Album Review: Victory by Slick Rick
What matters now is not whether Victory tops playlists or recaptures his eighties peak. Its significance lies in watching the quintessential storyteller seize control of his narrative once again.
Richard Martin Lloyd Walters grew up with one eye patched and the other fixed on possibility. In south-west London, his Trinidadian mother filled the flat with ska, lover’s rock, and the BBC’s pop staples; when the family resettled in the Bronx, he carried those melodies (and a distinct English lilt) into a borough that was then inventing hip-hop in real time. The accent that classmates mocked soon became an asset, with its sing-song cadence, allowing him to pack plot twists, punch lines, and stage whispers into a single bar. Friends nicknamed him “Rick the Ruler” long before he recorded a note, sensing that his voice, half-sly raconteur and half-nursery-rhyme narrator, would one day direct an audience’s imagination like a spotlight.
At the High School of Music & Art, he traded crude four-track tapes with Dana McLeese (later known as Dana Dane) and learned that storytelling could be a form of performance art. The pair donned Kangol caps and rapped at local shows as the Kangol Crew, sharpening comic timing that owed as much to British pantomime as to Bronx park jams. Rick’s patch, a result of a childhood glass accident, stopped being a vulnerability; onstage, it suggested mystery, a low-key swagger that didn’t require flailing arms or shouted hooks. When Doug E. Fresh invited the soft-spoken teenager to try a studio mic, two B-side experiments quietly made history. “The Show” offered beat-box theatrics; its flip side, “La Di Da Di,” was just Rick and Doug’s mouth percussion, yet it became a sample goldmine and an informal rite of passage for would-be MCs. More than its quotable lines, the record proved that rap could thrive on imagery alone: listeners saw the bathroom mirror, the jealous boyfriend, and the joyride because Rick told them where to look. The Library of Congress honored it decades later, but its influence was obvious the moment crowds began finishing his punch lines in real time.
Major labels soon competed for the duo’s services, though Rick chose a solo path with a powerhouse New York imprint. His first album, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick, sounded less like a collection of tracks than an anthology of radio plays. “Children’s Story” was cautionary, “Mona Lisa” flirtatious, yet each verse shared a plainspoken narrator who trusted the audience to fill in scenery. Contemporary rap prized bravado; Rick, however, preferred moral fables, comic sketches, and unresolved cliffhangers, all delivered in measured, almost conversational phrasing. DJs embraced the clarity; his vocals sat in the mix like a separate instrument, while peers copied his melodic inflections even when quoting other records. Offstage, he cultivated an image that was equal parts West Indian elegance and Bronx flash: wide-brimmed hats, diamond-encrusted eyepieces, and chunky rope chains that swung like exaggerated props. The look was deliberate theater, signaling that hip-hop could evolve from park-jam casual into something closer to Harlem Renaissance pageantry. Future stars, from a pre-mainstream Shawn Carter on down, admitted studying those outfits as closely as the rhyme schemes. Storytelling, Rick showed, was visual and verbal.
Fame, however, collided with a harrowing family dispute in 1990. After threats from a cousin-turned-bodyguard, Rick carried a handgun for protection; an altercation ended in two injuries and a courtroom saga that cost him prime career years. Even while battling charges, he hurried a second album, recording most verses in a few frenetic studio sessions between court dates. The finished set, patched together by engineers while he awaited sentencing, hinted at growth yet was overshadowed by the verdict. Rick ultimately spent five years in federal and state custody—time that froze his chart momentum but deepened his legend as rap’s imprisoned bard. Confinement did not mute him. Remote-patched vocals surfaced on Behind Bars, offering wry self-examination rather than self-pity.
Once paroled, he rebuilt his public standing the only way he knew: with another narrative masterclass. The Art of Storytelling balanced comedic vignettes with rueful autobiography, sounding less like a comeback grab than a craftsman reclaiming his bench. Producers and rappers sampled his older catalog at a dizzying pace, yet Rick seemed unbothered; imitation was proof that the blueprint still worked. A new obstacle emerged when immigration officials attempted to deport him under toughened post-1996 statutes. Detained for seventeen months after a routine Florida performance, he fought removal orders until a New York governor granted an unconditional pardon; eight years later, he secured full U.S. citizenship. The ruling not only ended a decade of legal uncertainty but affirmed hip-hop’s argument that its pioneers belonged to the national cultural fabric.
By the turn of the 2020s, rumors of a full-length return multiplied. Studio photos featuring Idris Elba surfaced online, sparking debate among fans about whether the actor was merely visiting or actively involved in the production. Then came confirmation: Victory, an audio-visual album built in London lofts and French countryside retreats, executive-produced by Rick and Elba with film direction by Meji Alabi that’s a part of the Legend Has It seven-album campaign by Mass Appeal. Rick explained the title in characteristic understatement: “A visual blend of art and heart—a sonic journey that reflects where I’ve been and where I’m going. Victory isn’t just music—it’s a bold in your face statement, showcasing British artistry at its finest!” For him, the victory is layered—surviving literal prison, sidestepping deportation, navigating rap’s shifting eras, and arriving elder yet unweathered, as evidenced by the intro. That’s the album’s concept, but with 15 songs and a length of 27 minutes, the material felt rushed and wanting more.
