Giggs’ new mixtape arrives at a time when his profile has never been so high yet his reputation, at least in the U.S., has never dipped so low. A couple of guest spots on Drake’s 2017 playlist album More Life may have elevated the South London rapper to new levels of global renown, but the reaction of American audiences to his work—and in particular the Batman-referencing verse on Drake’s “KMT”—has proved tepid verging on hostile. “His flow is wack. It doesn’t go with the beats he’s on. His mixing engineer did an awful job with his vocals and he’s got some weak bars,” a 17-year-old rap fan told Noisey UK when the music website set out to investigate the biggest Anglo-American culture shock since U.S. audiences started taking Gavin Rossdale seriously.
American criticism of Giggs tends to focus on two particular aspects of his performance. Many U.S. rap fans scoffed at the idea of a British rapper talking about drugs, guns, and gangs, as Giggs does on “KMT,” responding on Twitter with the timeworn clichés of tea and the Victorian empire. Others dislike Giggs’ brutally spartan rap style, comparing him unfavorably to Skepta, an MC who operates in an entirely different style of music. They may both hang out with Drake in London but Skepta is a grime don, while Giggs is the king of road rap, a name recently coined for the heavier, trap-infused style of modern British hip-hop. Giggs has said that Wamp 2 Dem—pronounced “W’appen to dem?,” a nod to the Jamaican patois that is omnipresent in South London—is meant in part as a rejoinder to the first charge. “What I did care about was people wasn’t really respecting England, like the hoods and shit,” he told Beats 1 host Ebro Darden. “I didn’t really like the disrespect of what man’s been through.”
Wamp 2 Dem displays Giggs’ talent for painting brutally dark London scenes with a sparse lyrical touch peppered with enough British slang to keep Genius in advertising dollars for the foreseeable future. On paper, Giggs’ lyrics often don’t amount to much. But he writes perfectly for his own voice, a pitiless, bassy mutter that oozes like tar slopping out of a barrel, infusing lines like “Man ain’t really too confirming/None of these vermin” (from “Gully Niggaz”) with an ominous force. True, some of the lyrics on Wamp 2 Dem may be decidedly charm-free—“Moist Pussy” is about as artless as the name suggests—but you are left in no doubt that Giggs’ native Peckham is far from the Mary Poppins utopia that some stateside listeners clearly imagine it to be.
The beats, meanwhile, show Giggs’ knack for mining the best in transatlantic rap production, a skill that dates back to his breakthrough track “Talkin’ da Hardest,” where he owned the instrumental of Stat Quo’s “Here We Go.” Production on Wamp 2 Dem comes from Florida duo Cool & Dre, Atlanta’s London On Da Track and Zaytoven, and Londoners Donae’o and Footsie, among others, and the overarching feel is of American trap bluster soaked in icy South London rain. American audiences may not find anything especially new here—particularly compared to the spikier, more frenetic sound of grime—but the beats on Wamp 2 Dem are finely tuned for Giggs’ crawling South London menace.
Opening track “Gully Niggaz” is perhaps the best example of this simpatico voice and production fusion. The beat samples Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” an idea that sounds on paper like the kind of contrasting musical blend we should run to the hills to avoid. (In fact, it’s the second time Giggs has taken on the Tchaikovsky ballet, after the 2015 Dizzee Rascal collaboration “Nutcrackerz.”) But the classical bed sits well with Giggs’ bruising monotone; helped by a fantastically heavy, pitch-shifting drum pattern, it adds just enough musical polarity to really lift the song. “Ultimate Gangsta,” which follows, pulls off a similar feat, marrying an eerie string sample to a nervy beat made out of gunshots and hi-hats, over which Giggs and 2 Chainz exchange tales of gangster life.
This high standard barely dips over Wamp 2 Dem’s 13 tracks, which are helped by sympathetic production and guest turns that do more than just take up space in the credits. “Times Tickin’” joins the dots between Giggs’ London hustle, Jamaican dancehall, and American hip-hop, thanks to a commanding guest turn from Popcaan; “Gangstas & Dancers” sees Giggs join forces with Lil Duke and Young Thug on a chilling, detuned beat; and London MCs Footsie and D Double E lend “Outsiders” a wonderfully paranoid energy. But don’t be misled by the A-list guests: Wamp 2 Dem is very much Giggs’ album, where his voice dominates and his aesthetics rule; it is Giggs in excelsis, whether he is being hard, crude, introspective, or playful. By the time “Ruler” closes the album in an epic, almost operatic fashion, the rapper has already made his point: London life isn’t all bangers and mash, British MCs don’t just make grime, and Drake fans who dismissed his performance on “KMT” have a hell of a lot of catching up to do.
