British rapper and actor Ashley Thomas, better known as Bashy, serves his second studio album as a passionate, mind-altering plea to the youth of London. No stranger to bold, stand-out-from-the-crowd-style displays (adopting a lollipop as a visual prop in his Chupa Chups mixtape era of 2007, and uniting the grime scene on a collection of remixes for his black empowerment anthem “Black Boys”, a year later), Bashy verifies the views expressed on Being Poor Is Expensive with the wisdom of maturity and valuable lived experience. “I wrestled with my demons, insecurities, flaws, traumas and memories long forgotten which revealed themselves during the writing process,” Bashy tells Apple Music. “It was a tough process during which I also realised that I had been a scared boy in the past—naive, often one choice away from death, jail, drama or a successful future, on an almost daily basis.” As the title suggests, Bashy’s second album circles the hidden costs of poverty (also known as ghetto tax) that result in a self-limiting collection of habits, beliefs and contradictions often unknown to sufferers themselves. “Some will break, some break through” he explains on cinematic opener, “The London Borough of Brent”. “Me and those guys went the same school.” To inspire and characterise the sound of BPIE, Bashy created a mood board of tracks for producers Toddla T, PRGRSHN and Aaron Levy. Of the sparkling quartet of timeless Black British songs that he gave them, two surface on the album in sample form—Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)” (on “Earthstrong”) and Groove Chronicles’ remix of Myron’s “We Can Get Down” (on “On the Rise”). Additionally, the influence of Wookie and Lain’s garage anthem “Battle” and Roy Davis Jr.’s “Gabriel” shine through uplifting verses on tracks that rally against systems of oppression (“Lost in Dreams”), and herald soundsystem culture and family (“Made in Britain”). Fifteen years on from debut solo album, Catch Me If You Can, Bashy admirably centres personal struggle in front of later years of TV and film fame, hoping to redirect others in similar spots of street miseducation.