Reflecting on ‘Psychodrama’ five years later

An Introduction

A psychodrama is a form of psychotherapy where people act out events from their past to help them understand their feelings or find a point of catharsis. It’s the concept that informs the narrative and structure of Dave’s “Psychodrama.” The concept is intriguing and intimate, displaying that the artist isn’t shying away but showing the burdens that he carries and the things that disturb him.

Released in March 2019, Dave’s debut album is a portrait of the intricacies of Black-British life. It’s a skillful deconstruction of the realities of being Black in the UK, and how British society creates racist images and false narratives about Black-British people that force them to adopt “masks” to cope and avoid the deeper complicated feelings of being Black in the UK. The album is an exploration of the psychological condition Blackness enters at the intersections of multiple systems of oppression.

For American audiences, Dave’s name may unfortunately still be unfamiliar. He’s considerably one of the best contemporary rappers in terms of writing and rap delivery, and a generational talent in his own right. Also known by the stage name Santan Dave, David Omoregie hails from South London and his debut was considered a highly anticipated album after the artist’s impressive appearances in underground grime scenes. It should be noted that though grime and hip-hop both deliver lyrics as raps, grime and hip-hop are two different genres. Grime operates at 140bpm, which is faster than hip-hop, and is influenced by dancehall, the UK garage scene and UK drill.

As a teenager, Dave found himself gaining buzz within music circles for his freestyles and became a focal point of British music critics with the release of his EP “Game Over.” On the EP, the song “Question Time,” was confrontational as it questioned British political leaders David Cameron, Theresa May and Jeremey Corbyn over Brexit, the Grenfell tragedy and the UK’s role in overseas conflicts, such as Palestine.

In a review of the EP, writer Nikita Rathod considered that Dave “shows his usual high levels of wit and intelligent wordplay.” Vice called him “a prodigious talent,” and equated him to Kendrick Lamar.

Dave and Lamar find themselves inhabiting similar frameworks, critiquing the present state of Black history and selfhood, putting a mirror to the systemic institutions of their respective societies and deep reflections into their shortcomings. Both stand as counterparts as orators of Black life and Black communities overlooked by governments. The overlap between the two could be its own essay, but to understand the gravity of Dave’s role as an artist in a hip-hop-adjacent genre, Kendrick Lamar is a comparable reference point.

What’s unique about “Psychodrama” as a concept is its inclusion of therapist skits that turn the album into a lengthy therapy session, in which the listeners are purview to Dave working out his difficulties with being Black in the UK, interpersonal relationships and trying to make sense of the violence he sees in domestic abuse and the gang activity. We’re not meant to approach the album as Dave telling us about his life, but as honest unpacking of sensitive materials to a trusted therapist. We as listeners are not meant to exist in such a setting, erasing our presence. It breaks the boundary of where a listener meets the artist, the music no longer functioning as just narrative but as personal accounts, documenting the layering of social pressures and the methods, good or bad, in which one needs to survive.

The Songs

“Psychodrama” is an 11-track album running at 51 minutes. Though every song is worthy of its own intricate analysis, there are a couple that are standouts in skill and role as cultural touchpoints. In the podcast series “Decode,” Kayo Chingonyi gives each song its own episode with extensive analysis. Scattered throughout the album are voice recordings of the therapist, appearing five times. The album’s producer, Fraser T. Smith, who won a Grammy for Album of the Year for working on Adele’s “21,” voices the therapist. The album can be broken down into three acts: environment, relationship and social and moral compass.

“Psycho”

The therapist’s recording opens the album on the track “Psycho,” asking Dave to discuss his background and the issues he’s been struggling with. Dave details his struggles with mental health, social and career pressures and navigating stereotyping. The song’s beat sounds like it’s driven by a drum trill, signaling the UK drill beat that will be interwoven through the album. “Psycho” sets the tone for the album introducing the listener to the range of emotions and topics that will get their own focus in the succeeding songs. Already there is clever tight wordplay packed with cultural references. To listen to Dave requires an attunement to culture and the ability to convert existing art into something new and interesting.

Halfway through the song, the beat switches to a smoother melody, and the drums drop with Dave’s rap flow meeting the new brightness of the production, his voice now sounding uplifted and motivated, contrasting with the stressed-out tone of the song’s first half. Seventy-five percent of the way through “Psycho,” the composition changes again into a piano melody to narrate Dave’s revelation about his mental struggles, which isolate him from familial and romantic relationships. Promptly then returning the song’s beginning production to end the song.

