It’s hard to figure out where Le1f ends and Khalif Diouf begins. By now we’re used to the persona presented in his music. His mixtapes reveal a gritty and unfiltered slice of Manhattan’s forward- leaning hip-hop and fashion culture, with its own terminologies and hierarchies. Sass has always been at the forefront of his oeuvre – he’s constantly calling out ‘basic bitches’ and ‘fuckboys’ and shooting down smitten guys with callous panache in his tracks: “You say I’m fit/ hmm thanks, I already know”. It’s an exaggerated stance used to rail against everyone that’s stood in the way of his hard-won self-acceptance.

Riot Boi follows in this vein but branches off to present a more multi-faceted picture. Taxi – one of the best tracks on the album – flips the prior dynamic on its head: “Boys pass me like taxis do / I don’t care, whatever, it’s cool.” Explaining the track, Le1f has stated that he was “trying to embody all the times I felt inadequate as black man to be someone to date.” As arresting and powerful as his heart-on-sleeve earnestness is here; it falls flat on tracks like Tell and Change; which are more likely to raise eyebrows than chill spines; the latter straying into queasy conscious rap territory featuring jarring rent-a-hooks from Devonté Hynes and Miss Geri.

As a whole though, the record delivers on everything that’s unique about Le1f: his singular vocal style, prickly one-liners and progressive beat selection that most rappers wouldn’t dare to touch. For the amount of risks Le1f takes here, you have to forgive him for striking out a few times.

Steve Mallon