J Hus: Beautiful and Brutal Yard album review — menacing and multi-layered

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“Do you know who you are?” an associate cries to J Hus at the start of his third album. “Show them who you are.” The London rapper’s response unfolds over the course of the next 18 tracks. It can be summarised thus: GOAT, Gambian, badman, Casanova.

The first of those is “greatest of all time”, a title that Hus regularly awards himself. This is a typical piece of hip-hop hyperbole, but it also reflects his significance to UK rap. Now 28, he helped pioneer a new sub-genre in the mid-2010s, a fusion of African, Caribbean and UK styles dubbed Afroswing. It gave musical identity to the growing proportion of young black Britons with African backgrounds. Hence the pride in Gambia that runs through Hus’s songs: it’s his parents’ homeland.

His hit debut Common Sense took his singular sound into the mainstream. Imprisonment in 2018 for carrying a knife threatened to reverse his efforts to surmount a past life of violence in east London. But 2020’s Big Conspiracy brought him even greater success, including a chart number one and a Brit Award. It cemented his place among UK rap’s leading names.

Beautiful and Brutal Yard differs from its predecessors in that Hus’s regular producer Jae5, a key figure in Afroswing, is absent. The music retains its diasporic feel, not so much eclectic as multi-layered. In “Massacre”, he raps with a Caribbean accent as if in tribute to the roots of black British pop. “Come Gully Bun (Gambian President)” features west London rap veteran Boss Belly, who shares Hus’s Gambian heritage. Other guests include Jamaican dancehall singer Popcaan and Nigerian Afrobeats star Burna Boy. A croaky-sounding Drake phones in a cameo on “Who Told You”.

Hus is a versatile vocalist, switching between unhurried rapping and melodic singing. His badman persona materialises in “Cream”, which combines the disarming flow of 50 Cent with drill music’s menacing basslines. Verses about blood-spilling cast a sombre pall in these thug-life outings, but lilting tempi add light to the darkness.

In comparison, the rather too frequent occasions in which Hus takes the role of Casanova pootle around in the same gear, a set of songs about sex and (much less often) romance framed by wafty acoustic guitars, burbling horns and samey slow beats. Hus shows us who he is, but the portrait could be crisper.

★★★☆☆

‘Beautiful and Brutal Yard’ is released by Black Butter Records