Perhaps Dave is caught in a loop of his own making. He’s built a career speaking for the most suppressed from the perspective of a person who comes from similar struggles, but now that he’s materially removed from that reality, he’s unsure of where he stands—in the minds of others but, more immediately, in his own. He denounces atrocities in the Congo, but wears jewelry that may have come from its diamond mines. He hardly ever prays, but seeks guidance from the God he was raised to worship. He boasts about money but won’t speak up for Palestine. These are criticisms he turns onto himself throughout the album without ever reaching a resolution. Will he stop participating in these things or does he just want to clear his conscious to the public?
In 2017, on his breakout “Question Time,” a 19-year-old Dave called then-Prime Minister Theresa May to task over UK airstrikes that killed children in Syria and for defunding the NHS rather than paying liveable wages to nurses like his mom. Two years later, “Black,” from his debut, Psychodrama, got at the maddening reality of being part of a subjugated people, working your whole life to dispel myths about yourself, only to still be treated like a second-class citizen. “Three Rivers,” from 2021’s We’re All Alone in This Together, paid tribute to Britain’s immigrant communities as hostilities toward them began to rise. That sort of state-of-society demonstration, which has always distinguished Dave from his peers in UK rap, is hardly present on his newest album. And it doesn’t help that The Boy Who Plays the Harp is considerably less dynamic when it comes to production.
What made Psychodrama and We’re All Alone in This Together especially stimulating was that between Dave’s social commentary and lyrical flexing lay sullen portraits of his of neighborhood (“Environment”), brooding D’n’B (“Voices”), glitzy trap-like bounce (“Clash” with Stormzy), and more. On The Boy Who Played the Harp, that diversity appears sparingly. “Raindance” with Tems, a sweet, stripped-down take on an Afroswing love song, will likely be the album’s mainstream win. Young British sensation Jim Legxacy contributes to “No Weapons” as a producer and vocalist, making it the album’s most fun track. “Marvellous” is largely about a young boy from Dave’s South London neighborhood who’s getting a taste of street life, but the Spanish guitar and thumping drums give it a useful jolt.
Even with the presence of these songs, the heart of this album lies in the more downtempo, man-in-the-mirror moments. The Kano-featuring “Chapter 16” is such an effective song in this context because, while Dave spends much of the album berating himself about whether he’s a fraud, or has strayed too far from God, or deserves to find true love, the make-believe steak dinner provides him with someone to bounce those insecurities off of. And, even though it takes the long road to get there, maybe this is the point that The Boy Who Played the Harp seeks to make: When you isolate yourself from the world, the voices within may eventually turn on you.
