At Your Inconvenience
4/5
‘I’m back, like I never left’ croons the cheeky chap of UK hip hop in the opening lines of his new album. Since his debut offering ‘Alive Till I’m Dead’ hit the charts at Number Two, the Professor, aka 27-year-old Stephen Manderson, has got a slick new image, made numerous TV appearances and apparently raked in the riches, if his ‘At Your Inconvenience’ promotional vid – ostrich and all – is anything to go by. But we won’t hold it against him, because this LP has been well worth the pennies. He’s roped in fast-rising pop starlet Emeli Sandé (on the epic-butangry first single, ‘Read All about It’), folk singer-songwriter Fink (wielding an acoustic guitar, breathing floaty vocals and covering The Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind?’ for the chorus of ‘Spinning Out’) and long-time collaborator Ed Drewett, who you’ll doubtless remember from the INXSsampling single ‘I Need You Tonight’, among a host of others. The record skips through jazzy twinges (‘Into the Ground’) and dubstep beats (‘Trouble’), all the while maintaining the Professor’s amusing jibes at popular culture and heart-rending confessions.