Dizzee Rascal “Tongue N’ Cheek” Review

“Beep Beep/Comin’ through/Move over/Yeah you/Don’t argue/Just blow it/Hurry up or you’re gonna get hurt” is how Dizzee Rascal starts the second song of his fourth album, Tongue N’ Cheek, and it seems as this is an appropriate mantra for Rascal’s approach to his entire album: Rascal is gunning for superstardom on this one, and he doesn’t really give a damn who he has to knock out of the way to get there. Though in his gun for a wider audience, Rascal mostly ends up knocking himself out of the way, eschewing the sparsely populated bleeps and blips of Showtime, or the southern crunk through way of East London of Maths+English for a much more mainstream club sound. However, it is either to Rascal’s credit or simply to his upbringing through the now extinct grime scene that Tongue N’ Cheek does not entirely fall prey to cheap club beats and tired rhymes about hoes, cash, and booze.

Album opener “Bonkers” is the closest that Rascal comes to straight techno, yet it also becomes one of the album’s catchiest and most subversive songs. In the hands of any other MC, the lines “Come people think I’m bonkers/but I just think I’m free/Man I’m just livin’ my life there’s nothing crazy ’bout me” would come off as straight and without interpretation, yet Rascal’s background and the way his verses repeat throughout the song give the impression that he is trying to convince himself that these words are true just as much as he’s trying to convince us, and he may be failing at that. “Dance Wiv Me” is slightly more straightforward lyrically (Dizzee would like an attractive girl to dance with him) but the beat is sublime, and sounds like it could be a B-side from Kanye West’s Graduation in the best way possible. “Dirtee Cash” is pure guilty pleasure, right down to the ’80s movie soundtrack synths and the drumline cribbed directly from Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy.” The standout track here is arguably “Can’t Tek No More” with its deep dub bassline and rasta vibe, and its also the most interesting track lyrically, as Rascal uses the protest horns from Aswad’s “Warrior Charge” to wax philosophical about the recession and the state of global politics in general. In the hands of a lesser MC, this might sound like sermonizing, but Rascal is talented enough and—most importantly—funny enough to keep the song populated with lines such as “Money lenders are extortionate/So you gotta move in with your mates or your mum/Ain’t got a place of your own now your gone/Feeling glum/It’s a crowded house and you cant have fun/’Cause when you have sex they can hear when you come” that stop the song from feeling trite or too heavy-handed.

However, not all of Rascal’s forays into more mainstream music pan out as successfully. “Freaky Freaky” sounds cool enough on the first listen with its Dr. Dre circa 1992 chilled out beat, but in this post-Bitches Ain’t Shit rap world misogyny has to be either done extremely well or hilariously over the top to be effective, and Rascal’s lyrics are neither, so it just blends into the fray. “Money, Money” was meant to come off as brash, but just comes out as bratty and obnoxious, and its refrain of “Money money money/Girls girls/Cash cash” is neither inspiring nor inspired.

Rascal ends his album with “Bad Behaviour,” a song that on paper should be an entirely forgettable club track that wouldn’t be out of place on a Lady Gaga album, but, like the rest of Tongue N’ Cheek, comes off sounding fresh and original when it technically should sound stale. It just goes to show that no matter how much Dizzee Rascal tries to widen his audience and break out on a more global scale, he can never forget his grime roots in East London, which could not have benefited him more.

[review by guest contributor Jonathan Eiseman]

Also: Dizzee Rascal on BBC Radio 1′s Live Lounge