Album Review: keepsake by Ragz Originale
The Skepta collaborator’s sophomore album keeps asking for somebody and barely waits for an answer. It is slim, warm, and gone before the feeling fades.
In 2015, a Ugandan-born, North London-raised producer named Ragz Originale co-built one of the decade’s most pivotal grime singles, Skepta’s “Shutdown.” The Ivor Novello nomination arrived. So did more sessions on Skepta’s Konnichiwa. And through all of it, Ragz kept clocking in at a steel factory, waiting for other artists to decide whether they needed his beats. He quit that arrangement and started writing his own material, spending three years by his own admission churning out bad songs before he settled on a philosophy he still follows—say what you need to say in eight bars, repeat it, finish in three minutes, and move on. keepsake, his self-produced sophomore album, obeys that rule so tightly it barely leaves a handprint on the furniture. Every song is short, most of them are about a woman, and Ragz sings all of them knowing the conversation will end before he finishes talking.
On “archive prada,” Ragz rattles off Archive Prada, Saint Laurent, Wales Bonner, Margiela, Mowalola—buying clothes, clearing checks, filling bags—and the woman he’s doing all this for won’t even look at him. Cosima whispers “Do you think I’m pretty?” midway through and the whole thing tilts. He’s spending money, she’s got her eyes on the moon, and by the time the song admits “I still don’t know you,” the shopping spree has curdled into something sadder than it let on. Ragz has been in London fashion circles for years, dropped Bare Sugar during Paris Fashion Week, and fashion is how he talks about wanting people, not as set dressing but the way other singers would use weather or geography. “couture” goes further and calls the relationship itself a garment, tailored from the source, which is a better lyric than most of what else is here. On “high calling” the name-dropping gets crowded with dressing, skin tone, Bali, origami, nakajamis, and you stop being able to tell what any of it says about the person he wants.
Halfway around the world on “mad ova u,” Ragz keeps a log of the hours and the expense of flying to New York for a girl, calls himself a “bedrock bandit,” tells her don’t break fast but you can break a heart. The outro is a voice note, someone telling him that if he moves to New York he’d better find another hustle, the amount of money his ass is about to blow on Ubers. Two-minute song and the voice note is the best part. Ragz says something quick, gets a good line in, and the song ends before it can wear thin.
Something toxic has been going on for a while by the time “tied up” starts—chapters burned through, resentment that worked in someone else’s favor, family members who became strangers, love blowing the fuse. The outro is frank. You love the city but you don’t want to do the most. “same bed” is aimed at a woman who answers the door in no underwear knowing she has another man who doesn’t know what’s going on. “Do you really think it’s fair what you’re doing?” he asks, over and over, and never gets an answer.
When Ragz writes past the come-on and into the actual mess of wanting someone who won’t commit, the material gets pointed enough to outlast its own runtime. The gap between those two songs and something like “all gas no brakes”—which runs on “sexy ladies in the house,” “bad bitch behavior,” and nothing else—is the gap between having something to say and just sounding good while you say it. “play along” coasts on “hey sexy, keep glowing” and a single verse about crashing down a hill with the wheels spinning, and two minutes later you’re not sure what happened. The eight-bar method is ruthless when the bars are thin. Nothing to fall back on.
A lonesome road, fear that won’t save you, a spirit that’s weary, a bank of emotion that’s empty. That’s “wake up hustler,” the opener, and Ragz is talking to himself for the first and almost only time. Demae thickens the air around him and the hook begs “don’t freeze,” which is the most honest instruction on all of keepsake. The closer, “keepsake,” flips to defiance, rapid-fire bars about spelling his name right and keeping non-believers at the bottom of the bass line, tagged with “this is for people with taste.” Those are the only two songs that aren’t about chasing a woman, and a fuller version of Ragz lives in them that the rest of the album doesn’t chase.
Solid (★★★½☆)
Favorite Track(s): “mad ova u,” “archive prada,” “tied up”