The Fork and Knife

Twenty-three years ago, Dizzee Rascal’s “Sittin’ Here” was, for many, a first glimpse of something they’d never encountered before. Musically alien—sinuous keys, tin rattle snares, and whirring sirens—it painted a hypnotic picture of urban ennui. Its “same old story” of kitchen-sink drama and formless possibility was the unassuming opener to an album that proved grime’s scrappy, DIY sound could translate to a more traditional format. It also demonstrated a sense of space that allowed for blooming storytelling.

A couple of decades on, Skepta, another of the grime scene’s early architects, borrows the same icy palette and sparse arrangement for a different account. “Secrets of Patriarchy” opens The Fork and Knife with a flit through the studios, appointments, fashion shows, and family life of a man with demands on his time—but ultimately in control of his own destiny. While “Sittin’ Here” was about the perils of waiting for something to happen, Skepta sketches out his own lot. It’s a story that The Fork and Knife is clear-eyed and bold in telling: moving beyond grime’s now-established templates to curate a mural that spans three decades and more of Black British music, and tells a modern story of an immigrant family flourishing in spite of all odds and expectations.

This album arrives seven and a half years after its nearest predecessor, and 34 months since it was first announced in January 2024. That delay might be explained, as Skepta has suggested in interviews, by the pursuit of perfection—or the weight of having to say something worth hearing. (When your audience has inadvertently become mums you might bump into on the school run, the pressure is apparently heightened.) So it takes a little time for things to get going. A bit of throat-clearing in the opening quarter, eggshell steps as he retreads familiar greazy grime rhythms and bouncy A$AP-adjacent rap flows on “Cold Shower” and “Currency.” But as The Fork and Knife unfolds, these nods to past output begin to make sense as Skepta starts to join the dots of a varied and storied career.

Skepta’s music has always been about putting shape to who he is. There are the classic reload bars stamping himself out as a “temple tourer, champagne pourer/Winchmore warrior, Class A courier/grime scene ambassador, Duppy maker,” or the repudiations that stuffed his 2014 comeback hit “That’s Not Me.” There have been lows—trying to manufacture a viral dance in an empty pub alongside a dwarf Michael Jackson impersonator among them—but Skepta is old enough to own those now, and grow from them. “I’ve been in denial, but not today,” goes “Revenge,” as he dissects his missteps over a slinky rolling beat. It’s all still part of him. That recognition shows a comfort in his own skin and his own story that perhaps only comes with age and the benefits of hindsight. And it brings a sense of freedom, too.

So, he flirts in French over alté with Aya Nakamura on “Chippie” (sample line: “You’re looking prêt-à-manger”—an all-timer pick-up line for anyone familiar with British grab-and-go cuisine). He glides over jazzy breaks on “Broken Hearts” with Central Cee and Jorja Smith, and sticks his head in the bass bins for the rumbling, Asake-featuring “Aloe Vera.” It’s a succinct, celebratory swing through his broadening catalog, culminating in the raw, radio-set energy of the blistering, nine-minute “Belly” cypher. The beat features the gnawing beep of a low-battery smoke alarm, and Skepta runs his old “temple tourer” bars with all the hunger of the younger MCs he puts on ahead of himself. A cameo from Madness’ Suggs on “Innocent Smile” threads a line back to Skepta’s dad DJing two-tone ska tracks in the febrile 1980s. And then “Victory Lap”—a frenetic smorgasbord that was originally created as part of livestream with Twitch streamer PlaqueBoyMax and the du jour Fred again..—shows Skepta’s still more than capable of keeping up with the kids.

If this is Skepta’s grown-up, conscious rap album, it’s an exercise in soft power and pictures of joy. He shows, rather than tells. The album title refers back to what his grandfather, a hospitality worker, wanted for his children and grandchildren: to live a life that looked like that of the customers he would serve, with their silverware laid out just so. For Skepta, now taking his mum to award ceremony dinners, that wish has come full circle. What’s more, this album arrives at a crucial moment in how Britain projects its own identity to the world. While a melange that spans basement social media agitators, troll farms, and the world’s richest man insist—absurdly—that the country is overrun by Islamists, hemmed in with no-go zones, youths riding rampant stealing mobile phones and watches, Skepta’s quiet defiance states otherwise. The Fork and Knife successfully dovetails the strands of Skepta’s public persona: grime MC, Más Tiempo house DJ, sometime painter, MAINS fashion label head, Nigerian chief, and figurehead of a new cultural dynasty. In doing so, he tells a new story of immigrant Britain. “I’m not an MC, I’m a locksmith/I spit bars and I open doors,” he raps cooly on “Revenge.” “And I don’t want a ‘Thank you’ from a young G/It’s your world, nigga, have it, it’s yours.”