
Giggs isn’t the best rapper - his flow is an ooze. He’s never surpassed 2007’s Talkin’ da Hardest, and he’s lost his record deal. Somehow, though, Landlord is fantastic, crafted, big-stage trap with the lissom, conversational feel of a mixtape. The clever use of features offsets that lugubrious voice with a pleasing range of articulate rappers; and the beats intelligently mix intimacy and claustrophobia, making Giggs’s grownup rhymes more authoritative than ever. Drake-aping Of Course is more drizzly than Drizzy, but adds light to the usual shady south London bad-boy bars of bangers Lock Doh and Whippin Excursion. “They call me the landlord / Come and get your keys cut,” he gruffs, and it’s fabulously half-hilarious, half-terrifying.
