and MNEK (as well as Lily). Because it came out before Ed spoiled it for everyone else, it holds the reasonably rare distinction of having had every song appear in the UK singles charts, although "Crazy Titch" only just made it at #100. Interestingly, it has considerably more instruments involved than you'd expect from a grime album including violins, French horns, tubas and a bassoon. Critically, it was very well received, made a few year-end lists and won the British Album Of The Year Brit Award in '18 and commercially, it did pretty well across Europe, getting to the top forty in quite a few countries, including #12 in Denmark and #1 in Ireland.

discogs.com tells us that you can pick up a decent CD version for three quid, but if you want a signed vinyl copy it's going to set you back £300 - which actually seems cheaper than I was expecting. Let's just say this isn't for me but I can see it has its fans and leave it at that.

24/03/17 - Interesting, but not loveable

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