Wiley – Evolve Or Be Extinct

After last year’s patchy 100% Publishing, Wiley rebounds with Evolve Or Be Extinct. His eighth album kicks off with the digital skank of Welcome To Zion, a powerful return to basics featuring sparse production and lightning-fast rhymes. The pace ramps up with the title track as Wiley attacks the fevered egos of commercial grime MCs. The four-to-the-floor of Boom Blast follows the Rolex model, with fairly mindless lyrics about 'the feeling' and wanting to 'touch the ceiling', but it is a mercifully brief concession to mainstream appeal, and a smart contrast to the slow-mo electro/rave of I'm A Weirdo.

Wiley is a weirdo, and that's perhaps why he sells fewer records than his former protégée Dizzee Rascal, but his playful, mercurial approach feels much closer to the original vision of grime than the safe, familiar enormo-pop of his contemporaries. He hasn't lost his sense of humour, and remains a gifted, massively prolific writer and producer – in short he's a national treasure. This is him on top form, delivering a coherent, intermittently hilarious, sonically adventurous album.