Blade - The Lion Goes from Strength to Strength (1993)

Blade should require no introduction, but then we live in a far from perfect world and it's been nearly thirty years since this album, fifteen since his most recent - unless there's been one which nobody told me about. It's not that he was the first rapper with a British passport, but he was in on the ground floor and maintained enduring visibility back before anyone took UK rap seriously on any kind of scale. He achieved some mainstream success with The Unknown recorded with the late Mark B, even landing an appearance on Top of the Pops, but this was his second album, the one which apparently remains his own personal favourite; which itself reveals him to be a good judge of his own work because it really is his best, at least so far as I'm concerned.

This is a CD reissue I'm listening to, but I can still recall the moment when I lowered the needle onto the first white vinyl disc of the original double, and I recall that moment because what comes out of the speaker is as astonishing as a kick up the arse - the adrenaline rush of organised noise, musical information overload somehow tamed to a funky as fuck beat duplicating the intensity of the Bomb Squad without simply copying the moves; and while we're on the subject of Public Enemy, Blade himself betrays the influence of - guessing here - both Chuck D and Rakim, but his own personality overpowers the delivery to the point that you couldn't really mistake him for anyone else.

As with much of Blade's work, the whole thing was pulled together by the man himself - recorded, pressed, distributed, everything, and the sleeve notes describe our man picking the pockets of teenagers in arcades to finance the release of his debut, arguing that they would only have spunked the money away on nothing. Accordingly you can really feel the graft that's gone into this one, fueled by fried chicken, Lucozade, and sleepless nights sweating over the beats and rhymes - gritty as New Cross, posture free, angry and funny, and refreshingly outspoken in terms of authority and our man's refusal to jump through the usual music biz hoops. Were it not for the fried chicken, The Lion Goes from Strength to Strength is one of the few rap albums which would have made sense on the Crass label, which is no bad thing.