

On his major-label debut, post-grime MC Wretch 32 tempers his streetwise bravado with self-reflective sensitivity. Playing off a DJ Premier-influenced slab of boom bap on “Please Don’t Let Me Go,” he raps about the trials of fatherhood, revisiting the same theme on the Ed Sheeran-assisted pop anthem “Hush Little Baby.” Yet for all the time he’s spent near a crib, he still knows his way around the club: “Unorthodox” samples The Stone Roses for its eclectic Madchester pulse, and “Traktor” is bursting with gnarled dancehall bluster.