It's weird that someone with such a straightforward lyrical style is so frequently thrown off by his own beats, but after hearing 'Bow E3'- where Wiley's postal-code hood-rep is halfway submerged under Maniac's production and constantly undercut by a stuttering, omnipresent hook- you begin to miss how his voice sounds, flaws and all, when it has breathing room.ДЄnd there's a couple tracks where he gives himself plenty of it, often with some uncharacteristically gentle touches. 'Gangsters' (one of three tracks carried over from 2006's self-released Da 2nd Phaze) is a loosely-associated string of threats and observations with only one word- an icy, synthetic female voice echoing 'gangsters'- holding his verses together, and technically there isn't even really much rhyming involved: 'We just had a wave of new (gangsters)/ Yeah, I think there's been a rise, more (gangsters)/ Imagine that, I'm a street kid brainy like (gangsters),' and so forth. Opener '50/50' is a sharp bit of lyrical work, wrapping a few tight phrases around a titular term that typically wouldn't give much room for them ('I'm 50/50, nifty nifty/ Got the best deal, nobody can twist me/ Anytime somebody tries to shoot me/ I flip the ball they miss me, miss me'), but by the second verse he's dropping syllables off-rhythm and his inflections fight distractingly against the beat.

His voice is a hell of an instrument in itself, a ragga-inflected string of serrated, lightning-quick jabs, but it spends a little too much time barreling over beats like they're suggestions instead of backbones. Wiley's deficiencies as an MC aren't overwhelming, but the possibility that his retirement may just consist of him stepping away from the mic while continuing to produce seems like a decent outcome. While Dizzee Rascal took a few risky chances on switching up and Americanizing his style for Maths + English- released, significantly enough, the same day as Playtime Is Over in the UK- Wiley has kept his formula mostly intact: skittering, hiccuping bounce rhythms, synths that sound like a turbocharged Super Nintendo with a subwoofer attached, and a manic, borderline-toasting flow that plows through everything in its path. Playtime Is Over* caps off Wiley's career in a low-profile fashion, considering that the progression he's taken since he dropped the 'Eskimo' riddim on an unsuspecting underground in 2002 can be measured in inches. Considering he had a beef at some point with almost everyone who appeared on Run the Road and is approaching 30 with a baby daughter in tow, the urge to step into the background is an understandable one- even if there's little indication on his supposed last album that he's had it on his mind. Yeah, I know, rap retirements- but he's gone through a lot of shit, whether recent (the fumbled pop-crossover of his Roll Deep crew's 2005 album In at the Deep End) or longstanding ('I'm getting threats but it's never stopped in 10 years,' he told RWD Magazine during his 'farewell' interview). Playtime, amongst other things: Aside from the possibility of doing some by-request production jobs and mentoring younger artists, Wiley was originally planning on retiring from the grime scene after this album.

Playtime is over wiley rar