Music

Probably the sole constant in Brown’s chequered career is his knack of wearing his heart on his sleeve and his brain in his sock. His yob-savant character is perfectly personified by this new album – an exploration of Britain’s socio-political realities named after the quote from the fountain in Tony Montana’s foyer.

Brown’s subject matter is the usual subtle blend of Biblical imagery (‘The Feeding Of The 5,000’), mystical mumbo-jumbo (‘the reason that we’re here, nobody knows in all creation’), scally sensitivity (‘so sure we’ll meet again, my precious friend’), street-level ‘keeping it real’ (‘it ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog’) and statements of the bleeding obvious (too many to mention). Whether you find this profound, hilarious or insulting to your intellect will depend on your existing feelings toward Brown. It’s pretty much the same story with the music.

With its ‘Kingdom Come’-esque piano stabs and demo-mode beat, opener ‘Eternal Flame’ (yes, really) suggests Jay-Z on a tight budget and an even tighter schedule. The rest of the LP deviates little from this template, revolving around a shuffly snare loop, sparse bass bumps, a wispily soulful Brown croon and an aural showreel from the Cecil B DeMille Memorial String Section. Quite where Brown’s new-found passion for strings comes from is a mystery, but it could well have something to do with a second-hand copy of ‘Car Boot Soul’ and a bucket bong.  But somehow it’s actually pretty good. No one else would be able to get away with it of course, but this world, it seems, is uniquely Brown’s.