Maxwell Ansah certainly knows the value of networking. The Walthamstow rapper better known as Lethal Bizzle has seen his horizons reach way beyond local gang feuds. He now shares bills with performers from the furious Gallow to the amiable Jack Penate and his music has been labelled “grindie”, a supposed meeting of grime and indie. Kate Nash and Babyshambles even appear on his new album, marking it for ever as something made in 2007.

But it was calling David Cameron a “doughnut” that really made his name, after the Tory leader demonised Bizzle to impress his natural constituency (and vice versa, of course). Bizzle’s raucous, possibly offensive music reminded us that a generation gap still exists.

He is not boring then. Delightfully for the listener, he does not possess a common-sense filter either. Bizzle reveals everything. A ludicrous mash-up of the Clash’s Police on my Back features him telling a pub yarn of being chased across East London by a police helicopter after nicking a bling-free Fiat Punto. In the soulful closer Reflecting he even yelps: “Thanks for your purchase . . . I think I’m gonna be making two more albums after this, then I’m done.” It’s nearer to a postmatch interview than a song.

On the surprisingly elegant My Eyes he bemoans, rather touchingly, how even his level of fame precludes a stroll down the market. The more frenetic Sometimes I Think displays the morbidity of the habitual marijuana smoker pondering life’s meaninglessness (“Some do the hustle in a shirt and a tie, it doesn’t really matter when we’re all gonna die”).

Elsewhere a Ruts sample anchors Babylon’s Burning the Ghetto, a tune that labels politicians as something worse than mere doughnuts.

Pete Doherty’s mob add a gentle stomp to the undistinguished Boy, but the anthemic Bizzle Bizzle is harder and more effective. Best of all is the turn from Kate Nash that transforms Look What You Done – a duet whose lyric reflects badly on the male partner – into a proper pop song.

But the presence of the late Slinga, an unknown local voice, is most touching. He was stabbed to death last year but his voice lives on, ironically on the desperate and predictable gangsta talk of You’ll Get Wrapped. It is that grim fact that keeps this wilful and entertaining record grounded.

(V2)

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