Music to die for

Dizzee Rascal's remarkable debut album is harsh, original and in a class of its own. It even overshadows his private life

DIZZEE RASCAL Boy in da Corner (XL)

If you've heard of him, chances are it's for all the wrong reasons. The release of Dizzee Rascal's full-length debut was always going to be quite an event, given the head of excitement building around the rough-neck teenage MC from east London. His uncompromising 'I Luv U' single was a big underground hit last year, turning Dizzee Rascal (also known as Dylan Mills) into the UK urban scene's biggest revelation since the Streets. He even supported Jay-Z at Wembley.

All this was quite a coup for the 18-year-old, thrown out of school for disruptive behaviour, until one sympathetic music teacher finally helped harness Mills's talent and intellect to something more worthwhile than throwing chairs about.

But the burgeoning interest in Mills's distinctive, rapid-fire lyrical style and stark productions has since been overshadowed by the news of his stabbing earlier this month in the Cypriot resort of Ayia Napa, the summer home of UK garage. A member of So Solid Crew was questioned by police and has since been cleared, but the attempted murder remains rooted in the internecine violence of the UK garage scene.

Put bluntly: Dizzee Rascal is so good they want him dead. His debut, Boy in da Corner, reveals him to be a bleaker Streets, concerned with the violence, lovelessness and paranoia of his immediate surroundings, yet possessed of both awe-inspiring verbal flair and a Year Zero musical style.

His subject matter is totally unflinching, even on the bangin' party tunes: 'I Luv U' - written when Dizzee was 16 - deals harshly with a teenage pregnancy, casting the 'juiced-up' girl as loose and grasping, and the boy as 'some prick', the title and chorus virtually running with grim irony. Tracks such as 'Brand New Day', meanwhile, mirror the rise of urban gun culture with a matter-of-fact air ('We used to fight with kids from other estates/ Now eight millimetre settle debates'). The cocking of a pistol turns into an insistent refrain on 'Hold ya Mouth'. Comfort is in short supply in this nervous teenage dystopia.

If the superficial concerns here - girls, respect, money, reputation - seem adolescent, it's probably because they are. But the boy in the corner - the watchful Dizzee - makes a tremendous witness, even if his hysterical delivery sometimes suggests his voice has barely broken.

He's a participant-philosopher who wonders - despairs even - at the portraits he's painting of friends and enemies. Sorrowful and determined, songs such as 'Sittin' Here' and 'Do It!' - the first and last tracks on the album - make obvious the links between Mills and Mike Skinner. 'Do It', especially, is a raw parallel to 'Stay Positive' on Original Pirate Material, contemplating the void, just about scraping together enough will to make it through to tomorrow.

Just as startling, though, is his music - largely self-written. This record is extra special, in that it will make 16-year-olds from Bow council estates dance and fans of avant-garde digital music wet themselves. Mills draws on garage, ragga, the bass in drum'n'bass, and a sample of forgotten American rocker Billy Squier; from this extreme urban pick'n'mix, he makes a superbly dissonant backing.

It's barely music as Proms attendees would recognise it: all bass stabs and manic rhythms, the kind people such as Aphex Twin have been borrowing from the underground for years. What rare melodies do surface sound like primitive Japanese lute scores. It's just as alienated - and alienating - as the lyrics themselves, but spiked with unexpected, sly humour.

The knife attack has made him infamous. But Dizzee Rascal's heart-attack productions and mercurial flow mean that Boy in da Corner will be remembered as one of the records of the year.

· To order Boy in da Corner for £13.99, inc p&p, call the Observer Music Service on 0870 066 7813

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