Skepta’s career is a fascinating contradiction. Doin’ It Again vs. Blacklisted, ‘All Over The House’ vs. ‘That’s Not Me’, Ed Hardy vs. Supreme, the North London Grime MC has shown a tendency to flit between tact and tackiness in a way which leaves his fans very much on their toes.

However, his 4th studio album, Konnichiwa, has settled the nerves. Grime, in a similar way to Hip-Hop in ’90s New York, acts as an honest mouthpiece for an entire urban generation. Unfortunately, artists who had a platform to go on and force grime – pure grime – into the mainstream instead opted for half-hearted repeat raps over poppy David Guetta beats. Skepta, along with his brother Jamie (JME), has done no such thing, and Konnichiwa is proof of this.

The album opens with a run of songs which are unmistakably faithful to the genre. The descent into the bass line following the samurai sound effects in ‘Konnichiwa’ is electrifying. It is the perfect opener to an album, as Skepta goes in viciously over the choppy beats in typical fashion. There is no respite in ‘Lyrics’, the song commencing with tinny 2001 vocals of Wiley urging for calm during a lively clash at Watford’s Destiny nightclub.

As well as giving a platform to the brilliant Novelist, surely Stormzy’s only competition as the next king of the scene, it showcases Skepta on the offensive. “You saw the blood on Devilman’s shirt” resurrects 2015’s mass grime brawl in which Skepta sent for the Birmingham MC with his unexpected diss track ‘Nasty’.

More poignantly, “Tell a pussy’ole look sharp fix up” is a thinly veiled inversion of Dizzee Rascal’s lyrics, evidence of Skepta’s much speculated disapproval of his fellow London rapper. This potentially provides the source material for ‘Man (Gang)’, with ferociously funny bars like “I don’t know why man’s calling me family all of a sudden/ like wow, my mum don’t know your mum stop telling man you’re my cousin” potential allusions to Dizzee’s unreciprocated claim that he and Skepta “go way back.”

The personal battle that is concurrent throughout the album is not only a hallmark of grime, but also reflects the album’s position on a larger scale. Konnichiwa is the perfect benchmark for grime’s current place in music, Skepta effortlessly skipping between protest and humour with darkly comedic lines such as “Put me in the van, wanna strip a man, fuck that I ain’t a Chippendale”. It is these themes, alongside the personal battles and recycled lyrics, that anchor the album in its genre, and ensure its integrity.

However, Skepta – ever the pioneer – doesn’t content himself with this. The album is just as rife with contagious comments on fame and living the high-life as it is with explorations of the gritty side of London life; bars like “Man shut down Wireless, then I walked home in the rain” show the fine line between the two existences that Skepta treads. It is like the musical version of Entourage: you are sucked in by the glamour, while constantly being reminded of the roots – and this does not stop with the content.

Musically, Konnichiwa intertwines pirate-radio vocal effects, bass-heavy beats and local slang with a neater, sharper and more skilfully produced sound that is often absent from Grime tracks. At a time where people like Azealia Banks are showing just how much resistance UK Rap might face across the pond, Skepta kicks the door open: who needs Drake when you have A$AP Mob’s Young Lord on impressive form in club banger ‘It Ain’t Safe’, or Pharrell Williams throwing it back with his bouncy verse on ‘Numbers’. Indeed, it is the Palm Beach vibed ‘Ladies Hit Squad’ which epitomises where Skepta and Konnichiwa are at: verses from both Grime legend D Double E and Harlem’s A$AP Nast show Skepta as a middle man, holding onto grime with one hand while pushing through barriers with the other.

This is not always so healthy for the album. We can see the toll this takes on the MC: “I’m too ambitious to be with the mandem on the road but I can’t be up there with them people either, I’m to black to be up there…I feel like I’m in limbo”, says Skepta – this conflict clearly affects Konnichiwa. 

Despite the excellence of the individual songs, as a whole the album can seem muddled. At a time where artists like Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West are making albums as entities – indeed, Beyoncé is making them into whole films – Skepta might have been better off emulating that aspect of American music. Although ‘Ladies Hit Squad’ is important in seeing how far Skepta has come, it does seem out of key with the rest of the album, as does the recycled feel of the ‘Numbers’ beat.

In a similar vein, finishing the album with the sentimental ‘Text Me Back’ seems weak, a whimpering end to an album which started with such a bang. On the subject of Kanye and The Life Of Pablo, Skepta should perhaps have followed suit in essentially ridding the album of prior singles – popular songs like ‘All Day’ and ‘Only One’. With ‘That’s Not Me’ and ‘Shutdown’ having come out in 2014 and 15 respectively, it seemed odd that they should stand beside new material, regardless of their quality.

Konnichiwa is not the perfect album, but it was never meant to be. Skepta is in unchartered territory in terms of music and status, so to expect something artistically complete and polished would have been foolish. What the album does do is provide hard evidence of just how far Skepta, and Grime with him, have risen.

It is simultaneously loyal and innovative; mixing braggadocio, anger, and melancholy with sleek new production and conscientious recession to form a record which solidifies the notion that Grime, in its pure and unadulterated form, is very much alive, and very much kicking.