When Fred again… and Skepta announced that they were releasing a collaborative album, Skepta..Fred, the internet (myself included) braced itself with excitement. Released in September 2025 under Warner Records, the album is equal parts grime manifesto, club-ready rave tape and cross-cultural love letter. Capturing Skepta’s unmistakable grime lyricism, Fred again’s knack for emotional production, combined with a sense of risk-taking that makes the whole record feel urgent, wild, and at times surprisingly vulnerable. This album landed with bass-heavy clarity : this is an album that doesn’t just merge genres, it reconstructs them into something brilliantly new.
A Tag-Team Effort
The UK duo teased the collaboration earlier this year with a surprise livestream show that spread across the globe like a wildfire. Their chemistry is as explosive as our failed science lessons in Year 11; Skepta thrives on gritty minimalism, while Fred thrives on layering emotions, samples, textures and moods. Together, they have curated an album that is more than a sum of its parts.
The album opens with ‘Back 2 Back’, perfectly sets the tone for the whole album. Allowing listeners to grasp the rollercoaster waves of serotonin. Skepta flows the beats with sharp, almost surgical bars, while Fred’s production transforms what could have been any other grime track into a soaring, emotionally charged head-banger. It’s not grime watered down for the global stage, it’s grime at its loudest and proudest confidently stepping onto the world stage.
Neo-Grime
Grime has always been about immediacy, blunt lyrics, icy beats and authentic storytelling. Ones that emerged from the rough streets of London in the early 2000s, with Skepta and his biological brother, JME, as pioneers of the grime music scene. Skepta..Fred respects that original DNA of the genre but mutates it into something more expansive.
Take ‘Freelance’ for example, the track keeps Skepta’s lyrical bite but allows Fred to inject lush synths and vocal chops that make the song feel like a club anthem as much as it is a grime track. It’s grime for the ‘pres’, festivals and ‘afters’. Then there’s the album’s closing song, the song that started this uproar from fans, ‘Victory Lap’. Featuring PlaqueBoyMax, the track was referred to as both “explosive and unexpectedly tender”. It’s the duality of the album that defines it; basslines that rattle your entire car paired with Fred’s production that could make you tear up mid shuffle and muzz.
Critical Take : Risk, Reward and Rebellions
Here’s where it gets interesting. Posthumous albums, like Mac Miller’s Balloonerism that recently released, often raises questions about authenticity. But Skepta and Fred, like this album, are very much alive and it asks us to consider what happens when “authentic grime” collides with global pop sensibilities. Critics of Skepta have long accused the rapper of “selling out” when he collaborated with other genres. But here’s where they’re wrong, not only is Fred again… polishing Skepta for an increase in Spotify playlist adds, he’s building new contexts where Skepta’s voice matters diversely. The end result is not the death of grime as a genre, but it’s the reinvention of grime.
For Skepta purists, the grime connoisseurs, it is supposed to sound almost like pirate radio cassettes. Raw, harsh and unapologetic. Fred’s glossy productions may feel like an intrusion on the true British DNA grime is required to have. But for new listeners, especially the Gen Z crowd, being raised on hyperpop and Spotify’s mainstream shuffle, this album fits in naturally with their music rotation. A double whammy for the newfound British duo, Skepta gets to spit verses that reaffirm his lyrical dominance and identity, while Fred’s productions ensure that these tracks won’t stay in niche UK circles and between London postcodes.
Best Release of 2025?
The brilliance of Skepta..Fred is that it refuses to pick a side, one genre, one sound. It doesn’t sacrifice grime’s street-born credibility, nor does it chase classic EDM chart formulas. Instead, this album creates a new space for its existence. One where Skepta’s grit and Fred’s sentimentality mesh harmoniously. This is an album about hybridity and cultural reconstruction, proving that grime can be both fiercely local and massively global. And maybe there’s a lesson here; genres aren’t prisons that must not be breached, they do not come with maximum state of the art security. Instead, they’re launchpads for those with a musical ear. Skepta and Fred just successfully dropped a blueprint for how UK culture can evolve whilst still growing and nurturing within its origins.
In a year full of recycled trap beats, the same Drake flow and AI generated ‘collabs’, Skepta and Fred have given us something rare. An album that’s both critically complex and stupidly fun to play full volume on your speakers. It’s grime for anywhere and everywhere. And after reading all this, and you have yet to give this album a listen, why are you still here? Go on now, shoo.
Caitlin 
Clara 
Kath Smart