Big Zuu Delivers Long-Awaited Debut Album 'Navigate' f/ Jme, Novelist, Kojey Radical & More
Over the past few months we've witnessed Big Zuu's well-earned success in the creative industries. From releasing a cookbook, launching the second season of his television series Big Zuu's Big Eats and receiving a BAFTA nomination; it's now time for the icing on the cake as he presents his debut album, Navigate.
The 12-track project houses a blend of sounds built around Zuu's distinctive grime-driven spitting style. Navigate oscillates between rap, Afrobeats, R&B and punchy grime tracks that feature veterans like D Double E on "Variation" and Novelist and Jme on "Offline".
Sir Spyro handles the production on the latter, which was also released as a single today, creating an urgent soundscape of pulsing, ground-shaking bass and intricate drum rhythms for the MCs to spill their hard-hitting bars back-to-back.
Speaking on "Offline", Zuu shares: "Working with Spyro again after 'Variation' (with D Double E), you have to continue on the theme of working with amazing grime MCs so we got Jme then I thought we need someone from the new generation as well so we got Novelist & we came up with this nice, fun, tongue-in-cheek expression which was just banter but it's also about how people react to the internet & how we all should be a bit more focused on real life."
Elsewhere on the album Big Zuu is joined by Kojey Radical, AJ Tracey, Unknown T, Crafty 893, Mae Muller, and Donel to deliver a well-rounded stellar debut. Get into it below.
Words: Blessing Borode
Photography: David Townhill