Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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Dave

  • Psychodrama [Neighbourhood, 2019] A-
  • We're All Alone in This Together [Dave/Neighbourhood, 2021] A-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Psychodrama [Neighbourhood, 2019]
London-based Nigerian rapper David Orobosa Omoregie has quite a history. When he was an infant his clergyman father was marooned in Africa in a snarl of immigration snafu, religio-political sectarianism, and marital dysfunction. One brother was sentenced to life in a gang murder and another has done time for bank fraud. Dave himself, however, is a piano-playing paragon who took law and philosophy classes while studying sound design in college and won a Mercury Prize for this debut studio album. Its beats orchestrally and/or electronically embellished piano riffs, its lyrics intelligible, thoughtful, calm, sometimes even gentle, it's framed as a course of psychotherapy spanning 2018, when Dave turned 20. He has plenty of perspective: "You see our gold chains and our flashy cars/I see a lack of self-worth and I see battle scars" is an observation both wise and cocky for a debut album, and though he's a rapper first, cameos from knife-wielding London rapper J Hus, Afro-fusion luminary Burna Boy, and Nashville up-and-comer Ruelle suggest the breadth of his self-conception. Exactly how compelling he can be musically remains an open question. But the climactic tragedy "Lesley" definitely points him in the right direction. A-

We're All Alone in This Together [Dave/Neighbourhood, 2021]
Since music per se isn't what this prize-winning artist is selling or his wide-ranging admirers are buying, let me insist that Dave's quietly grand, steadily melodic keyboard parts and calm, assured percussion figures are crucial in holding his long strings of off-rhymes together: torcher-corner-baller-aura-pauper-daughter-slaughter-borer-flora-stalk us-order-insurer-water-orca, whew. He collaborates all over the map, ranging from big-talking South London rappers who stoke his unfortunate appetite for luxury timepieces to, for instance, James Blake, Jorja Smith, and Dutch singer-songwriter Anouk, and I could go on. But he's also candid about the crippling anxieties that can ensue when your brothers are criminals and your mother nearly died giving you life. And surprised though he is to be shagging Tories and falling in love with an Albanian, cultural breadth is just part of his mission. Of course he's down with his African and West Indian brethren. But he's almost as appalled by how fucked post-Brexit Britannia's Middle Eastern and Eastern European immigrants are. A-