2011 studio album by Professor Green
At Your Inconvenience is the second studio album by British rapper Professor Green, released on 28 October 2011. "At Your Inconvenience" was released as a promotional single on 26 July. The first official single "Read All About It" was released on 21 September 2011.[1] Some guests from his debut album appear on the album, including Ed Drewett, Fink and Emeli Sandé; new guests include Slaughterhouse and Bad Meets Evil member Royce da 5'9", Kobe, Luciana, Ruth Anne, Sierra Kusterbeck and Haydon. Upper Clapton Dance originally featured on Green's debut mixtape Lecture #1.
As of 6 September 2014, the album has sold 280,000 copies in the UK.
Background
The album's general theme is different, in that it is more emotional, to Professor Green's previous album; he had a difficult upbringing with a hard relationship with his parents. His father committed suicide in 2008 and it heavily affected him. The album, thus, is generally more emotional than his previous album, Alive Till I'm Dead, which covered more humorous themes. Ed Drewett and Emeli Sandé, who had previously worked on Alive Till I'm Dead, were featured on the album.
Reception
In general, the album has received mixed reviews from music critics. RWD Magazine gave the album 4/5 stars and stated "Introspective and reflective, this borders on emo-rap on occasions, while retaining edginess on the sonic side."[12] MTV UK gave the album a positive review stating "From hip-hop, to UK garage influences, this slick LP really does have it all."[13] The Guardian's Charlotte Richardson Andrews awarded the album 3/5 stars, saying "It's difficult to reconcile Green's more crass verses with his sentimental numbers; Astronaut's tale of innocent rape victim turned junkie sits uncomfortably next to all the phallus jokes and Eminem-style sadism of songs such as 'Into the Ground'. It's a heavy, ambivalent confessional, but Green's precocious personality and distinctive flow manage to keep it fired up."[7] Jesal Padania of RapReviews gave the record a 7/10, praising the various production choices and Green's lyrical content for showing an update in variety and character consistency, despite some off-kilter delivery and a feeling of lyrical depth being held back, concluding that it "might leave you wanting a little bit more of what he's potentially best at. But make no mistake, it's an album that displays growth, maturity and improvement in almost every respect - he's certainly becoming a versatile and engaging artist."[11]
Andy Gill of The Independent was less positive, saying "Having managed to parlay an association with Lily Allen into the semblance of a career, Professor Green punches above his weight on his second album", before describing Green's delivery as "too Estuary-Eminem, scattershot hip-hop asperity snarled out with a mockney menace that is too secondhand to be effective" and the Evening Standard said "At his best, as on the vitriolic 'Read All About It', he can still sound like the English Eminem. When the acoustic guitars come out, though, he's closer to Just Jack." The BBC were also unimpressed, with contributor Gary Mulholland saying that Green is basically just saying "Please let me on The X Factor… I promise I won’t swear!" and that you are left "frankly, bemused and, increasingly, very, very bored."[3] The Evening Standard summed up the album by saying "The good news is that if fame really is so tough Manderson won't have to suffer for long: another album like this and nobody will be listening." Uncut gave the album 2 out of 5 stars, summing it up as "rather tiring." Perhaps the most damning review of all, though, was The Daily Telegraph's 1 out of 5, with writer James Lachno claiming that "his rhymes are too often lewd brags or boneheaded non sequiturs."[4] Any Decent Music, the online review aggregator, rated the album overall 4.3 out of 10.[14]
Padania argued that UK music critics are not familiar with the construction and structure of hip hop albums, and said that when approaching these types of records, "you have to know precisely what to analyse, and what the MC is trying to achieve."[11]
