Skepta Ends a Seven-Year Wait With The Fork and Knife, Featuring Central Cee, Asake and Jorja Smith

Skepta made fans wait 34 months between announcing The Fork and Knife and releasing it, and seven years since his last solo album. The 15-track record, out Friday (Nov. 6) via Big Smoke and Epic, is his first solo full-length since 2019’s Ignorance Is Bliss, per Complex. He first announced it in January 2024.

Guests run from the underground to the charts. Central Cee and Jorja Smith are on “Broken Hearts,” Asake is on “Aloe Vera,” Skepta flirts in French with Aya Nakamura on “Chippie” and Suggs of Madness appears on “Innocent Smile,” per Pitchfork’s review. Fred again.. and PlaqueBoyMax are on “Victory Lap.” Then there’s “Belly,” a nine-minute cypher with JME, Frisco, Kibo, Queenie, Bossman Birdie, Mayhem NODB and Kruz Leone, per Complex. Watch the video for “Pandora’s Box” below.

Pitchfork’s Will Pritchard calls the album “clear-eyed and bold,” a mural of three decades of Black British music that tells “a modern story of an immigrant family flourishing.” It opens on “Secrets of Patriarchy,” which borrows the icy palette of Dizzee Rascal’s “Sittin’ Here” for a day in the life of a man in control of his own destiny. Pritchard hears some throat-clearing in the first quarter before it finds its feet. Dazed praises the candid “Secrets of Patriarchy” and “Revenge” but says detours like “Chippie” and “Victory Lap” wear the connective tissue thin. It also notes that, at 44, Skepta has become a mentor to younger UK rappers including fakemink and Finessekid.

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The title comes from a family wish. Skepta told Complex UK for his first cover story that the album marks the irony of what his family once aspired to, and that winning Man of the Year at the GQ Awards and being served beetroot is a good example.

I think this album is going to mark a moment where I look back at the things my family once aspired to.

Skepta, to Complex UK, Complex

He also shut down any farewell talk: “Obviously, I’ll have breaks and take time out whenever I need to rest my mind, but I’ll never retire from music.” On “Revenge,” per Pitchfork, he sums up the role he’s taken on: “I’m not an MC, I’m a locksmith. I spit bars and I open doors.”

He planned a sold-out release-day show at The Cause in London, and has sold-out December dates at Élysée Montmartre in Paris, La Madeleine in Brussels and Gashouder in Amsterdam. Central Cee, a guest on “Broken Hearts,” made his Burberry runway debut in September with Skepta watching from the benches, as we reported.