Wiley's 2017 full-length Godfather was a career best, becoming his first U.K. Top Ten-charting album and earning rave reviews. After a disappointing 2018 sequel, he started to bounce back somewhat with "Boasty," a minimalist dancehall single with Stefflon Don, Sean Paul, and Idris Elba that became Wiley's biggest hit since 2013. A full dancehall/rap crossover album was set to be released by a major label, with guest appearances by Nicki Minaj and Future, and while a few singles trickled out, the project ended up being scrapped due to rights disputes. After engaging in a pointless beef with Stormzy for a few minutes around the beginning of 2020, Wiley released The Godfather 3 in June, announcing (not for the first time) that it would be his final album...before surprise-dropping Boasty Gang - The Album less than a month later.
For all of his maddening inconsistencies, however, when Wiley is at his most focused and determined, he remains unbeatable, and entirely deserving of his self-appointed status as the Godfather of Grime. G3 is one of his no-nonsense pure grime releases, rather than one of his calculated chart-bait efforts, and it ranks as one of his best, much like the first Godfather. The album's lyrics, as well as Wiley's pre-release comments about it, center around taking grime back to its roots -- as he says on "Protect the Empire," "We built this up, that's why we must protect it." The album's most exciting old-school throwback is "Eskimo Dance," an "8-bar rally" posse cut with nearly a dozen guest emcees trading rapid-fire bars over brief bits of instrumentals from grime's early days, including Wiley's own "Igloo." The track itself is named after a grime rave that Wiley first hosted in 2002, and the first three instrumentals used in the track were also the first three to be played during the initial Eskimo Dance. Other tracks flash back to the 8-bit-style bleeps and angular beats of the early grime production style, while leaning towards the higher-definition, trap-influenced sound of the genre's resurgence. Wiley wants to make sure grime is in good hands when he eventually retires, and he takes numerous opportunities to showcase up-and-coming lyricists, with "West London" and "South London" each dedicated to rhymers from the respective parts of the city. On a more personal level, "Light Work" is about teaching his son how to rhyme and produce tracks, walking him through the steps and challenging him to "go and do better than me." "Balance" is a more sentimental, R&B-tinged reflection on a turbulent relationship, and "Free Spirit" is even more introspective, with Wiley looking back over the previous two decades over a woozy, yearning beat. Other than those few precious moments, G3 is heavy on bangers, with all tracks whizzing by in two or three minutes, and the album constantly stays sharp and exciting.