Dave

Latest Release

Essential Albums

  • We're All Alone In This Together
    We're All Alone In This Together
    We're All Alone In This Together

    It’s perhaps fitting that Dave’s second album opens with the familiar flicker and countdown of a movie projector sequence. Its title was handed to him by iconic film composer Hans Zimmer in a FaceTime chat, and We’re All Alone in This Together sets evocative scenes that laud the power of being able to determine your future. On his 2019 debut PSYCHODRAMA, the Streatham rapper revealed himself to be an exhilarating, genre-defying artist attempting to extricate himself from the hazy whirlwind of his own mind. Two years on, Dave’s work feels more ambitious, more widescreen, and doubles down on his superpower—that ability to absorb perspectives around him within his otherworldly rhymes and ideas. He’s addressing deeply personal themes from a sharp, shifting lens. “My life’s full of plot holes,” he declares on “We’re All Alone.” “And I’m filling them up.” As it has been since his emergence, Dave is skilled, mature, and honest enough to both lay bare and uplift the Black British experience. “In the Fire” recruits four sons of immigrant UK families—Fredo, Meekz, Giggs, and Ghetts (all uncredited, all lending incendiary bars)—and closes on a spirited Dave verse touching on early threats of deportation and homelessness. With these moments in the can, the earned boasts of rare kicks and timepieces alongside Stormzy for “Clash” are justified moments of relief from past struggles. And these loose threads tie together on “Three Rivers”—a somber, piano-led track that salutes the contributions of Britain’s Windrush generation and survivors of war-torn scenarios, from the Middle East to Africa. In exploring migration—and the questions it asks of us—Dave is inevitably led to his Nigerian heritage. Lagos newcomer Boj puts down a spirited, instructional hook in Yoruba for “Lazarus,” while Wizkid steps in to form a smooth double act on “System.” “Twenty to One,” meanwhile, is “Toosie Slide” catchy and precedes “Heart Attack”—arguably the showstopper at 10 minutes and loaded with blistering home truths on youth violence. On PSYCHODRAMA Dave showed how music was his private sanctuary from a life studded by tragedy. We’re All Alone in This Together suggests that relationship might have changed. Dave is now using his platform to share past pains and unique stories of migration in times of growing isolation. This music keeps him—and us—connected.

  • PSYCHODRAMA
    PSYCHODRAMA
    PSYCHODRAMA

    The more music Dave makes, the more out of step his prosaic stage name seems. The richness and daring of his songwriting has already been granted an Ivor Novello Award—for “Question Time,” 2017’s searing address to British politicians—and on his debut album he gets deeper, bolder, and more ambitious. Pitched as excerpts from a year-long course of therapy, these 11 songs show the South Londoner examining the human condition and his own complex wiring. Confession and self-reflection may be nothing new in rap, but they’ve rarely been done with such skill and imagination. Dave’s riveting and poetic at all times, documenting his experience as a young British black man (“Black”) and pulling back the curtain on the realities of fame (“Environment”). With a literary sense of detail and drama, “Lesley”—a cautionary, 11-minute account of abuse and tragedy—is as much a short story as a song: “Touched her destination/Way faster than the cab driver's estimation/She put the key in the door/She couldn't believe what she see on the floor.” His words are carried by equally stirring music. Strings, harps, and the aching melodies of Dave’s own piano-playing mingle with trap beats and brooding bass in incisive expressions of pain and stress, as well as flashes of optimism and triumph. It may be drawn from an intensely personal place, but Psychodrama promises to have a much broader impact, setting dizzying new standards for UK rap.

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About Dave

Challenging power and perception with a free-spoken approach to rap, Dave has indelibly amplified hip-hop’s voice in Britain. Born David Orobosa Omoregie in Brixton, London in 1998, Dave suddenly implanted himself in the UK rap scene in 2016, first with the electric grime alliance “Thiago Silva” with AJ Tracey and then when Drake jumped on the remix of the velvety “Wanna Know” from Dave’s first EP, Six Paths. Rebuffing label advances to pursue his career independently, he demonstrated a self-reliant streak on releases such as his 2017 EP Game Over, whose “Question Time,” a scathing attack on Theresa May’s Conservative government, garnered him an Ivor Novello songwriting award. Dave’s full-length debut, the Mercury Prize winner Psychodrama, followed in 2019; epitomizing his achingly honest rap style, it laid bare personal vulnerabilities while challenging institutional racism in a provocative fashion rarely heard in British rap. The centerpiece of the lavishly soundscaped album was “Black,” a heart-wrenching portrait of the prejudice affronting Black lives. At the 2020 BRIT Awards, where Psychodrama won Album of the Year, Dave started his performance of “Black” by accompanying himself on piano and ended it by excoriating British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a “real racist” and executing a perfect mic drop.

HOMETOWN
Brixton, London, England
BORN
June 5, 1998
GENRE
Hip-Hop/Rap

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