Dave is overrated
I’m interested to see what the opinions are here but I just wanted to add my opinion on this.
I’ve seen many people refer to Dave as the “Kendrick Lamar” of the UK. Now I love to see the appreciation our artists get, and I definitely think Dave is a cut above most rappers in the UK. However as someone who’s listened to Kendrick Lamar, this comparison is ridiculous and kind of disingenuous.
Mainly cause of a couple factors:
Dave’s lyricism is overrated, a lot of the bars are easy to catch first time and don’t require any real thought to understand. He rinses football bars a lot and sets up punchlines the same way (I don’t mind this). Most of Dave’s best lyrics came earlier in his career, “I got more 16s than the last year of secondary”. I’d go further to argue that the best bars off of Dave’s most recent project came from Ghetts in “Into the Fire”. Dave is a great rapper but his lyrics aren’t amazing
I’m gonna use the Kendrick comparison as a benchmark due to how bigged up he is by the masses. Dave just isn’t as creatively focused on projects despite how creative he is. My main point in saying this, is how he deviates from themes within his albums for mainstream hits. Look at Psychodrama, Location (as much of a summer banger as it was) did not fit in well at all. Look at “We’re all alone in this together”, all the Afro based songs didn’t make sense on that album, neither did Clash. It’s especially frustrating when you hear tracks like Three Rivers, Heart Attack, Both sides of a smile. When Dave is actually locked into the themes of whatever project he’s on, then I can understand why people big him up so much.
Dave isn’t a conscious rapper. He makes conscious music, but he makes mainstream appealing songs far too much to the point where he contradicts himself. And I’m mainly talking about the amount of singles he’s involved in which is literally just basic UK rap. Once again not a bad thing, I just think the “conscious rapper” title given to him is undeserved since he doesn’t move like one. Having purpose on your projects doesn’t make you a conscious rapper. I’ll admit, Dave’s storytelling is up there with the best rappers around today but he is never consistent with the serious themes he portrays. I’m not saying conscious rappers don’t contradict themselves (Kendrick does all the time), but Dave gets pulled to the mainstream industry of UK rap too much to get a title like that.
I see Dave as more of a pocket lite version of Jay Z than a Kendrick or Cole. At his best he is creatively insane, but he never taps into that consistently