Dave drops an interesting line in “Psycho” that pulls together the psychological implication of being a Black-Brit. He raps, “my environment made me a sicko.” He implicates society in damaging his possibilities and the people he grew up around. He lists how a teacher tried to simplify his problems while assuming he was gang-related because he grew up in a more impoverished area of Streatham. It brings light to how stereotyping proves itself to be an obstacle for Black people seeking to break through the societal situations they find themselves in.

“Streatham”

Tight verses and clever wordplay that leaves you thinking about what you just heard. That’s exactly what “Streatham” does. In detailing his life growing up in Streatham, London, Dave interweaves double entendres, puns and figurative language that layer meaning and expand the picture of Black-British life in Streatham. Examples include, “I grew up in Streatham / Teachers was givin’ man tests / Same time the mandem were givin’ out testers.” Dave links the difficulties of education with the escapism of drugs, which fuel a cycle that keeps people stuck in Streatham.

Life in Streatham is depicted with imagery about evading gang activity, racial profiling and dreaming of a life beyond the conditions of the area. But for Dave, he includes his own journey alongside the journey of other young people in Streatham. As he watches the people he went to school with get initiated into a gang, pressure builds on Dave to succeed in school so he can avoid the same fate. The narrative is taken from Dave’s own personal life. After both his brothers were incarcerated, his mother made sure Dave stayed inside studying, which would influence Dave to take up piano and develop his musical skills.

In “Streatham,” Dave follows clear rhyming patterns with internal rhymes that are layered with double entendres and cultural reference points that test your understanding of fashion, car culture and pop culture. Such strong opening wordplay returns in “Screwface Capital” with Dave’s lines “I made a link with the Russians / Six figure discussions, dinners in public / My linen all tailored My outstanding payments swift like Taylor.”

“Black”

Black details what it means to be Black in Britain and the complications that it brings socially and psychologically. Dave turns Blackness from only a social experience into a social condition, which is the essence of “Psychodrama.” He illustrates how the social experiences of being Black turn into a psychological condition amplified by internal and racial tension, code-switching to reach a sense of social inclusion, and then having to realize that your Blackness is acceptable in the parts that fashion non-Black individuals, leaving you into a ghostly figure illegible to greater society.

Conversing with the literary ideologies of Frantz Fanon and Tsitsi Dangaremba, whose work highlights the psychological impacts of experiencing and walking through the world as a Black person. Dave explains the impact of colonization on erasing the Black histories that could add to the picture of Black identity and the systemic role of poverty and incarceration in keeping Black communities from social mobility.

The song’s music video is a worthy watch, showcasing a collective of Black-British excellence from fashion designers, Olympians, musicians, actors and academics. Included in the music video are scenes from West Africa, connecting Black Britain to the diasporas that inform Black-British culture.

“Black” landed Dave in controversy in the UK. When the song debuted on BBC Radio 1, it received backlash from listeners asking for the song to no longer be played. Radio 1 DJs Annie Mac and Greg James had to step in to defend the track, both emphasizing the importance of discussing race. For Dazed, Kemi Alemoru wrote of the backlash, “it’s truly indicative of the nation’s [UK] deeply ingrained attitudes to blackness.”

The controversy continued when Dave performed the song at the 2020 Brit Awards. Adding in new verses to the live performance that discussed society’s sensitivity to white boys who engage in violence rather than a quick demonization of Black boys who do the same, calling out the British press’ racist coverage of Meghan Markle and labeling then-prime minister Boris Johnson and the UK at-large a racist.

The performance received 300 complaints, reported to the UK’s broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, all ultimately rejected by the broadcaster. The performance would go on to spark a national discussion on race, praised for its direct challenge to political leaders and brutal honesty about the political state of the UK for Black and marginalized individuals.

“Location”

Back in 2019, “Location” was the party anthem. Dave set the mood for the song when he tweeted in March 2019 “Picture the scenes. You’re drunk in Ibiza. It’s merky festival and you’ve had a couple cocktails, Hus is free, location is playing, Girls are smiling at you. What a 2019,” four months before releasing the music video for Location, which would embody the vision put forth in Dave’s tweet (Hus, referenced J Hus, a frequent Dave collaborator and featured on the album’s song “Disaster”). Featured on the song is Burna Boy, an artist who at the time was also cementing his own career, becoming a defining voice for African music coming out of Nigeria in the 2020s.

