Stormzy: This Is What I Mean review — grace and vulnerability from the UK’s most significant rapper

As their sales have evaporated, the purpose of albums has been called into question. But they can have a purpose beyond sales figures: a higher purpose, one might say. The new release from the UK’s most significant rapper is a case in point.

This Is What I Mean is Stormzy’s third album. His first, 2017’s Gang Signs & Prayer, marked the Londoner’s crossover from underground grime MC to mainstream chart act. The tension between the two states was folded into a wider question, about being true to oneself, by songs that deftly picked a way through competing demands of street and church life. Its follow-up, 2019’s Heavy Is the Head, dramatised a different friction. Its cover showed Stormzy contemplating the Union Jack-emblazoned stab vest that he wore at his stunning Glastonbury headline set that year. The album was torn between his pressing sense of public duty as figurehead of black British music and a desire for breathing space.

“The second one was stressful, but it’s simple for my third,” he raps on This Is What I Mean. The title has the ring of someone nailing a point that they felt unable to express properly before. The 12 songs cohere better than those on Heavy Is the Head — although some Stormzy fans may be dismayed at the reason for that coherence.

The album was preceded by the single “Mel Made Me Do It”, a seven-minute tour de force of rap one-upmanship. But that song does not appear on This Is What I Mean, and nor does its invulnerable demeanour. Instead, opening track “Fire + Water” strikes an opposing note. An electric piano sets up a head-bowed contemporary gospel melody over which Stormzy sings and then raps in an intimate murmur. It is a love song in which he appeals for an ex-lover to return. Christian imagery of healing waters immerses the theme of romantic love in the medium of holy love.

Faith has always been prominent in Stormzy’s music. But whereas secular and religious music were treated as contrasting forces in Gang Signs & Prayer, here they are reconciled. “Firebabe” is a quietly devotional number about a lover who is likened to an angel. “Light still guiding you home, you know I’m there,” he softly raps in “Hide & Seek”, a delicate ballad about rekindling an old flame. The gossip-conscious may note that Stormzy is rumoured to have done exactly that with his ex, the television presenter Maya Jama. But the songs are not merely updates on the 29-year-old’s dating status.

“Time to free my mind and limitations,” he raps in the title track, a head-nodder with a slickly bombastic beat. It provides momentary relief for purists hoping to hear Stormzy spitting bars rather than pouring his heart out — but as the song progresses, he selflessly cedes the microphone to a succession of guests, UK rapper Ms Banks and Ghanaian singers Amaarae and Black Sherif. They are among the numerous other voices that turn up on the album, including a gospel choir, an entire track sung by the vocalist Sampha and a sample of Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B talking about the building of a black British musical identity.

The polyphony partly derives from Stormzy’s pragmatic recognition of his vocal limitations in an album featuring as much singing as rapping. It also chimes with his belief that a congregation of black voices must be heard in British music, not just a few industry-approved stars. “They told us just one at a time, that’s the biggest lie,” Stormzy raps in “My Presidents Are Black”. The message may prove too self-effacing for big commercial success — there is no “Vossi Bop” here — but it resonates nonetheless. This Is What I Mean is a graceful, rewarding album. It knows its purpose.

★★★★☆

‘This Is What I Mean’ is released by 0207 Def Jam/Merky