A Little Deeper

They may be unlikely bedfellows, but New York darlings The Strokes could certainly teach London’s latest garage diva Ms Dynamite a thing or two about debut albums, namely the accurate premise that less is more.

While Is This It kept itself to a trim 35 minutes with very little waste, A Little Deeper balloons to fill the extra space that CD offers, clocking in at over an hour. If truth be told, Dynamite could have easily lost half of the material on offer and just left us with the 30 or so minutes that actually hit the target. For what a sublime 30 minutes they are. Single ‘It Takes More’ is as good a place as any to start, a withering critique on gangster rappers and bump and grinding r’n’b stars that betrays an intelligence to match the attitude.

Work your way through a hundred tracks of bragging bullshit hip-hop and the chances are you’d still be struggling to find a line as telling as “How many Africans died for the baguettes on your Rolex”. It’s a moment that sets the tone for A Little Deeper’s considerable highpoints, indicating a voice that is genuinely streetwise yet studiously avoids all the usual tiresome clichés. A good rapper (although inclined to adopt that rather annoying nasal style so beloved of the UK garage scene) and a fine singer, the 21-year-old aquits herself well on a range of material. ‘Dy-na-mi-tee’ is an infectious autobiographical piece, ‘Brother’ genuinely moving and ‘Watch Over Them’ a show stopping acapella number, complete with more world weary lyrics. Then it all self-combusts in a string of uninspired, middle-of-the-road tracks that show none of the spark that Dynamite is so obviously capable of producing.

Maybe it’s a case of trying to do too much too soon, but this is still a hugely impressive debut – one that at times is utterly peerless. Let’s cut her some slack and just celebrate a talent that shows all the signs of giving the Lauryn Hills of this world a serious run for their money. Not yet, maybe, but it’s surely only a matter of time.