The title of Headie One’s fourth solo mixtape, Too Loyal for My Own Good, first arose in conversation between the Tottenham MC and his sister—keeping up the family theme after he dedicated his 2020 debut album, EDNA, to the memory of his late mother. In truth, no definitive answer is found to his sibling’s observations across the tracks they inspired. Instead, Headie One considers the implications and underlying factors of this—asking not for sympathy, but permission to dismiss the pack mentality of his past. “I put my life on the line for the mandem/I went to jail and felt like I was abandoned,” he reveals on the JAE5-produced “Finer Things.” Though a firm collaborative streak runs through Headie One’s rise, including a chart-storming meet with Drake on his debut and the joint project GANG with Fred again.. in 2020, and a trio of tapes with OFB partner RV, it’s all in the past for Headie. Here, on such a soul-searching project, he can only go it alone.
Too Loyal for My Own Good trades in painful memories and laments on the misfortunes of those around him to better grasp his own nature. Guided by truthful self-dialogue and immersed in familiar production sounds (Quincytellem, M1onthebeat, The Elements), Headie One obsesses on settling old scores (“2 Chains”) and the need to outgrow the much-publicized issues of his past (“PTSD”) while also rejecting the trappings of his rising fame (“Nothing to Me”). Credited with widening the framework of the drill sound, Headie One racks newly polished drill anthems around unmistakable sample flips of ’90s Busta Rhymes hits (“Cry”) and a PARTYNEXTDOOR mixtape cut (“Long Knight in Knightsbridge”). The closing track—an alluring confessional of thumping bass notes and somber thoughts—draws shut this self-examination with the conviction that changing your ways is necessary and essential for survival.