Ceebo's 'Bloccstar' Review: Navigating Fame's Moral Challenges

Ceebo has swiftly become UK rap ’s most vital storyteller. Over two acclaimed mixtapes, 2024’s ‘LambethNotLA’ and last year’s ‘Blair Babies’, the NME 100 star’s vivid lyrical vignettes of council house living and social sharpness have given voice to a misguided, misrepresented generation trying to make sense of their lives, all while he, too, actively made his way out of the mud. The Lambeth musician’s climb to the top of UK rap is nearing its end – he knows he’s next in line for the throne – but what do you do when the fame you’ve always wanted begins to look like a cage?

- READ MORE: Ceebo: the Lambeth rapper giving a voice to his generation’s struggles

In comes mixtape three ‘Bloccstar’, which uses Macbeth as its morally bankrupt bedrock. Ceebo kicks things off with his usual cinematic charm, opening with ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’: a so-sad-it’s-funny skit of executives tearing apart his “little project” – throwing us into the rapper’s fight to be commercial or conscious. He claps back with ‘Parable Of A Skinnyman’, where he’s both astute and braggadocious. “Fuck all that starving artist shit” , he proclaims – he wants the money, the success and the freedom to say whatever he wants.

As Ceebo inches closer to fame, he’s also steps further away from his humbling past, it becomes clear that he’s enjoying his new life a little. Swaggering over a kinetic, clattering Azonto-style beat, ‘Jangolova’ sees Ceebo team up with Two Tone and OdzMoney for an hedonistic celebration of fun tequila-soaked nights. But ‘Shallow’ soon cuts through the revelry. On the song, Ceebo pushes back against those who won’t let him be more than a conscious rapper: “They would rather see me be broke, than Ceebo not be woke… Fuck that shit, I ain’t widdit.”

Ceebo’s near-spiral into overindulgence is stopped in its tracks on ‘Macbeth’s Soliloquy’, where Wretch 32 appears in the young Lambethian’s story. Given Wretch’s stature as one of the scene’s most illustrious wordsmiths, it’s worth thinking of him as the King Duncan to Ceebo’s Macbeth. But rather than killing the king, though, Ceebo is forced to confront what that hunger and success has begun to turn him into, with his idol reminding him to “remain secure, remaining pure” . Afterwards, it all clicks: ‘These Days’ finds Ceebo examining how being “on profit” muddies his moral obligation to be the voice of the voiceless. He returns home on ‘H.I.T.H’ – where he flips Ray BLK ’s 2016 ‘My Hood’ into his own south London ode to his ends.

Ceebo doesn’t let his story end in tragedy, but instead ends it with a victory lap on closer ‘Bloccstar (BITW)’. Glorious fluttering piano and digital violins invoke the warm, sentimental DNA of 2010s road rap – paired with a Sneakbo-esque flow – as Ceebo finally enjoys the position he’s spent years chasing. ‘Bloccstar’ flawlessly explores the trap of fame and success through a brilliantly sequenced, beautifully produced record that turns his own ascent into a roadmap for those coming up behind him. The boy might be from the block, but he’s a star now.

Details

- Record label: 3:16

- Release date: October 2, 2026

The post Ceebo – ‘Bloccstar’ review: wading through the moral pitfalls of fame appeared first on NME .

_Originally reported by [NME](https://www.nme.com/reviews/album/ceebo-bloccstar-mixtape-review-3971885?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ceebo-bloccstar-mixtape-review)._