Insomnia sees grime legends Skepta and Chip join forces with D-Block Europe’s Young Adz to blur genre boundaries and create a UK Hip Hop album that seems to be the perfect zeitgeist project. Combining a heady, woozy UK trap aesthetic with the grime sensibilities of Skepta and Chip and a little bit of garage thrown in for good measure, each rapper pulls their weight and brings their own unique and distinct style to the plate.
Opening with psychedelic trap banger ‘Mains’, the trio dart between woozy, autotuned verses over a beat that sounds like it was forged with the sole purpose of being played at full volume while you cruise around London in a convertible. It slaps. This is followed up by ‘Golden Brown’ (no, not a Stranglers cover) which is a high-point on the album, a braggadocious track that sees the rapper’s trade verses about wealth, opulence and success. Even the instrumental carries a warm opulence, piano chords, bouncing bass lines and pounding kicks that harken back to the poppier tracks on Skepta’s Ignorance Is Bliss. Kanye and Jay Z also get name checks which is a nice touch - referring to another titan of rap collaborations.
Production on the album is tight and polished with a woozy skew, a whole host of producers working to produce an album with a consistent and intriguing aesthetic that manages to feel fresh while remaining true to the artists. Instrumentals heavily lean on trap aesthetics while simultaneously incorporating grime and garage motifs, skittering snares and bouncing basslines layered over piano melodies and even a little bit of saxophone that snakes throughout ‘Traumatised’.
The trap influence Young Adz brings is a welcome addition for grime veterans Skepta and Chip to flow over but listening to tracks like ‘Waze’, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Adz feels out of his depth. A relative newcomer to the scene, he struggles to hold his own against two legends of the industry when it comes to bars even though his addition brings an interesting flavour to what would otherwise be a fairly standard grime project.
The slower pace resulting from the trap influence unfortunately puts Skepta and Chip on the wrong foot, seeing them have to flip their styles to fit the flow as they ditch machine-gun grime rhythm for a more laid back pace. At times, the pair manage this change superbly. At other points, they don’t quite manage it and end up sounding a little awkward. This being said, both rappers outshine younger talent Young Adz as they bring some of their best bars and flows to date, Chip stealing the show in terms of pure rap credentials on this one.
‘Mic Check’ is perhaps my favourite track of the bunch, the UK garage bounce combined with Young Adz’s autotuned trap vocals is a great pairing. I love the garage sensibilities, there’s even a little reference to Sweet Female Attitude’s ‘Flowers’ and Craig David, as the trio manage to pull off a perfect ode to the genre while simultaneously making the track their own. This is a proper club track.
The flip of MIA’s ‘Paper Planes’ on ‘St Tropez’ is another stand-out moment on Insomnia, the chopped and skewed sample combined with tight grime flows being a perfect pairing. It’s an example of where the trio seem a perfect pairing, a tight synergy of old-school and new-school ideas to create something that sounds razor sharp and fresh.
This synergy isn’t always the case. ‘Sin City’ feels like a rushed attempt to fuse the disparate styles of the three acts, with each verse coming off as disjointed. It feels more like a series of features on a Skepta track.
Other tracks just don’t hit as hard as they could. ‘Insomnia Interlude’ and ‘Star In The Hood’ present some interesting ideas but don’t quite push them far enough. As a result, the tracks sound a little underwritten and flat.
There are also a couple of slightly naff lines that stick out like a sore thumb. Skepta flexing on his old school teacher is one such moment, as is the line about running out of condoms and the one about ‘wearing all white like a Nazi’ on ‘St Tropez’.
These are both completely overshadowed, however, by a line about a zebra crossing on the A406.
Insomnia is by no means a groundbreaking album but it serves as a calling card for the current UK rap scene, showcasing some of the genre’s most unique and distinct voices at their best, and sometimes their worst. For Skepta and Chip, this another great project in the UK Hip Hop canon. For Young Adz, this is a step in the right direction for the sort of style he should be experimenting with.
This is the album to blast out house parties, from your car stereo as you cruise around in the summer sun and drop at a club night to get the room bouncing. Now we just have to wait to hear it in those settings...
7.5/ 10
Alex Thompson
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