Hi, everyone. Freshthony Cuttano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Central Cee album, Can't Rush Greatness.

UK rapper Central Cee, coming through with his highly anticipated full-length studio debut album, which has really been several years in the making now. Central Cee, a figure of note in England's hip hop and drill scene for a minute now, and has really had a decent buzz going for him over there since the release of his 23 mixtape. But I think gradually over time, he found there was more exposure and money in bringing a pop appeal to his very grimy and violent drill roots, leading to this more commercial strain of drill music, which obviously artists such as Ice Spice operate within who he's collaborated with in the past.

I think many of you know the moment he really became an international sensation is when he dropped his "Doja" track in 2022, the one that starts with, "How can I be homophobic? My bitch is gay." And since the release of that track, I feel like Central Cee has toned down some of the darker and more in your face elements of his music and has embraced more of a near monotone delivery and a lot of slightly cringe lyrical earworms.

Maybe I'm gaslighting myself, but I feel like he's really used that track in many ways as a bit of a blueprint print for a lot of the material on this album because he cannot possibly be rapping with pretty much the same delivery for one song after another. But no, for the most part, he really truly is. It's almost like an endless continuum of staccato syllabus and just nearly emotionless inflections. I mean, the oomph he would come through with on some tracks from 23, it's almost a night and day comparison, "Retail Therapy" being an example. I would even say off of this project, "Top Freestyle" – as far as Cee's vocals – does have a bit of a punch to it.

But for the most part on this record, this dude is rapping like he's reading out of the phone book. Sometimes I can appreciate a rap style that is low-key or even cold-blooded, like in the case of 21 Savage, who features on this record. But I don't even think Central Cee's core appeal works in that way. I mean, for the most part, the tracks on this thing just feel like playlist rap that they all blend together in such a way to where it doesn't really grab your attention enough to make you want to skip any one track or moment because anything stands out as particularly good or bad, which, again, is very strange because when you actually dig into some of the deeper lyrics on at least a handful of these cuts, he is addressing some issues around love and romance, serious traumas, and very dark events of his past and his upbringing.

Despite all of this detail and content, there is just this endless numbness to the rapping, to the instrumentals, to a lot of aspects of this record that doesn't really make any of the content, any of the substance of what is being said hit. There's no emphasis on one thing over any other thing, because there is so little variation within the rapping and sometimes the topics on these tracks, I feel like Cee relies more on his features and his production here to switch things up. But a lot of the time, those elements are so unremarkable and so bland that they fail to do that entirely.

The only thing that truly stands out on this album and serves as a bit of a benchmark, allowing me to get a sense of where I am in the record is when certain bars pop up that just warrant an eye roll. Like on the track "Must Be", where, of course, he talks about a woman who doesn't want to fuck and as a result of that, yeah, she must be gay. Or this one bar where he's going on about American girls laughing at him because they think it's funny when he says "wat-uh bot-ul." And yes, I am so goddamn serious that he brings that up in a song. There's this other bar that doesn't quite make sense as well where he says, "I cheat on my wife, but how can you blame me? / I cheated life." Okay, I mean, sure, again, that's coming from a place of trauma, bad things happening, nearly escape death there, but that's cheating on your wife validation.

There's also some moments on this record where he's depicting lyrically some modern love connections, like on "Gen Z Love", where he says, "I met your mom on FYP / Where Young and R loves Gen Z." God, there was no hope. There was no hope on this record.

Again, with the flows, overall, being decent but repetitive, combined with the fact that the instrumentals are really nothing to write home about, and Central Cee on top of all of it, is not really a master of choruses. There are no real banger hooks on this album. And when there is actually a formal chorus penned into these songs, there is so little variation between these moments and the verses that they don't really stand out as all that memorable. Nothing on this record really comes across as all that anthemic.

There are some cuts where he's dabbling in a bit of a Latin thing. There are some cuts that are a bit more sensual and clearly going for something more lovey-dovey than others. But outside of those very, very, very slight changes, this record is just such a monotonous drone, even if there are a handful of cuts that I think, when I separate them out of the context of the record, they sound either decent or even good. But the main and the key issue is as an overall album experience – this record is just really missing something, something to actually bring personality and variation to it and a level of intensity that actually requires that you engage with it directly, not just play it in the background.

I mean, while I didn't find this album to be an awful listen or offensive to the ears or anything like that – it's certainly passable – its lack of anything genuinely interesting makes it in a slight way offensive to the soul, which is why I'm feeling about a light 4 on it.

Anthony Fantano. Central Cee. Forever.