Ceebo – ‘Bloccstar’ review: wading through the moral pitfalls of fame

Ceebo has swiftly become UK rap’s most vital storyteller. Over two acclaimed mixtapes, 2024’s ‘LambethNotLA’ and last year’s ‘Blair Babies’, the NME 100 star’s vivid lyrical vignettes of council house living and social sharpness have given voice to a misguided, misrepresented generation trying to make sense of their lives, all while he, too, actively made his way out of the mud. The Lambeth musician’s climb to the top of UK rap is nearing its end – he knows he’s next in line for the throne – but what do you do when the fame you’ve always wanted begins to look like a cage? READ MORE: Ceebo: the Lambeth rapper giving a voice to his generation’s struggles In comes mixtape three ‘Bloccstar’, which uses Macbeth as its morally bankrupt bedrock. Ceebo kicks things off with his usual cinematic charm, opening with ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’: a so-sad-it’s-funny skit of executives tearing apart his “little project” – throwing us into the rapper’s fight to be commercial or conscious. He claps back with ‘Parable Of A Skinnyman’, where he’s both astute and braggadocious. “Fuck all that starving artist shit”, he proclaims – he wants the money, the success and the freedom to say whatever h...