Dylan Mills is a bad boy and proud of it. As Dizzee Rascal, the 19-year-old Londoner writes about his escapades in the inner city, using the garage MC formula to paint a bleak landscape of debt and desperation. The result is one of the best albums yet to come out of the UK urban scene, daring, original and occasionally quite disturbing. Musically dense (with synthesised strings and Gothic sound effects to the fore) and lyrically uncompromising, Mills makes the likes of So Solid Crew look like a bunch of wusses. And while his malevolent brashness is occasionally offputting, he more than makes up for it with such priceless rhymes such as "Queen Elizabeth don't know me, so how can she control me, when I live street and she lives neat?" If he can keep this up, the boy in da corner will soon be promoted to the top of the class.
