“I am British, I am Jamaican, I am American. I am what I am,” says Slick Rick on “I Did That,” a track from Victory, his first album in twenty-six years. Born in Mitcham, London yet long considered a pioneer of ostentatious New York style and panache due to seminal golden-era recordings like “La-Di-Da-Di” with Doug E. Fresh and 1988’s The Great Adventures of Slick Rick, the man famed for wearing massive gold chains and one eyepatch embraces his British-Caribbean heritage here with newfound vigor. The album is accompanied by a 33-minute film directed by Meji Alabi, who has worked with Afrobeats stars like Wizkid and Burna Boy, and executive-produced by Idris Elba, who helps turn the affair into a whirl of pretty faces, many of them wearing eyepatches in honor of the self-proclaimed Ruler. “I flipped being blind into a fashion statement,” says Rick.
Victory feels reminiscent of a recent swath of projects by Eighties rap gods – LL Cool J’s 2024 comeback The Force, MC Lyte’s 1 of 1, Chuck D’s recent Enemy Radio: Radio Armageddon – that push boldly and awkwardly into uncharted sonic territory, with sometimes-illuminating results. With platinum success in the rearview and a swelter of career accolades on the mantle, these acts have little left to prove other than making art that means something to them, whether an audience gathers or not. Slick Rick’s journey to earning a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award last year has been particularly bumpy, from serving time for attempted murder charges in the Nineties to nearly being deported in the Aughts before New York Governor David Patterson pardoned him in 2008. He hasn’t released a full-length since 1999’s The Art of Storytelling, which drew energy from a terrific bop with OutKast, “Street Talkin’.” However, subsequent occasional but memorable cameos on Jay-Z’s 2001 hit “Girls, Girls, Girls,” Mos Def’s 2009 track “Auditorium” and a handful of others have proven that Rick remains a formidable voice when he chooses to re-enter a studio.
At 27 minutes, the Victory album is even shorter than the movie. The latter has some tracks currently unavailable on streaming like “Badman Generation,” which finds Elba preening alongside Rick, the Hollywood actor living out his boyhood dream of being a rapper, and “Who the Fuck Gonna Stop Us,” which is co-produced by Rick and Q-Tip, who also helmed LL’s The Force. Debuting at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Victory resembles a visual album akin to Beyoncé’s Lemonade, but without that piece’s poetic reflections on Black identity and culture. Instead, director Alabi stocks up on flavorful images of Black London, impeccably dressed actors and dancers bathed in cinematic light, and a brain-frying amount of jump cuts that don't allow the viewer to meditate on what’s being shown. It feels like one of those late-Eighties videos where middle-aged classic rockers surrounded themselves with beautiful models trying to look cool for the VH-1 crowd. There are a handful of fine moments, though, like a clip of Rick performing at the famed Blue Note in Manhattan, rhyming into a diamond-encrusted microphone; or a black-and-white scene of Rick giving his “I Did That” speech while staring out on a rocky beach.
The music itself is a bit more substantive, if only because hip-hop fans understand how crucial Rick is to the evolution of the culture. The way he speaks, his unique British inflections, and the way he deploys his voice in a whispery, almost feminine sway have had an enormous influence on generations of artists. On one of the better tracks, “Documents,” he pairs with Nas, a hip-hop icon clearly inspired by him. (Victory arrives via Mass Appeal Records, a label Nas co-owns.) There are two cuts, “Cuz I’m Here” and “Come On, Let’s Go,” that find Rick embracing a fun Afrohouse party vibe. Then there’s “Angelic,” where Rick flips an array of stop-start cadences. “Thanks to all the fam and/Set to go on rammin’/Here’s a toast to all my niggas/Coasting with this British/Goes another painting like I’m Rembrandt’s/Showing off the grit has/Wrote it like it’s witchcraft/Ya gets me?” he raps. At age 60, he’s earned the right to stunt without expectations.
