Thirty-three months after it was announced, the grime legend’s new album is coming out. He explains how skinheads, fatherhood and rap history came to bear on its socially conscious contents

‘I can’t be perfect,” Skepta says, pulling a black Arc’tyrex beanie down over a furrowed brow with both hands. “But I can be conscious.” The self-proclaimed king of grime has always been a serious person, wary of fools and time-wasters. Focus is important to him, perhaps because he’s often multitasking: balancing his music career, his fashion label Mains, film-making and acting (his debut short, Tribal Mark, came out in 2024), his Big Smoke festival and a house music project, Más Tiempo.

He coordinates them all from the scruffy but functional studio in London’s West End where we meet. At one point, he picks up a Rubik’s Cube from the cluttered coffee table, and, over the course of five minutes of conversation, solves it. “This album has been winding me up,” he admits, referring to The Fork and Knife, which is out next week, 33 months after it was first announced. “But I think I’ve actually made something here that is what the people want from me.”