It could be considered a surprise to our American readers that East London MC and producer Wiley is a legend in British underground music. Well known for his role in the seminal grime collective Roll Deep and his association with Dizzee Rascal, Wiley has developed a reputation for his prolificacy and his dichotomy between grime ambassador and crossover act. Wiley meditated on pop and grime in his August 2013 interview with FACT magazine and it’s definitely a lens through which to view his 10th studio album, Snakes & Ladders.
While it is quite lazy to automatically favor Wiley’s grimier tracks over his pop or hip-hop tracks, this is the dominant critical narrative around the man’s music. As such, Snakes & Ladders is an exercise in cognitive dissonance. There’s grime and there’s pop on this album and each genre have moments that rise to the occasion and others that fail just as hard. The 11-minute closing track, “Snakes & Ladders (Part Two)” is a track divided up into suites that manages to do a little bit of everything mentioned. The first five minutes of the track is a short grime number that segues into a slower meditation on growing up in Bow, that’s actually one of his most well-put together moments lyrically, but is ruined by a cut-and-paste hook that, for once, Wiley himself isn’t on. This gives way to a raucous grimy mission statement on his career going forward talking about how he’s going to “spit bars like I’m on an old school Roll Deep track” and that he “went top five with a sound that I plan to pursue/but I gotta let ‘em know I’m not on that” with a hook that would have worked on an A$AP Ferg track, but sounds more at home on a Wiley release. The end of the suite-style track shows how Wiley would be properly be employed on an EDM track and gives a chipper ending to such a hit-or-miss release.
What keeps Snakes & Ladders above sea level, even in its worst or most uninteresting moments, is that the hooks are all great and the modal beat on this album is above average. What makes Snakes & Ladders stale at times is that Wiley’s mission statement is the driving lyrical force. To that end, Wiley now makes singles about being an underground legend from East London and grime tracks about how he’s on the radio. It’s promising, but Wiley overstates his goals that his earned shit talk makes Snakes & Ladders sound like the grime incarnation of Magna Carta… Holy Grail. Unlike Jay Z, however, Wiley’s premise still revolves around continuing to make good music and being an overall people pleaser. Wiley rides this to a great lead single on “On A Level,” the theme of the album sounds tired by the time JME says, “Wiley is a national treasure” on “From The Outside.” It’s doesn’t get much better on that end, as everything that isn’t the pre-chorus or the chorus on “Busy” is reduced to boilerplate Wiley.
Still, the album hits more than it misses. The drums on “Drive By” sound more like high school marching band plays trap music than beats by guy trying to peddle his beats over Twitter. Wiley blows through “Badman” with gusto, unleashing the best hook on the album and follows that with “Step 21,” that goes over just as well as the step freestyles that comprised his ace mixtape It’s All Fun and Games Till Vol. 1. The track “Lonely” is worth mentioning because it’s a bounce track featuring American rappers J.R. Writer, Cam’ron, Gudda Gudda, and Problem, on which Wiley flosses on the hook and the other four are doing more of the same on the verses. This almost works, but instead occupies the best bad song/worst good song spot on Snakes & Ladders. The reason being that Cam’ron and Wiley are the only performers on this track bringing anything interesting and at that, there are better ideas that could serve as the premise to a Wiley and Cam’ron collaboration.
For all of the albums peaks and valleys, Wiley comes out of Snakes & Ladders looking good. As a whole, this work is not enthralling, but his braggadocio is earned and what doesn’t work on the album is occasionally entertaining. Snakes & Ladders exceeds mild expectations, but would be more enjoyable to listen on a track-by-track basis.
Album Rating: 3/5