Any magazine worth its salt compiles a best-of list at year’s end (ours is elsewhere in this edition).

While these are great in principle, they get put together in November for a December publication date. This does mean that any album released immediately after, even in the unlikely event that it’ a gem, won’t make it.

And so while Kashmere, Bliss n Eso and Atmosphere respectably hold down the top end for Tourdates hip-hop, we’re still a little bit sheepish. One day – literally, one day – after we’d submitted our picks, Lowkey’s Dear Listener dropped through the post box. It drops (in the music sense of the term) in January. And while you won’t find it on our list this year, you probably will in 2009.

On the phone to us before his gig with his storied band Mongrel (of which more later) Lowkey is rhapsodising about tea. “I’ve got this German tea I can’t even remember the name of,” he enthuses. “Tastes absolutely disgusting but does wonders for my throat. I’ve got to make sure I don’t have any dairy products before a gig – no cheese, milk, just loads of hot tea and lots of sleep.”

And onstage? Lowkey (Kareem Dennis) makes the usual noises rappers tend to make when asked about live strategy; crowd interaction, acapella verses and getting the crowd to relate to the music. We bet it’s just the tea.

Lowkey’s gig list is pretty full up for the next few months. He’s doing it all off the back of the new album which is, as we said, all kinds of dope. Lowkey is not the world’s best MC; he’s good, but doesn’t sound all that different or unique. And listening to the album, it takes a couple of songs before you realise what the hype is about: focus.

Many MCs struggle staying on topic for more than three bars, let alone a whole song. Not Lowkey. Whether he’s spitting about hip-hop itself (‘The Essence’), proving his ability as a rhymer (the astonishing ‘Alphabet Assassin’, where he finishes what Papoose started) or breaking down compelling stories (the phenomenal ‘Relatives’), he grips and doesn’t let go. You can hear it in lyrics and you can hear it when he talks about his songwriting: a flaming, intense passion gripping his voice. Focus, with a deadly determination.
Or, to put it in a simpler way, the boy can write.

Talking to him, we sense Lowkey is an MC with very little to lose. He’s had his brush with fame, and he didn’t like it. One of the standout songs on the record is ‘Rise and Fall’, where the half-Arab-half-British MC documents his arching trajectory in the rap game.

“We all have our own issues. Once you go through dramatic shit you just want to curl into a ball,” he says, referring to his brother’s death in 2004, shortly before his second mixtape dropped, an event that affected him greatly. It led to him becoming very disillusioned with the concept of success.

“The nature of celebrity and [being famous] is quite intrusive. I didn’t want that scrutiny; I’m not in it for that. For me, it was never that bad, but my brother’s death made me see things differently.”

A lot of this dissatisfaction comes from feeling disaffected. Put simply, Lowkey is pissed off with the current state of the music markets. It’s a theme that gets a good airing out on the album, and none better than the fantastic line on ‘The Essence’: “For every 50 Cent there’s at least fifty MF Grimms”. The line refers to 50 Cent and his nine bullet wounds, and underground stalwart MF Grimm, who was similarly shot but instead of going on world tours and selling vitamin water ended up paralysed and in a wheelchair.

“It’s unrealistic dreams,” says Lowkey angrily. “Rappers don’t realise what power music has, that people idolise them. With 50, there is a perverse interest in him being shot. It’s not glamorous, it’s not sexy. Kurt Cobain’s suicide was glamorised. My brother killed himself – there is nothing romantic about it.”

He goes on. “I’m not going to sell a million records in my first week. What I do is art, and the way records are sold these days is a science. I would rather be in a situation where I sell nothing than chat absolute rubbish.”

The science versus art dichotomy is something that he mentions more than once. He explains that he believes recording is an art, and that the release of the music once it leaves the hands of the musician is a science – the marketing and promotion side of it. Emotion versus numbers, as he puts it. He baulks a little when asked what, for instance, a mastering engineer would say to this point of view. (“That’s a different kind of science, not quite what I mean.”)

However, he has reason to feel the way he does. Despite cosigns from Ghostface Killah and DJ Semtex and being called a Spike Milligan for the 21st century (courtesy of pithy Radio 4 DJ Rowan Pelling), success – the kind that he would like to achieve, rather than the celebrity-driven casual meaning – has been illusive for Lowkey. Hopefully, this will change, not only with the release of his album but also with the live shows (and forthcoming release) of his band Mongrel.

We say ‘his’ band but he’s just the MC. Other band members include Jon McClure and Joe Moskow (Reverend and the Makers), Andy Nicholson and Matt Helders (Arctic Monkeys) and Drew McConnell (Babyshambles). We couldn’t make this band up if we tried.

The passion does fade a little from Lowkey’s voice when asked about the band – not because he hates his fellow members but because he’s probably been asked far too often about how such a strange group got together. “I met John McClure, we got to talking and it went from there. We’ve only been together since April this year.”

Go check out our list. Buy (not download, please) all the albums on it and go see their makers live. But first thing next year, get hold of Dear Listener. You owe it to yourself.