Skepta Ends the Seven-Year Wait With 'The Fork and Knife'

Seven years after Ignorance Is Bliss, Skepta has a new solo album. The Fork and Knife, his sixth studio album, arrived on Friday through his own Big Smoke Records under exclusive license to Epic Records: 15 songs, 55 minutes, and the end of the longest solo-album gap of his career.

It was never a disappearance. The years between albums were filled with singles, features, DJ sets, his Mas Tiempo club project and the MAINS fashion label. But the solo rap album is the format that built his name, and there had not been one since May 2019.

The Long Road Here

This album has been coming, in public, for nearly three years. Skepta first announced it on New Year's Day 2024 under the flipped title Knife and Fork, and "Gas Me Up (Diligent)" landed that January as an early taste. Then the record went back into the workshop and was rebuilt. The final run-in came this autumn: "Innocent Smile," a link-up with Madness frontman Suggs and Chase & Status, arrived in September, and "Pandora's Box" followed on October 23 — slower and heavier than the singles before it, a man rapping about the weight people carry around. In album week he performed on Later... with Jools Holland and released "Diamonds Dancing" with Novelist, a standalone single that does not appear on the album at all.

A Title From His Mother's Table

The title is a family inheritance. The album's notes trace it to a saying of his mother's: her father once saw fine cutlery in a hotel and said the family would have to work hard, so that one day they would eat with a fork and knife. The record is framed as the story of a British-born son of Nigerian parents, and Skepta told GQ it is "a liberating album, of immigrant trauma that was transformed into hyperfocus and success." The cover makes the same point without a word of explanation: a childhood photograph of Skepta standing next to his mother.

The Guest List Is a Map

Read the features in order and you can trace his whole world. Asake sings on "Aloe Vera" — Lagos to London on one record. Project Pat, a Memphis legend, turns up on "Cold Shower." Aya Nakamura shares "Chippie." "Broken Hearts" pairs Central Cee with Jorja Smith, the generation that grew up on him, while Novelist — long cast as his heir — takes "Outside." "Belly" is a full crew reunion, with JME, Frisco, Bossman Birdie, Kibo, Kruz Leone, Mayhem NODB and Queenie on one track, and the album closes on "Victory Lap" with Fred again.. The features were announced the loud way, too: on billboards in Times Square, Lagos, Memphis and London, each city handed the names that belonged to it.

The Bar Is His Own Catalogue

The standard this album is measured against is the one he set himself. Konnichiwa won the Mercury Prize in 2016 and carried grime onto the world stage; both that album and Ignorance Is Bliss peaked at No. 2 in the UK. The launch shows begin tonight at The Cause in London. Seven years on, The Fork and Knife does not have to prove Skepta matters. It has to prove the wait was the point — and from today, listeners can judge for themselves.