Britain has found itself experiencing Shakespearean levels of tragedy: abject poverty, international tensions, rich men plotting their domination. Staring down the barrel of another period of austerity, only a working-class artist could create the state-of-the-nation treatise needed to make sense of it. Enter Slowthai, who pilfers from rap, punk and garage to depict every shade of a wretched nation.
Fittingly, throughout his debut album, the 24-year-old rapper plays the Shakespearean fool. In the Bard’s plays, the fool was a savvy servant who danced circles around those of a higher social standing. They were the one to provide wit in bleak times, and so in Nothing Great About Britain, Slowthai wryly evokes the forgotten parts of the country through snapshots of working-class life: tea and biscuits, hiding drugs, fallouts with a stepfather, EastEnders’ Phil Mitchell. From the album’s eponymous opening track to the so-quick-you’ll-miss-them barbs at the prime minister (“I run my town, but nothing like Boris!”), his punk spirit ridicules the country’s gatekeepers. The album art visualises Slowthai’s intent in a striking tableau: people watch from an estate and union jacks limp over the balconies, as a naked Slowthai grins like a maniac, locked in medieval stocks. The self-proclaimed King of Northampton suffers with a smile.
Despite Slowthai’s various statements over his breakout year – brandishing a mock-up of Johnson’s decapitated head at the Mercury awards, his “Fuck Boris” T-shirts, his delicious comments about Theresa May – his debut isn’t explicitly political. Slowthai shows, not tells, and Nothing Great About Britain lets the personal speak for itself. In his case, that’s growing up to a half-Bajan single mother in a deprived area and dealing with a cheating stepfather. On Ladies, he pays tribute to the fairer sex: the ones who have the babies, drive men crazy but made them what they are. He’s happiest “dreaming of a life he’s not living”, everything any nice aspirational lad would be after. (“I want a wife that’s gracious / Then we can get a yard that’s big in Barbados.”)
And still the phrase repeats itself across the album like a darkly comic mantra: there’s nothing great about Britain! Except Slowthai clearly thinks there is given how he applies such tenderness and care to the characters that populate his world. “Kicked us out now we living at Tasha’s,” he raps on Northampton’s Child: “In her living room / Funny how good vibes turn the room to a palace.” In a savvy piece of marketing, Slowthai’s team set up mirrors around cities with the caption “something great about Britain”. His “Bet Ya a £5er” tour billed tickets at five pounds in a bid to attract fans who wouldn’t usually be able to afford an academy gig. For all Slowthai’s apparent nihilism, his message is uplifting: it’s the people who make our country something worth saving.
In Shakespeare’s time, the fool highlighted key cultural truths: war, corrupt leaders, personal suffering. By playing the jester, Slowthai became the voice of a British generation at the turn of a turbulent decade. Hope may feel unfeasible for twentysomethings on the eve of another general election, but there’s some comfort, at least, in grim humour. We’ve got to keep laughing or we’d die crying.
