Craig David: The Time Is Now

Grade: D–

You’re in a minicab, on the way home from some bash that was considerably less pleasing than you had anticipated. The driver has the radio on and this limp, witless, landfill R&B crap is hammering into your sinuses. You want to tell him to turn it off right now but don’t because you are too polite, too aware of sensitivities. You want your driver to like you. I don’t know why. You sort that out with yourself.

But anyway, that stuff on the radio — it’s actually Portsmouth’s gift to the world of music, digging like a maniac into the enamel of your teeth. Craig David, recently reinvented (as being slightly more boring than he was originally) and back with a new album: The Time Is Now. No, Craig, a more appropriate title would be The Time Was About Seven Years Ago And Even Then It Was Dull As Fuck.

He’s hauled in supposedly talented people. But they haven’t helped much with the tunes and still less with the truly cretinous lyrics. So, from the agonisingly repetitive and execrable ‘Brand New’ we get ‘Señorita, every time I meet ya.’ And the uplifting chorus from the slightly worse ‘For the Gram’ is: ‘Blah blah blah blah/ Yah yah yah. Baby.’ The songs go on and on and on. And he has nothing interesting to say in any of them.

But it will be there, at the top of the charts, on every radio, seemingly for ever. Frankly, I’d rather listen to Diane Abbott reading out my own death certificate in front of the Parliamentary Labour Party. So happy new year, then. Onwards and upwards.