Central Cee’s ascent over the past five years has been staggering, even by the accelerated standards of TikTok stardom. He arrived on the scene in 2020, and, aided by an acute sense of timing, he’s successfully ridden UK drill’s predictable arc from folk devil soundtrack to mainstream chart mainstay. He’s had the Drake co-sign, the buzzy clutch of mixtapes, a viral hit with the cheeky “Doja.” His 2023 collaboration with Dave, “Sprinter,” spent an unprecedented 10 weeks at the top of the UK singles chart. Whichever your preferred streaming platform or social media service, he’s ensured those all-important numbers are ticking endlessly up.
This has positioned Cench, as he’s known, as the ubiquitous new face of the UK’s rap scene, for those both watching at home and looking in from abroad. He’s one of the very few (perhaps only) rappers from the UK whose voice you’ll hear booming out of car windows in cities around the U.S. This has not happened by accident. He raps with a distinctive clarity, and his flow resembles rote classroom exercises—a smart, viral take on the slang-translation rap trope when he debuted on L.A. Leakers in 2022 helped too. Last year, he explained to the Guardian how he engineers his lyrics to make them more digestible for American audiences. With Can’t Rush Greatness, his first album since signing with Columbia, he wants to stake his claim to generational-talent status.
Unfortunately, the most interesting thing about Central Cee is not his risk-averse music, but rather how he markets himself. He raps a lot about this. About his steely negotiation skills, and about those numbers he puts up. It’s mogul rap, only without Jay-Z’s charismatic finesse; lifestyle rap without Young Thug’s comical excess. And while the UK’s millennial icons like Stormzy and Dave have put message over money (while still stacking plenty of the latter), the UK’s Gen Z rap acolytes are here for what they’re owed and not shy about it. Central Cee gives a cut-glass voice to this cause. It reflects a vogueish kind of dead-eyed capitalism that shares the territory of podcasts like Diary of a CEO, where entrepreneurs talk about the sacrifices they’ve made and the mental health struggles they’ve endured in pursuit of money.
It is market-optimized music, growth-hack rap. “I won’t even lie,” Cench raps on “Limitless,” with a sliver of remorse that he knows his fans will forgive him for, “I put my family second, I’m sorry, the money’s my main concern.” The accompanying video runs like a promo for a UFC bout: Cench hanging out in a big house in the hills with his boys, eschewing everyday luxuries for late-night runs, flinging his skinny frame through calisthenics workouts, and spitting bars from inside a hypobaric chamber. On closer “Don’t Know Anymore” Cench measures his faith in music by how many views his videos get. Tracks like the torn “Must Be” go nowhere. It’s polished to the point of being stilted.
