Wretch 32 ‘Home’ review: Rap great dissects the idea of home

Wretch 32‘s sixth album drills into a broad theme — the complex perception of ‘home’ for British-Caribbean and Black British people — and interrogates it with depth and nuance. He lays the foundations with a string of breezy, sun-drenched tunes that pay homage to his Jamaican roots, with tons of space given to collaborators like Skip Marley and Protoje.

Once Wretch switches his gaze to the UK, his knack for incisive social commentary — with no wasted words — comes to the fore. On ‘Black and British’ (featuring Little Simz and Benjamin AD) he recalls heartbreaking formative episodes, spitting “On Black Boy Lane I was caught on my own / He told me go back to my country, I thought I was home / Guess I was wrong”.  This kind of potent storytelling has defined every Wretch album, but targeted towards the specific lyrical theme of ‘Home’, its clarity is intensified.

Examining the Black British experience of being cherished when convenient and cast aside the rest of the time, ‘Home Sweet Home’ enlists UK rap royalty Kano for an intelligently-crafted, wordplay-heavy skewering of the treatment of Black British footballers, with bars like “Bet Saka never felt blacker / And Rashford was the bees ’til finals / So really we’re some “he’s alright thoughs” / But only when they feed our child though”. Across the record, Wretch augments these observations with clips from the 1988 documentary Scenes From The Farm, an exploration of life on Tottenham’s Broadwater Farm estate (where he grew up). These snippets help zoom things out; this album is a piece of social documentation that stretches back generations in its attempts to understand our current reality.