Lethal Bizzle Back To Bizznizz Review 426nq

Lethal Bizzle is the third East London grime hero to trample across 2007’s soundscape and also the third to leave punters exhilarated, cheered and menaced.

Only a few weeks back Bow’s Dizzee Rascal and his eski-beat progenitor Wiley cracked out their own LPs of formidable speaker pressure.

Now the MC that made it out of More Fire Crew as far as performing on stage with Pete Doherty and Kate Moss in front of a mud-drenched Glastonbury in June brings his own talents to the table for his second album.

Bizzle, again like Dizzee, is an ace at picking out collaborators. Some of Back To Bizznizz’s finest moments are when the hilarious and profanity-charged rapper spits rhymes alongside the likes of up-and-coming Harrow lass, Kate Nash, and those Babyshambles oiks. With the latter’s assistance on "Boy", urchin-rock riffs and tribal beats are fused with Bizzle’s customarily witty rhymes to great effect.

Meanwhile "Look What You Done" sees Nash’s chirpy call and response vocal added to some typically London love-life tales proves infectious. Bizzle hilariously intones: 'I erased your number from my phone / Told you all I wanna do is bone’.

Lethal’s love of genre-mashing also comes to the fore on the tale of his pre-music days, "Police On My Back". Musically, it’s just a sample of The Clash’s driving punk cover of Eddie Grant’s tune, but in these hands it’s a vignette about getting away from the law in a stolen car and hiding in a shed in Essex.

Producer Statik has helped mould this record into a pleasingly diverse bunch of tunes from the dirty electro-house of "Selfridges Girl Not On MySpace" (ace title and again packed full of great lines) to the acoustic, lightweight strains of "Reflecting".

There is also a fair bit of malevolence on the likes of "Mr" and "Bizzle, Bizzle", with rock-hard beats sure to puncture listener ears like razor-sharp sonic skewers.

Another banging urban British album from the East end. Who says grime don’t pay?