There’s a theory, often debated online, that America is home to foods the European mind (and body) simply cannot comprehend. Hold my beer, says Tony Bontana: On the ninth track of the British rapper’s latest album, the Birmingham-born artist pays homage to a delicacy unique to the place he grew up—the battered chip. These are deep-fried potatoes that are lathered in batter, then deep-fried all over again until they congeal into a crisp, iridescent mass. Comprehend that.
Birmingham locals—Brummies, as they’re known—treat delicacies like battered chips with a reverence Parisians reserve for haute cuisine. It’s bad for them, they know, but Brits take pride in the ridiculous, delicious traditions unique to the working-class cities of England. These aren’t pretty places, but there’s joy in finding the romance in them anyway.
Tony Bontana knows all about that. The English rapper, guitarist, producer and label-head—who many Americans may have first encountered last year when he appeared as the sole guest verse on Nourished by Time’s The Passionate Ones—is a remarkably prolific DIY artist whose work spans drill, skittish cloud rap, and sprawling free-jazz psychedelia. Much of his music revolves around the very excitement of making it: perpetually energized by the power of imagination, and the notion that enough of it can help the artist outgrow any circumstance.
My Name, a sequel to his 2024 tape L’Humanité, doesn’t deal directly with Birmingham, but the resilience of its people animates every line. You don’t choose the city you’re from any more than you choose the name you’re given: So goes the spoken-word intro in which Bontana’s best friend, Izzi, muses on her own name, muddied by the complications of mixed parenthood and lost heritage. “My name isn’t even mine, it’s what I get called” she says: “My name was given, not chosen, and for me that says it all.”
My Name unfurls less as a well-ordered treatise and more a series of ruminations on the theme of what a name means, flitting between odes to art, memories of childhood, and declarations of internationalist solidarity. With regional rappers from the UK inexplicably blowing up of late, it’s a joy to hear an MC rap in an accent from England’s heartlands: all those long, deep vowels, the way Shakespeare spoke them. Bontana performs with an open chest, projecting affirmations like “live life in absolutes, like Matt Bellamy” whole-heartedly. His lyrics detail a process of active healing, gesturing at a contentedness that beds in as your 20 begin to wane.
Stylistically, the album feels of a piece with the work of post-Earl MCs like MIKE or Navy Blue, delivering meditations over electro-funk loops resplendent with squelching synths, twinkling keys, and Jimmy Jam drums. You may occasionally long for more variety (this is, after all, a rapper who released a split EP with a Pittsburgh noise-rock band), but Bontana and his co-producers display remarkable range, from the Brainfeeder-esque cacophony oghost summons on “Don’t Cost a Thing” to Proxee’s piano-flecked hypnotics on the languid “About Face.”
The majority of the beats tend toward density and fuzz, which is what makes My Name’s closing track so distinct. “October Fallacy” begins, startlingly, with bright, twinkling acoustic piano, shimmering like a Philip Glass etude. It’s a fitting canvas upon which Bontana divulges his most direct reflections on the album’s theme. “My name’s a mask to keep my inner child safe/My name’s the last thing they’ll remember after my face,” he raps with the exhausted drawl of a post-fight boxer. Then a gospel choir joins him and the song explodes, reaching toward the sky.
I’ve been thinking about an Instagram reel I saw recently that features some Birmingham teenagers looking over the work-in-progress skyline. “Bro, if Birmingham’s this beautiful” one of them says, clutching a can of Red Bull, “imagine how beautiful heaven’s gonna be.” It’s a charming comment that has become something of a viral moment for Brummies: a joke but also not, mixing reluctant affection with unapologetic aspiration. Life, like a name, is whatever you make it.
