Review: Hip-hop star and 'mumble rap' pioneer, not to mention all-out legend, 21 Savage delivers his third full-length studio album, American Dream. Coinciding with a new, forthcoming biopic about his life - American Dream: The 21 Savage Story - this is probably set to be the rapper's most forthcoming and acclaimed album to date. Having shouldered a fraught early life prior to his rise to stardom in Atlanta (Savage, real name Sheyaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, was born in Plaistow, London, to parents of British nationality and Caribbean heritage), Savage's earliest days are a hot topic when it comes to the theme of shaken personal identity and the double consciousness of immigration, a topic not commonly explored in contemporary hip-hop (it should be). Already lauded as the project through which Savage divulges all, this album serves as a birds-eye view of his history and a defiant rejoinder to the American ICE's misguidedly loaded statement, 'this whole public persona is false'.
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