Jonski explains his stance straight away for anyone puzzled by the lack of distinction Concrete Jungles makes between album, single, EP and mixtape. Tidy as he is, Jonski’s studies from the South and the Smoke are perhaps, well, a little meek. With Celebrate, a wide-assed boom-n-shake, you’re thinking a more strapping performance would suit instead of a blasé ensuring that lines don’t get fluffed, where Jonski is almost counting the bars in his head, although to be fair his movements into embracing nearest and dearest are perfectly suited for his respecting tones.
On the other hand, the hush over holler becomes perfect for the role of silent assassin. The superbly shady Poorly Rich is a dope mix of Spice’s lollipop-chewing big willy funk and ‘Ski doing his accountant of the streets bit, concluding that the receipts still ain’t adding up, holding big bucks musicians and sportsman culpable, though the boozers and face-stuffers next door are just as liable. Fed up with being a rat race stat on Movement paints Jonski as the ideal daydreamer wanting to eat, breathe and sleep the double H (“it’s a staple diet, like pasta or rice”), quickly realising and affirming that doing it for the love is the exclusive right of passage. Conspiracy theories and the grip of the media, with a Spice beat plunging you into uncertainty and daring you to trust anyone, mean Jonski’s tones now play the ultimate pokerface; Hall of Mirrors is something Non Phixion would go over with a gangsta magnifying glass.
The title track covers another favourite subject – unity, and the hows and whys as to it being unachievable – but again Jonski sounds bespectacled and despite talking good sense with a deft use of humans as animals similes, doesn’t quite have the voice to carry authority. Another great Danny Spice funker for Organic (check the horns tooting to trebly extremes) allows ‘Ski to compare himself to “renaissance impressionists” , still in search of hip-hop’s true teachings. Goodbye closes out with virtuous tales about everyday heartbreak; rather than forwarding himself as a storyteller, Jonski examines long-term evidence as if he’s thumbing through the last 30 years of hip-hop topics and trends and in his own words, calling it as he sees it.
Risk-free is Jonski’s mantra; hip-hop’s favourite themes aren’t spun with a particularly individual slant, tripping up with the occasional misplaced word and rhyme and leaving for room improvement with his hooks. It’s better to look at Jonski’s withdrawn rolls off the tongue as a scheming set-up for Danny Spice’s brazen and bumpedy-bump, a social conscience also excelling at the basics first before anything else, which will never be a bad thing.