Album: Professor Green, At Your Inconvenience (Virgin)

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, with tracks indulging the standard hip-hop tropes of self-aggrandisation ("At Your Inconvenience") and aimless antagonism ("DPMO (Don't Piss Me Off)").

But save for one track on which he and Fink borrow a Pixies refrain to no significant end, there is little originality in evidence here, from the routine R&B vocal hooks and romantic tribulations to the self-pitying stuff about absent fathers and a heroin tragedy. It all seems too familiar, however he tries to ring the changes by shifting from squelchy dubstep synths to pulsing techno-rock to portentous anthem. Green's delivery is too Estuary-Eminem, scattershot hip-hop asperity snarled out with a mockney menace that is too secondhand to be effective.

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