By aligning his own persona with high fashion and entrepreneurial flair—“MC Ricky D to Slick Rick, icon, fashionista, storyteller”—he maps out an influential career that deliberately merges performance art with everyday swagger with the interlude, “I Did That,” which is weird saying that because most songs are a minute-long. Rick explained the title in characteristic understatement: “Every story needs triumph.” For him, the victory is layered—surviving literal prison, sidestepping deportation, navigating rap’s shifting eras, and arriving elder yet unweathered. The associated short film, already tapped for festival screenings in London and New York, positions the patch-eyed narrator as a timeless griot guiding viewers through border crossings and block parties, suggesting that immigrant tales and Bronx tales are chapters of the same book.
Two songs that felt sorely out of place. One is “Come On Let’s Go,” a house track that does absolutely no favors, and “Cuz I’m Here” follows the same vein with a spirited monologue in which he occupies a conversational mode that swings between self-assured flirtation and tongue-in-cheek commentary that doesn’t fit on an uptempo track. Throughout the mundane “Stress,” Rick’s delivery rides atop a spare beat, punctuated by hard-hitting drums which can be distracting, and Giggs shifts focus from general unrest to personal anecdotes, references to life in Britain, encounters with lovers on uneven footing, even offhand commentary. “Another Great Adventure” employs a Q-Tip production that may give a side-eye (knowing how much we enjoyed LL Cool J’s The FORCE), Rick mixes buoyant cadences with unexpectedly somber subject matter. The choice to frame his daughter’s disability in blunt, colloquial terms amplifies the tension between empathy and embarrassment, while the dark humor epitomizes the stigma that drives him toward extreme measures.
However, positive moments arrive on “Documents,” where Slick Rick’s approach in this piece is nothing short of a masterful exercise in coded storytelling, and that’s his strong suit. From the moment he intones, “Now they got me like a top agent shogun, watching me program,” we’re thrust into a world of espionage where fashion and danger collide. By packaging his narrative in concise, image-rich lines, he makes each measure feel like a frame in a film, with Rick himself playing the suave rogue at center stage. When Nas steps up, the mood shifts subtly from slick heist to polished pursuit of status. He layers details (“Suede Bally’s, dope boy grace, the ‘88 911 Porsche in a car chase”) so that each object becomes a symbol of both taste and tension. In their tandem, Rick’s crisp mission briefing and Nas’s sartorial reportage form a compact yet vivid dossier on how style, strategy, and street smarts intersect.
In “So You’re Having My Baby,” Slick Rick adopts a first-person stance that reads almost like a courtroom deposition that sets up a conflict between his reputation on the street and the new claim on his identity as a father. This blend of colloquial speech and vivid, almost cinematic details gives the narrative force beyond what might be expected from a mere anecdote about unexpected fatherhood. Later on, the tension between street loyalty and domestic obligation becomes more pronounced. Beyond the sonic craft of “Angelic,” there is a layered conversation at work. The preacherly introduction suggests moral guidance, but what follows reads like a dialogue between father and child, or perhaps between an older self and a younger self. Rick provides a snapshot of an identity shaped by faith, family, street life, and the sheer joy of rhythmic wordplay. “Not good for man to be standing, examine/Or more adventurous, ’cause tension cause” shows a man wrestling with the pull of youthful recklessness against the promise of greater wisdom.
The opening bars on “Foreign” plunge into a playful yet pointed back-and-forth: “You no know good music, Junior” immediately positions the narrator in opposition to an imagined skeptic. By following with “Grandpa, check out what I did with your song,” Rick honors and gently mocks the generational hand-off of musical ideas, framing this as an ongoing conversation rather than a solitary performance. Although it’s not a standout because it ends before it gets going, this concept functions less as a simple question and more as a meta-commentary on sampling, remix culture, and artistic ownership. He has some records like “Spirit to Cry” that deal with relationships, and the Reggae-tinged “Landlord” is one of the better songs that showcase his storytelling chops once more, but we won’t spoil the concept (however, it’s definitely relatable).
Victory keeps reminding us that even a master raconteur can lose the thread when the reel runs too long. Sprawling runtimes, cameo pile-ups, and abrupt stylistic pivots break the spell just as a story’s tension peaks, leaving strong verses stranded in what feels like an overstuffed anthology rather than a single volume. The momentum Slick Rick builds on “So You’re Having My Baby” and “Cuz I’m Here” dissipates when sequencing shuffles him from personal to out-of-place house track and back again with little connective tissue. Instead of the seamless visual-audio fusion promised in the pre-release buzz, we get some brilliant moments that never quite coalesce into a cohesive whole, and the gaps make the unfinished edges impossible to ignore.
Still, disappointment and defeat are different outcomes. Victory doesn’t diminish Rick’s instinct for detail or the conversational ease that once turned cautionary tales into block-party folklore, but it only underlines how vital a judicious editor remains to his process. A fleshed-out body of work, reordered with intention, these songs could stand alongside his classic chapters, reminding newer fans why he taught rap to trust in plot and pause. Until that revision arrives, whether through deluxe reissue, tour reinterpretation, or the next studio set, the album settles for being a vivid rough draft of the triumph its title proclaims. The Ruler’s crown may tilt under the extra weight, but it never slips, and that sliver of promise keeps the door open for a sharper sequel rather than closing the book on an icon who still has stories worth hearing.
Above Average (★★★☆☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Angelic,” “Lanlord,” “Documents”