STORMZY Heavy is the Head (#Merky / Atlantic)
With his second album, Stormzy had a lot to prove. Notoriously difficult at the best of times, it’s a much fiercer beast to tame once stoked with the expectations brought on by a killer headline set at the biggest festival in the world and following up a platinum-selling, Number One debut. And let’s face it, there’s only so long an artist as big as Stormzy can keep the gap between expectation and reality on a level playing field before it catches up with him. ‘Heavy Is The Head’ demonstrates he’s kept these opposing forces in perfect balance. Like life itself, there are flashes of humour, love, heartbreak, politics, fun, vulnerability and identity (in both its searching and celebratory form). Opener ‘Big Michael’ is pure grime, a balls-out battlecry of bravado bubbling on top of an urgent instrumental littered with stabs of brass. ‘Audacity’ follows providing a doubleshot of adrenaline, before the more meditative spirit of ‘Crown’ spills through the speakers as he attempts to make peace with his position as “the voice of the young black youth”. Beyond these first handful of tracks, Stormzy’s engulfing snarl is largely kept at bay in favour of a smoother style which drops in and out of melody. The second half of ‘Rachael’s Little Brother’ is a beautiful slither of piano-led balladry featuring full-on singing, and the interlude ‘Don’t Forget To Breathe’ sees Yebba providing a lush counter-melody to his soulful croon. Stormzy certainly has a mainstream audience to appeal to now, and yes, there are poppier moments here, namely ‘Superheroes’ and ‘Own It’ featuring Ed Sheeran and Burna Boy, but it never feels forced or like he’s pandering to his newfound audience, as he explains on the fun throwaway of ‘Pop Boy’ - “I’ll never stop popping, I’m the pop boy”. The labyrinthine complexities of human nature are explored here in all their grit and glory, but it’s the combination of Stormzy’s charm and his knack for storytelling that allows ‘H.I.T.H’ to glimmer with a universal appeal that will please both his mainstream audience and grime fans of old; an almost impossible task that he’s amazingly pulled off. (Sean Kerwick) LISTEN: ‘Don’t Forget To Breathe’
Keeping expectation and reality in perfect balance.
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