Santan Dave delivered his sophomore album, We’re All Alone In This Together, pairing it with A-list collaborations, such as: Wizkid, Jorja Smith, James Blake and Stormzy, to name a few.
Whilst his debut album introduced the world to him and his upbringing in Streatham, this next album provided the backstory to his roots and his private life.
Dave opens the album with We’re All Alone, to get his listeners up to speed on how his life has changed since his critically acclaimed debut album was released three years ago.
He explains how having the fame and money brings luxury, but also self-hatred, because now he has money, all he really has is money:
“I just want my flowers while I’m still here / so I can put them at the front of my grave that I’ve been digging for myself.”
Dave embraces his Nigerian roots, featuring two Naija artists Wizkid and Boj. It is on these tracks that he exposes his versatility.
Dave is known as a modest musician, yet on Lazarus and System, he lets it be known that he knows he’s a big deal, considerably the biggest deal in the UK rap scene.
Yet the closing song puts a seed of doubt in our mind and we question if he’s happy at all. He convinces us that he resents his success on Survivor’s Guilt because he can’t enjoy his new life without realising what he lost to get to where he is.
His artistry is really elevated on Heart Attack, when he talks about the dark reality of growing up in South London and how rising crime is just a reflection of rising poverty:
‘Round here main way to provide for your kin / is in a flick blade, little push-bike and a sim’.
The main theme of the album is about being the child of an immigrant and he dedicates this record to his mother, Juliet, who left Nigeria as a young adult and experienced insurmountable loss but continued to provide for him:
‘That affected the way that I see s*** / nightclub toilet, you peed on the seat / ‘cause you don’t know how it feels when your mum’s gotta clean s***.’
He also briefly touches on having his older brother serving life in prison and how the justice system is systemically built to punish the black man and pardon the white man:
‘I was twelve wishing that I was a white man, hard / ‘cause if I was then they probably wouldn’t life man’s dargs.’
To summarise this album would be doing the complexity of it a disservice. It is a masterclass of song writing and a stripped back insight into the vulnerable side of the traumatic life of a musical sensation.
We’re looking forward to seeing what he brings to the show as a Brit Awards 2022 nominee.