Dizzee Rascal — Maths + English

Dizzee Rascal's Maths + English, as its title suggests, is a record of basics, but executed by somebody in the advanced class. It's also the London-based MC's most accessible effort for North American audiences. Dizzee's East London inflection still indelibly stamps every syllable, but he's inched further away from his Grime-star roots in favour of a more dancefloor-friendly, dare I say it, Americanized sound. He's more frequently brilliant than not. His spiteful derision of wannabe gangsters on "Where's Da G's" is hard evidence of that. When Dizzee snarls, "Love to sit and listen/But we know that you don't walk the walk," the disdain boils over the snapshot bass line. His syntactic venom isn't always so incisive, like on the boorish and regrettably infantile "Suck My Dick." But cut for cut, the good far outweighs the lame posturing on yet another exercise in expectation-defiance.