Back in 2012, Skepta was at odds with his place in the mainstream. Having cut his teeth in the early-2000s pirate radio days, the former king of the underground suddenly found himself at the forefront of a corporatized grime scene he hardly recognized. After a string of ill-advised commercial dalliances in the spring of that year, the Boy Better Know co-founder got real in a 26-minute YouTube monologue, firing shots at the industry and pledging to return to his roots. His next album, 2016’s long-delayed Konnichiwa, ignited a new grime renaissance that brought the UK genre worldwide. Midway through his long-awaited sixth album The Fork and Knife, Skepta returns to that pivotal moment. “It was 2008 when I lost my way,” he spits on “Revenge,” briefly outlining the mainstream missteps that set him off his path. In the seven years since his last album, Ignorance Is Bliss, the 44-year-old MC has been having a similar reckoning—reckoning with the weight of his words as grime’s most influential elder statesman and with his position as the British son of Nigerian immigrants in a post-Brexit cultural landscape. Named after one of his mother’s favorite sayings (“One day we’ll eat with fork and knife”), it’s an album-length exploration of his immigrant identity on which the veteran counters his early bombast with the wisdom of experience. Can conscious rap still bang? Skepta says yes, drawing from a vast array of diasporic styles—zouk on “Chippie” with French Malian singer Aya Nakamura, Afrobeats on “Aloe Vera” with Nigeria’s Asake, plus Project Pat on the Memphis-inspired “Cold Shower.” But he gets serious on lead single “Innocent Smile,” railing against his home country’s xenophobic panic over skittering breakbeats from Chase & Status and a hook from Suggs of the ’80s ska band Madness: “MPs lie, they treat us like idiots/How you turn around and blame it on the immigrants?” Elsewhere, the veteran touches on topics like masculinity and addiction before capping things off with “Belly”—an eight-minute barrage of grime at its purest, with verses from newcomers like Kibo and closing verses from Boy Better Know members Jme, Frisco, and Skepta himself. It’s a full-circle moment for the boy from Meridian.