Internet superstar and undefeated professional boxer KSI has taken a swing at the music game in a big way. On May 22, KSI released his highly anticipated debut solo album Dissimulation, which includes features from some of America’s and Britain’s biggest hip hop artists. 

KSI, whose real name is Olajide Olatunji, is originally from Berkhamsted, a small market town in Hertfordshire, England. KSI first rose to fame as a Fifa youtuber, but as time went on, he diversified his YouTube content to include more vlogs and comedic videos. Currently, KSI is the UK’s biggest youtuber with over 21 million subscribers and over 5 billion views.  

Although KSI has been making and producing music for over seven years, Dissimulation is KSI’s first professionally recorded studio album. The record differs a lot from KSI’s past music, which was mostly aggressive deliveries to spacey trap beats and autotune. 

The album is somewhat of a knockoff of American artist Travis Scott’s album Astroworld, which included similar beats and deliveries. However, KSI’s unusual British accent was able to alter the album enough so it wasn’t a carbon copy of Astroworld. 

Dissimulation starts off strong, including hits like ¨Cap¨, ¨Poppin¨ and ¨Houdini¨ which are some of the best songs on the album. In all of these tracks, KSI delivers parts of his verses in an accent, which freshens up the album and brings variety. These songs include features from many high-profile artists like Offset, Lil Pump, Smokepurpp, Swarmz and Tion Wayne. 

After the strong start, the album does hit a low. Halfway through the album, songs like ¨Domain¨ and ¨How It Feel¨ tend to drag on with boring and repetitive hooks, but the album does recover with its closers.

KSI was able to reenergize the album with songs like ¨Down Like That¨ and ¨Wake Up Call,” which made it really easy for the listener to sing along and get lost in the music. This strong finish leaves the listener wanting more and makes Dissimulation a memorable album. 

Overall, for a debut record, Dissimulation impresses and certainly leaves me eager to hear what Olatunji has in store for the future. It has a wide variety of songs and the different features pull the album together. It’s safe to say that KSI was able to smoothly transfer from YouTube rapper to legitimate rapper with this album.