The hooded sweatshirt is often seen as a signifier of youth criminality, a utilitarian garment repurposed as sinister cloak. On his powerhouse sixth album, Hoodies All Summer, the veteran British rapper Kano turns that notion on its head. Here, the hoodie is cast as pitiful protection from the incessant sorrows raining down on young black men, no matter the season.

The track at its centre, Teardrops – which opens with a spine-tinging blend of piano and electronic loops and has a gorgeous, elegiac orchestral coda – is a desperate, angry and moving account of everyday racial injustices in modern Britain. “We used to dream of the most frivolous things/ ’Til we brought the most ridiculous of rings/ Now we’re trying to keep our brethren out the bin,” Kano raps, underlining his themes of empathy, maturity and responsibility for his community.

Hoodies All Summer is the album that grime has been crying out for, an audacious state-of-the-nation address from one of its most articulate lyricists. At 34, Kano (real name: Kane Robinson) has been around since the early days of a fierce, electronic-based genre that put British rap on the map in the Noughties. He has always exhibited substantial skill, switching up tempos and expertly shifting between a tough, attacking spoken style, a more playful reggae patois and snatches of singing in a plain but tuneful voice.