Farma G is comfortably and confidently in a new chapter of his career, settling into his solo identity with a second album under his own name. Deepening and expanding his status as a legend of UK underground hip-hop, Nearly Nothing’s Enough pulls you in and doesn’t let you go.

The beats built by Relense sit in a fascinating space that’s still recognisably hip-hop but hovering very close to horror movie score territory with creepy twinkling pianos and unsettling arrangements with everything calibrated to unnerve you. Murky, vague and dreamlike, Farma G offers no concrete answers and keeps you perpetually uncertain about where the real ends and the metaphor begins. Like a David Lynch film, you’re never entirely sure what’s literal and what’s symbolic, with that ambiguity being the entire point.

Farma G’s character throughout is menacing but poised. With age and experience has come an unhurried quality with fantastic bars that are delivered with a swagger and a stillness that speaks to someone who has nothing to prove. His wit is on point, and the record is cartoonishly funny at times, playing with the boundaries between real life observation, metaphor and storytelling.

The album opens with the creepy atmosphere of Till I’m Gone before You’re Dead Now arrives built on horror samples and an obsessive fixation with death that runs through the entire record. Mr. Moany is a brilliant track that stays on a single topic reeling off physical manifestations of laziness. The dirty mirror, filthy cat litter, clothes on the floor, everything is grubby and crusty and accumulating and it works because you recognise some of yourself in it, perhaps a lot of it if you’re being honest. Farma notes that there are millions just like him, being self-critical and universal simultaneously. Makes Me Wanna... brings an intense Wu-Tang energy and X-Files is an indisputable highlight as Farma tests your knowledge of conspiracy theories and asks how deep the rabbit hole goes. Throwing the questions back at you rather than offering answers, how old do you think the pyramids are? How much are you willing to believe?

The character Farma G plays is a provocateur, a questioner, and someone poking at the edges of consensus reality with a raised eyebrow and a grin. Psycho with a Lexicon is a swaggery highlight, and the record is loaded with London-specific references that ground even the most surreal and murky moments with an authentic weight that’s tethered to the real.

There’s a lot going on in Nearly Nothing’s Enough with buckets of bars, wit and dark observations crammed into twelve tracks. It rewards close attention enormously, so lean in, listen carefully and you’ll find something new every time.