Dizzee Rascal: The Fifth

Enthroned as UK rap’s biggest star, Dizzee Rascal is out to have a good time on his fifth album. He parties with Jessie J on “We Don’t Play Around”, has a one-night stand at Miami’s South Beach on “Spend Some Money” (“Think her name was Jane but it could have been Julie”) and hits the club in search of another one-night stand in “Something Really Bad” as Will.i.am choruses the awful refrain “Let’s get freaky” from the sidelines.

Crude dance-rap hooks ram home the let-have-fun message; yet the frenetic pace of Dizzee’s rapping gives the escapism a desperate edge. It’s strangely apt that the maestro of celebrity angst Robbie Williams should help elucidate the Rascal’s unease on the pair’s oddball collaboration “Goin’ Crazy” – Dizzee pausing amid Robbie’s corny mid-Atlanticisms to ask himself: “Should I be somebody else?” Short answer: yes.

Dizzee Rascal

The Fifth

(Dirtee Stank/Universal Island)