In the mid-2010s, it was Skepta and Stormzy who seemed poised to carry British rap across the Atlantic as the sound of U.K. grime had its crossover moment in the States. However, their success proved to be more of a primer than a full-scale takeover. Grime’s production style — influenced by dance-music genres like jungle and dubstep — made its mark on American listeners’ taste, but it would be U.K. drill, a genre infusing the sonic textures of Chicago’s native genre with the electronic-leaning sensibility of grime, that’d leave a lasting impression. Enter Central Cee, the 25-year-old rap sensation from the West London neighborhood of Shepherd’s Bush, whose reign over social feeds these past few years feels uncontested. With his studio debut, Can’t Rush Greatness, he seems poised to carry the mantle for his country on a global stage.
“The album’s got to be a serious thing. I’m definitely not rushing it,” Central Cee, born Oakley Neil Caesar-Su, told Rolling Stone in 2022, fresh off the success of his mixtape 23, which reached the top of the U.K. charts upon release. He’d cracked a melodic formula that allowed him to move easily between the more subterranean sounds of U.K. drill and big-budget pop music. In the time since, Central Cee’s output has been minimal if not precise. He dropped the viral hit “Doja,” with its meme-ready hook and mainstream crossover sensibility later that summer. Then, a year later, came the short-and-sweet Split Decision, a collab tape with the U.K.’s rap laureate Dave and featuring the hit “Sprinter.” He joined Drake for a pitch-perfect “On the Radar” freestyle at the end of 2023. Then, last year, he dropped his cross-continental banking anthem “Band4Band,” featuring Lil Baby, and the inescapable earworm ”Did It First” with Ice Spice.
Through it all, Central Cee’s proven a reliable Gen Z hitmaker with the streaming stats to back it up, all before dropping a debut album. With Can’t Rush Greatness, he’s out to show that he can live up to the hype, and at 17 tracks spanning a range of sounds and styles, the album makes his case mightily. On opener “No Introduction,” Cench flexes the international scale of his appeal, making a quick melody of the countries he’s famous in — “Sweden, Norwegian, New Zealand/Australian, Arab, Armenian, even Asia and Indonesian.” You’re inclined to believe him. He pairs easily with Young Miko on “Gata,” a breezy Latin trap banger that offers a comfortable space for his bouncy drill flow.
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“St. Patricks,” meanwhile, feels like a hip-hop homage, riding a pitched-down sample of Wu-Tang’s “C.R.E.A.M,” and speaks to the honestly refreshing student-of-the-game ethos Cench brings to rap. Whether or not you’re in the population of American listeners who can’t get past a British accent in a rap song, there’s no denying Central Cee takes the craft, and its history, seriously. It’s what makes songs like “GBP,” with 21 Savage, and “Band4Band,” with Lil Baby, so effective. He understands the language of hip-hop at an elemental level. Like a British Young Jeezy, he makes music for hustlers.
The U.K.’s other rap phenom, Dave, joins Cench on “CRG,” which feels like the type of narrative, introspective track from Dave’s critically acclaimed 2019 debut, Pyschodrama. Thematically, both rappers get a chance to highlight their strengths as storytellers, painting a picture of the internal tension of transforming a life in the trenches into a life of extravagance. “Forty thousand square feet off of this pain/Look at me, I got heart acres,” Dave raps. Skepta joins on “Ten,” in what sounds like a generational changing of the guard. Cench has made it known that he grew up listening to Skepta, and the moment feels like one era’s superstar passing the baton to the next.
“Truth in Lies,” with Lil Durk, offers what seems like a glimpse into what will likely make Central Cee’s time in the limelight more permanent. On the album’s slower, more R&B-focused moments, you get a sense of a deeper range in his music. For all of the jokes about his affinity for the phrase “generational wealth,” he’s most compelling carving out melodic odes to girls he can’t quite commit to. With a cadence reminiscent of Juice WRLD, Cench taps into a new sound, assisted by a well-constructed flip of Ne-Yo’s “So Sick” that has the makings of a major crossover hit.
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For all of the album’s strengths, it’s worth noting how strategic the whole thing feels. An album with A-plus features, alongside a hyper- intentional roll-out. Up to now, that might have given it more a sheen of label-driven inauthenticity, but with Central Cee, it feels a bit different. To debut the record, he joined the ascendant Twitch streamer Plaqueboymax, playing the album live for more than 200,000 people. A true representative of his generation (“Gen Z Love” has the makings of an anthem for an era), Cench is as attentive to the music as the optics surrounding it, and his acumen for both is what makes his debut album a success, and why his reign is likely just getting started.
