SPACEMAN

France-born, London-raised Oliver Godji originally planned to call his debut mixtape Revenge as a riposte to anyone who’d doubted his ability to make a success of a music career. He eventually settled on SPACEMAN, but his defiant stance still holds. “We all live in space, everyone lives in space, you can create your own space,” he explained to Julie Adenuga on Beats 1. “I have my own space—this is my space.” The 14 tracks here establish his outlying place in the UK rap universe while showcasing a restless, progressive talent that has previously earned a co-sign from Drake. Drifting between rapping, singing, and spoken word, his voice crackles with the experience and emotion of someone way beyond his 22 years, while his kaleidoscopic music cycles through psychedelic trap (“Don’t Cry”), reflective R&B (“Think Twice”), and a fusion of mournful bass music and rave euphoria (“Lightning”). The murky atmospheres and mutating rhythms are offset by a pop writer’s instinct for inescapable hooks, and songs rarely reach three minutes—when you’ve got this many good ideas, there’s no point lingering on one for too long.