Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Bugzy Malone, B Somebody Records/ADA 2018.
Bugzy Malone was born and raised in Manchester, England. His early years were blighted by poverty, domestic violence, gangs, criminality and a stint in prison.
And yet despite this upbringing he has managed to not only transcend his past, but to become the embodiment of what is possible if you have a positive attitude and you become inspired.
B Inspired is his debut album and it comes hot on the heels of three top-10 EPs that have seen his songs streamed over 200 million times.
The album is a brutally honest collection of songs about his life.
In it he strips back the outer layer of bravado that he hid behind to reveal the boy, and later the man, who was buried beneath.
Although the stories he tells are painful and heartbreaking, the overall message he transmits is a positive one of inspiration and confidence – that we can all make a difference and influence our futures.
He is saying that if he could rise above his difficult background then anyone can.
In a recent review of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly I extolled the virtues of the album as a game changer and I think that Bugzy Malone’s album could do the same in the English hip-hop scene.
Both albums share honest assessments of the brutality that is prevalent in many disenfranchised communities but in B Inspired Bugzy is presenting a solution.
He comments that; “I’m now in a place where I can speak to a lot of people and my whole ethos is ‘switching on the belief switch’ in people’s heads. If people take inspiration from that then it’s priceless.”
The lead single for the album, Run, features The Rag ‘n’ Bone Man and it’s receiving considerable air time.
Bugzy’s rap falls into a sub-branch of hip-hop called grime.
It’s a uniquely English expression of the genre and it’s more musical than most American rap.
As a sucker for melody I find it more approachable than much of the harder, industrial, stuff I receive.
I also find that I can understand what he’s saying without having the lyric sheets.
Maybe it’s just that his accent is more familiar.
This is an album that I will happily listen to many times which is unusual for a hip-hop disc.
