Harlesden rapper Courtney “Nines” Freckleton is one of those musical success stories that says fame won’t change him, but that isn’t necessarily a good thing. This fourth album connects closely to earlier work by sharing a title with his second, Crop Circle, from 2018. The lead single, the gangster-celebrating Tony Soprano 2, follows his song Tony Soprano from the previous release. “Still the same old me even though I’m rich/And it’s still gang gang, I’ll never switch,” he raps.
Other titles have alluded to the main theme of his music: a rap career that began over a decade ago but hasn’t completely extinguished the need to make money by other means. In 2015 a mixtape called One Foot In was followed by his debut album in 2017, One Foot Out – a grim hokey cokey that continued more recently. Crabs in a Bucket, the name referring to the difficulty of climbing out of the gang life, became his first number one in 2020. By October the following year he was in prison for importing 28kg of cannabis into the UK from Spain and Poland.
