After 26 years of silence, Slick Rick, 60 years fit in a trainers, drops the album Victory. ‘»MC Ricky D to Slick Rick, icon fashionista, storyteller, I did that«, he claims his status – and immediately reminds us that style in hip-hop was more than just fashion.
The spoken word interlude ‘I Did That’ quoted here should actually be a prologue. It would show TikTok kids, who glorify Playboi Carti or Ufo361 (!?) as fashion icons, on whose muck the fashion and bling game actually grew. Instead, it is interspersed – much like Rick’s storytelling finesse, which spins a casual, ironic, instructive and philosophical urban novel about women’s troubles, unwanted pregnancies, secret agents and landlords with a winking casualness. Rap’s Ringelnatz.
Of course, you won’t find any rage-rap noise or autotune here. The inventor of the sing-song flow prefers to celebrate his typically insouciant purring flow on 80s rumble-box beats and 90s nostalgia. The most astonishing thing is that the bejewelled fairy-tale uncle has retained his light-footedness in the best tradition of The Adventures of Slick Rick– so much so that he even revives the genre monster hip house twice without losing face. The last track is called Another Great Adventure – how true.
