{"id":679284,"date":"2026-11-09T06:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T06:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/679284\/"},"modified":"2026-11-09T06:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T06:54:09","slug":"skepta-the-fork-and-knife-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/679284\/","title":{"rendered":"Skepta: The Fork and Knife Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty-three years ago, Dizzee Rascal<\/a>\u2019s \u201cSittin\u2019 Here<\/a>\u201d was, for many, a first glimpse of something they\u2019d never encountered before. Musically alien\u2014sinuous keys, tin rattle snares, and whirring sirens\u2014it painted a hypnotic picture of urban ennui. Its \u201csame old story\u201d of kitchen-sink drama and formless possibility was the unassuming opener to an album<\/a> that proved grime\u2019s scrappy, DIY sound could translate to a more traditional format. It also demonstrated a sense of space that allowed for blooming storytelling.<\/p>\n

A couple of decades on, Skepta<\/a>, another of the grime scene\u2019s early architects, borrows the same icy palette and sparse arrangement for a different account. \u201cSecrets of Patriarchy\u201d 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\u2014but ultimately in control of his own destiny. While \u201cSittin\u2019 Here\u201d was about the perils of waiting for something to happen, Skepta sketches out his own lot. It\u2019s a story that The Fork and Knife is clear-eyed and bold in telling: moving beyond grime\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

This album arrives seven and a half years after its nearest predecessor<\/a>, 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\u2014or 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<\/a>.) 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 \u201cCold Shower\u201d and \u201cCurrency.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty-three years ago, Dizzee Rascal\u2019s \u201cSittin\u2019 Here\u201d was, for many, a first glimpse of something they\u2019d never encountered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[692,93,61,60,278,514],"class_list":["post-679284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}