J Hus’ conservative detractors believe he and his music play an outsized role in the UK’s so-called knife crisis. In December 2018, the London rapper was sentenced to eight months in prison after being arrested for carrying a knife at a local shopping center, his third arrest for carrying a knife or being involved in knife fights. When he was stabbed in 2015, he was criticized for making gang signs in his hospital bed and glorifying violence. “They wanna judge me from what they heard I do/It’s a big conspiracy,” he sings sarcastically on his sophomore album’s title track. He seems to embrace the role of the anti-hero, but only on the condition that the nation recognizes its own role in shaping him.

Improving upon his more eclectic debut, Common Sense, Big Conspiracy is smoother, preciser, and more measured. Common Sense showcased his working knowledge of road rap, Afropop, reggae, turn-of-the-millennium American rap, and even the weirder corners of SoundCloud; now, he is more concerned with how all of that might fit together. Big Conspiracy reunites Hus with Common Sense architect Jae5, along with co-producers TSB and IO, and as a unit, they create the rapper’s most balanced and full-bodied music yet. You discover that his versatility comes from feeling adrift and misunderstood in his own country, and these songs are a journey back to the center of his true self.

Big Conspiracy plays like J Hus wants to set the record straight. This is who he is: a lost son of Gambia, an adult-in-progress, a talented pop polymath, and just a guy who has a lot of sex. Common Sense was playfully aimless, a horny playboy fantasy with a few songs about gangsta paranoia. There’s still plenty of that here, too: he’s libidinous across “Fortune Teller,” and “Helicopter” emphasizes the terrors of probation and plainclothes officers stalking him. But this album more clearly sketches out his development from displaced African boy to imprisoned British man, and it is by far the best J Hus has been on record as a performer and storyteller.

There are introspective raps about his incarceration and prison culture, colorism, and colonialism; about the fear and paranoia and violence that come with street life; about carrying a knife around London and being ready to use it, and why using it might be necessary. Ever since the stabbing in 2015, his music has carried the urgency of knowing your attackers are simply waiting for an opportunity to finish the job. That cuts through Big Conspiracy’s more muted and low-key vibe. On “Must Be,” he’s seeing adversaries everywhere. The frenzied grime cut “No Denying” finds him at his most convincingly defiant: “You know me, I’m the livest, call on all your riders/Call on all your strikers, me, I don’t even fear death/You don’t know me, I’m fearless, me, I’m out here bare chest,” he raps. He’s not just self-assured, he’s invincible.

While Hus is an undeniably captivating rapper, he isn’t going to bowl anyone over with his lyricism. He is a solid, dependable writer somewhat reliant on his ability to sound comfortable in any setting, and he usually impresses with his charisma and the sheer command of his range. But his pivot toward interiority gives his songs a new dimension. His bars are simple, straightforward, and can occasionally lean toward fortune-cookie wisdom (“Get the bread, avoid the drama/You can avoid the feds but not the karma,” he raps on “Fight For Your Right”), but throughout the album, he seems to be growing more secure in himself.

The focus throughout Big Conspiracy is finding the person at the center of a musical matrix. Big Conspiracy joins records like Burna Boy’s African Giant and GoldLink’s Diaspora, which found connections between black music the world over, but like Dave’s Psychodrama this album feels distinctly about the personal turmoil of being the child of African immigrants raised in London, making a home in a place you don’t belong. “I had to play dumb, just to blend in/Then go to Africa for spiritual cleansing,” he explains in the final moments of closer “Deeper Than Rap.” Being uprooted has threatened many family trees; sometimes finding ways to take root in a foreign land is the only way to survive.