When “Location” dropped, the song oozed the glowy orange hues of summer. It’s a song of ease and fun and good times with friends. The song comes in the album after the therapist tells Dave it’s a good thing he’s able to be positive despite the social challenges he faces. “Location” isn’t important only for its afrobeats dancehall influenced vibe, but because it’s one of the only times there’s a sense of joy on the album. “Location” signifies the pursuit of joy in the midst of systemic racism.

“Lesley”

This is the crowning achievement of the album. It’s where Dave gives us his all, putting all of his strengths on display. Coming in at 11 minutes, Dave doesn’t pause to take a breath. We see how talented Dave is, putting together vocal delivery with narrative. We get a multi-layered story filled with fully formed characters and a plot line filled with surprises and tensions.

The song follows Lesley, a woman experiencing domestic abuse and struggling to pay her bills. Lesley’s partner, Jason doesn’t aid in financially supporting their life, cultivating a sense of instability in Lesley’s life. Lesley finds out she’s pregnant, which further complicates her relationship with an unfaithful and violent partner.

Playing throughout the song are string instrumentals and piano, the song fits an orchestral arrangement that works to soundtrack the emotional tensions and pitfalls of Lesley’s life. The emotions in Dave’s voice narrate the painful realizations of violence that happens behind doors within families and to friends, the intimate partner violence that lives in the shadows and goes unheard.

Final Thoughts

The last therapist message is the therapist congratulating Dave on going through therapy, offering Dave a temporary sense of resolution.

What makes Dave great is his dexterity and versatility. When you listen to his music, it’s the narrative that comes first. He wants to talk about us, who we are, challenge our perceptions and wonder if we can be better than who we are. He’s introspective and critical, layering multiple angles between verses to get to a full-storied picture. Listening to Dave is a callback to what made rap great: a focus on social consciousness, continuing tradition and active work in progressing one’s musical genre forward.

Dave defined a new generation of hip-hop artists as the genre moved towards a new decade and inched closer to its 50th anniversary. “Psychodrama” returned to the essentials of hip-hop with a focus on pure rap delivery rather than a reliance on melodic performances. Though Dave utilizes melodies, inspired by the likes of Lana Del Rey and Hans Zimmer, Dave isn’t necessarily singing on this album. By the late 2010s, melodic hip-hop was a dominant form of the genre. The rise of trap and mumble rap turned memorable hooks into the foundation of hip-hop songs instead of intricate skills required to craft bars that outlive party scenes and temporal music moments.

Maybe due to the fact UK hip-hop and grime had yet to fully be inducted into the United States’s melody-driven hip-hop scene by 2019, Dave is able to avoid the trappings of work that exists only in a moment (fellow UK hip-hop artist Loyle Carter would release “Not Waving, but Drowning” a month later in April 2019, which was constructed with more fluid melodies and slower cadence while evoking a 90s West Coast rap delivery). But what maybe aids Dave the most in transcending temporality is his diverse hip-hop skillset, and how his music speaks to something beyond music, social conditions that can be mediated upon and internal reflections that still need to be scavenged. Dave intertwines cultural references in calloused wordplay that bridges together colloquial statements of Black-British life.

Inspired by his own brother’s therapy sessions in prison, the album’s title is also a reference to the role of therapy in prison incarceration. Dave’s brother’s incarceration is a theme of the album, and Christopher Omoregie makes an appearance in “Drama,” the final song of the album. Dave is the youngest of his family, and losing Christopher and his other older brother was a trauma that defined Dave’s childhood.

In “Drama,” Dave breaks the fourth wall, turning away from the therapist to speak directly to the audience for the first time, while simultaneously addressing Christopher. He voices his hope that we will like “Psychodrama.” The song is seven minutes long, and Dave reveals to us new information about the inspirations behind the songs “Streatham” and “Lesley,” the latter based on the domestic violence he witnessed between family members. Dave leaves a lasting impression about who he is and why he’s the new chapter of talent defining music and culture.

Ending the album is Christopher reading from 1 Samuel 16, the Bible story that depicts the anointing of Israel’s second king, the youngest son of the family, the one overlooked and hidden in the shadows. The one named David.