Top Boy soundtrack review – a showcase of UK rap's strength and diversity

There is seemingly no end to Drake’s adoration of UK rap culture. Beginning with his impromptu features at Skepta’s London shows in 2015 and an effusive back-and-forth on social media, the Canadian rapper was soon bringing up obscure references to smoking a blem and wearing Hermès in “Gyalchester” on 2017’s More Life. Yet the pinnacle of his grime fascination came with the Channel 4 series Top Boy. Consistently posting stills of the show on his Instagram, featuring clumsy captions like “real bod man”, he couldn’t get enough of the east London drug gang drama.

Cancelled after two seasons, Drake has now been pivotal in bringing the show back to life on Netflix. It’s apt, then, that with grime’s ascension into the mainstream since Top Boy went off-air in 2013 that music is central to the new series. This compilation isn’t strictly a soundtrack but a collection of tracks loosely inspired by the show, featuring some of its newest onscreen stars like Dave and Little Simz, as well as standout talents from the wider scene like AJ Tracey, Ghetts and Headie One.

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Highlights come from the bigger names like Dave on Professor X, employing his characteristic verbal dexterity, rapping, “I’m a top boy like Sully but darker” over a down-tempo undulating instrumental, or “I do seafood Saturdays when I see your girl / Only oysters she’s ever had were on TFL” on the Godfather-esque God’s Eye, while AJ Tracey is frenetically paced over a UK garage-referencing Elastic. Numbers like Nafe Smallz’s Riding on E and Teeway’s Feeling It are less remarkable, though, playing like lacklustre covers of Drake tracks in their spartan mid-tempo production and Auto-Tuned hooks.

Even with some middling tracks, the album documents the breadth and depth of UK rap’s influence in 2019. From Little Simz’s incisive, high-drama standout Venom, or veteran Ghetts’ sub-heavy Listen, it is a vibrant, tangibly British set of tracks, brought together under the umbrella of a cult show that has come to visually represent this music. The taunting singsong flow of UK drill, arguably the sound of London gang life in 2019, is rightly represented in strong tracks from Headie One and SL.

Drake, of course, closes the record with Behind Barz, and leaves a bitter taste with his grim pastiche: an embarrassing hybrid of drill and Skepta delivered in a ripe Jamaican-inflected accent. He is better employed instead as a fan and A&R, allowing the true stars, with their intuitive grasp of the British genre, to shine.