Listen: Dave's "Lesley" ft. Ruelle

Streatham-born rapper Dave's PSYCHODRAMA is a consistently engaging record that echoes the complexities of being black in Britain, a debut so searing that it's easily one of the most definitive rap albums to come out in recent years. "A kid dies, the blacker the killer, the sweeter the news/ And if he's white, you give him a chance, he's ill and confused/ If he's black he's probably armed, you see him and shoot," he rails impassionedly on Black, while simultaneously playing out like a 51-minute long psychotherapy session examining the concept of racial identity that's at once topical, thoughtful and emotionally raw. But the centrepiece of the album is Lesley, a devastating 11-minute story where David Orobosa Omoregie raps about a chance encounter with a pregnant woman on a train (named Lesley) who is trapped in an abusive relationship, imploring the listener "to get support if you're lost or trapped..." Visceral and gut-wrenching enough to move one to tears, it's the pièce de résistance I didn't know we've all been waiting for. PSYCHODRAMA, when viewed in this context, feels a lot less like just another rap album than a boundary-pushing conversation for change.