REVIEW: D-Block Europe Strive For Global Domination With New Album ‘Lap 5’

3.5/5 Stars

D-Block Europe have released their new album ‘Lap 5’, following their 2021 gold-certified mixtape, ‘Home Alone’. Adding to their ever-growing roster of music, the 16-track project amplifies and celebrates the duo’s previous five summers and their quest to go global. Setting the tone for their international breakthrough, the album starts with the single ‘If I Ruled The World’, with a piano-based production that starts with Young Adz reminiscing on a world he used to know, all moments bringing the pair to where they are today.

The project is a lead-up to their world tour, starting today at Rolling Loud, New York, and ending in February next year in Oslo, Norway, with two dates at London’s O2 on the 10th and 11th of November. The album is not too feature-heavy but enlists two of the world’s biggest musicians; Ed Sheeran and Burna Boy, with Burna’s position, placed perfectly for the single ‘She’s Not Any One’. While Ed’s placement feels a little out of place in tangent with D-Block Europe’s signature vocals, understandably the Ed Feature is strategically clever for the duo to grow their international fanbase.

The middle of the project features ‘Bando Baby Diaries’, which has Young Adz spitting over a simple production, with his bars cutting raw through the bass-heavy beat. The single is perfect for those who are not so into just hearing their popular autotuned sound, presenting itself as ‘real rap’. While the album is a perfect introduction to D-Block Europe’s global impact and continuation of releasing a project every year since 2018, there isn’t too much that is distinctive for this project. The pair are a much-loved addition to music, with a legacy that is undisputed, there just seems to be a need for something different in comparison to their previous success.