ALBUM REVIEWS
For over two decades, Tottenham’s revered wordsmith Wretch 32 has evolved before our eyes, from a raw talent to a cornerstone of UK rap, taking up space beyond his own records. In the six years since his last album ‘Upon Reflection’, he’s been a creative director for 0207 Def Jam, penned a poem for Stormzy’s 2022 cinematic comeback ‘Mel Made Me Do It’, and written his first book, Rapthology: Lessons in Life and Lyrics. Now he’s back behind the mic, imparting his wisdom in his sixth album, ‘Home?’, his most philosophical release yet.
Despite the Windrush generation’s crucial role in shaping British culture, their descendants still grapple with belonging. As a second-gen British-Jamaican, Wretch seeks to ease that restlessness with a message of healing and growth, promising back in October that ‘Home?’ is for those “who need soul food and something to fulfil them” – but this nourishment is for all of those simply wondering where their home is.
On the fiery ‘Seven Seater’, the Tottenham star makes it known that he’s not “competing with numbers,” just delivering his divine message on heritage and selfhood – quickly expanding to the lived tension between Blackness and belonging. That journey quickly deepens on the indulgent ‘Like Home’ with Nigeria’s Temi where Wretch briefly honours his ancestral home of Africa, framed by Bob Marley’s words: “Every Black man in the West is what he want to be when he goes to Africa.”
He continues his search for belonging with ‘Nesta Marley’. A track swelling with emotional clarity, Wretch and Skip Marley offer a powerful moment of diasporic healing as the former yearns for a deeper connection to his motherland. The intellectual polymath “prays for better days, where we all can live as one” – a call for unity that extends beyond the diaspora to all of humanity. He echoes this sentiment by interpolating the melody of Dido’s ‘Thank You’ on the refrain, reflecting his desire for inner peace and acceptance: “Roots and culture in my system, di I-dem big and strong / People fighting out my window, cyant they see da sun?” As the track closes, the vinyl crackles like a burning chalice, with Wretch’s prophetic, parabolic spoken words soaring higher than I-and-I in this sonic reasoning session.
‘Bridge Is Burning’ with Chronixx mourns the rupture migration leaves behind as adopted cultures eclipse inherited values, the link to the motherland slowly smouldering. That’s why it flows so powerfully into ‘Me & Mine’ – a sunlit, island-fused anthem with WSTRN that doesn’t just bounce for vibes’ sake: it symbolises what we built from the ashes. Haile’s hook fused Wretch’s raw croon with Akelle’s slick lines and Louis Rei’s yard-man style, nostalgically interpolating Sanchez’s reggae classic ‘Frenzy’. This isn’t escapism – it’s a reclaimed sound where the spirit of back home echoes loud.
As ‘Home?’ unfolds, Wretch brings in Black British voices – Little Simz, Benjamin AD, Angel, Skrapz, Tiggs Da Author and more – to help explore love, survival and legacy across Britain’s diaspora. ‘Seven Seater’ sees Wretch reunite with The Movement brethren Mercston and Ghetts to celebrate grime’s Black British roots and the brotherhood that has been central to the genre and Black Britons’ survival. Kano dissects Black Britishness on ‘Home Sweet Home’, using his Jamaican heritage and football hooliganism to expose society’s flippancy between race and nationality, forcing Black people to juggle their identities.
That unsettled spirit reverberates on ‘Windrush’ with Cashh – a rapper deported by the UK Home Office in 2014 who fought for five years to return – exposing generational betrayal. But the sweet-yet-short interlude ‘Home Is Where The Heart Is’ is where Wretch succinctly captures the tension best: “They call me all of the names, under the sun, still I rise, morning come / Home is where the heart is, why do you stay where you are?”
In the end, Wretch’s search for belonging is emotive and heart-wrenching for those who truly understand what it is to be forever torn between worlds. Yet, within that loss, he hosts a homecoming of sorts – an invitation for Black Britons to mourn, heal, and ultimately celebrate what they and their forebears have built despite everything. When Wretch said ‘Home?’ would be “soul food”, he wasn’t kidding. It goes beyond that, becoming a testament to the strength of roots that refuse to wither and a promise that – no matter where you are in the world – you can always find a piece of home in this record.
ALBUM REVIEWS
The leather jackets and skinny jeans worn by Noah Dillon and Chandler Ransom Lucy have become something of a signature, and the pair have hovered around the edges of the pop worlds in New York and Los Angeles for quite some time. First highlighted by NME during the Dimes Square resurgence in 2023, The Hellp have gradually stepped away from their earlier indie-sleaze imitation and leaned into something far more thoughtful. Their wild, neon-tinged party vibe has been traded for a more cinematic electronic approach that still holds onto a confident, self-aware attitude.
Dillon and Lucy started releasing music as The Hellp in 2016, with early mixtapes rooted in the chaotic nights and carefree behaviour once associated with NYC’s indie-sleaze staples like LCD Soundsystem and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Over time, though, they’ve earned a steadily growing respect from critics. That rise has come through both their underground gigs, which have included a show at London’s Corsica Studios with Fakemink as support, and through Dillon’s expanding visual work that recently reached Rosalía’s ‘LUX’ album and a pair of music videos for 2hollis.
As ‘Riviera’ approached release, the duo shared: “We knew our next project would need to be a bit more mature… we refuse to become stagnant. ‘Riviera’ is more solemn, restrained and impassioned than anything we’ve done before.” The finished album feels like Dillon and Lucy carefully balancing identity and openness, theatricality and direct emotion.
The lead release, ‘Country Road’, carries a late-night heaviness, the kind of confession you would quietly tell a friend in a club’s smoking area. Its lonely tone is surrounded by glitching electronics and a rising bridge that points to the exhaustion that follows endless nights out. Tracks like ‘New Wave America’ and ‘Cortt’ deepen what the duo mention in their liner notes as a “desperate story of the disparate Americana.” Both pieces broaden the album’s emotional landscape and offer clear-eyed commentary on reluctantly stepping into adulthood.
When ‘Riviera’ shifts into ‘Doppler’, the tone brightens for a moment as hopeful synths lift Dillon’s words about yearning and heartbreak into an emotional peak. And in the final moments of the record, The Hellp land on something instantly familiar to anyone who has drifted away from the club scene. The Kavinsky-like opening of ‘Here I Am’ nods to their early inspirations, while the closing track ‘Live Forever’ arrives with a slow, grounded maturity, built around Dillon repeating the line: “I don’t want to live forever.”
‘Riviera’ holds far less disorder than The Hellp’s earlier releases. This turn inward marks an important risk for a duo once fuelled by the momentum of a downtown New York comeback. By easing off the frenzy, The Hellp have stepped out of the party’s lingering haze and returned with a style that feels more refined and more aware of itself than anything they have created before.
