Whether or not commercial success would make Rodney Smith more at ease with himself than, say, a good cuddle, a kindly word and a listening ear would, it would be nice to put the former scenario to the test. One of Britain’s most fiercely talented and original lyricists, the famously conflicted rapper reaches his fourth studio album no closer to the breakthrough his musical inventiveness and self-knowing wit demand. Few, if any, 2008 albums released by home-grown artists can match Slime & Reason for musical and verbal menace, ebullience, melancholy and thrilling unpredictability. The bouncing carnival cadences of Again & Again; CRUFF’s dark electro-dub; the take-your-breath-away candour of Show Must Go On (“I can’t let my kids see me this way . . . What have I become? / A long streak of piss, a drunken bum?”); and the tunes: twisted and mashed pop, funk, reggae, hip-hop, electro. This is sensational. Buy it.

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