There’s a scene in The Sopranos where Paulie Gualtieri is sharing recycled stories over dinner. Paulie cushions his punchlines with thick bursts of nervous laughter, the New Jersey mafia captain sounding a lot like a constipated hyena.

His gruff boss Tony Soprano, meanwhile, has eyes of pure thunder. Tony lets out dismissive words that cut through the air: “‘Remember when’ is the lowest form of conversation!”

While interviewing Slick Rick – a legendary emcee who has built an enduring bridge connecting up the rap scenes of London and New York City, while also someone that’s consistently taken rap storytelling to nutty new artistic heights – I often feel like the Paulie to his Tony.

A few minutes before our interview starts, I’m unexpectedly advised to keep the questions geared solely around his new visual album, VICTORY, which represents Slick Rick’s first project in 26 years and has guest features from Nas and Giggs. The original idea of doing a We’ve Got A File On You retrospective quickly fades away. I cut a succession of questions geared around how the artist – who was brought up in Mitcham, London before moving to the Bronx as a 10-year-old – normalised rapping in a smooth British accent.

It’s clear the Ruler (real name Richard Martin Lloyd Walters) finds it a little difficult to reflect on classic albums such as 1988’s The Great Adventures Of Slick Rick and 1999’s The Art Of Storytelling or influencing every emcee from 2Pac to MF DOOM to Snoop Dogg to Ghostface Killah, who called Slick Rick “the greatest of all time.” After all, so many of Rick’s major career shifts occurred amid high-profile battles with the US legal system (Rick was jailed at the height of rap fame on attempted murder charges, something the artist was later pardoned for) and invasive immigration officers.

The country he loves even tried to deport him, before he finally won American citizenship back in 2016. Some of Slick Rick’s most free-flowing verses might make fans smile with vibrant, sing-in-the-shower visions of Gucci underwear and Benny Hill-esque sexcapades. For their creator, however, they often conjure up dread due to the difficult circumstances in which they were created. “I like to look forward,” he tells me.

Fortunately Rick’s surprise new album, which was inspired by party-loving friend and actor Idris Elba urging Rick to get back into the studio, is something well worthy of deeper discussion. On this new LP, Rick’s signature ambling flow hasn’t been lost too much to father time, especially on controversial new song “Landlord” (more on this one later).

Rick’s piffy vocals carry the same slightly effeminate, mean-mugging sass that you’ll remember from all his golden era tracks, which famously touched on everything from your girl cheating with the postman to seeing teenage friends get shot dead by the cops (the gutter funk of “Children’s Story“). In other words: It doesn’t feel like one of those projects a musical veteran phones in.

Just like he did on career gems such as the healing “Hey Young World” and the widely sampled, NSFW-storytelling track “La-Di-Da-Di”, Rick sounds like a slick-talking Top Cat character that’s somehow wandered its way onto the Black Dynamite film set. Although a lot of the songs are far too short (the surreal, Q-Tip-produced highlight “Another Great Adventure” barely surpasses 90 seconds), Rick remains a captivating presence and re-stakes his claim as one of rap’s most iconic vocalists.

It’s also refreshing to hear a veteran take a risk by effortlessly purring out bars over chaotic, uptempo house production (see “Come On Let’s Go” or “Cuz I’m Here”) that seems better suited for an Azealia Banks’ house-rap record. Rick touches on divisive topics with this new project. The sci-fi boom bap of “We’re Not Losing” carries a wry observation around US politicians blaming Mexican immigrants for all of society’s problems: “Who they trynna blame kid? Talking all this trade shit/ Two faced, brainwash the public.”

Referencing the famous patch that hides an eye injury sustained through being exposed to broken glass as a toddler (“I Did That”), he also triumphantly reads out the words: “I flipped being blind into a luxury brand.” The short film that accompanies this music is full of striking imagery, including a small child with an eye patch firing a slingshot at intimidating waves.

It all feels like a cinematic eulogy to its creator’s hard-won journey. “Music has always been like a hobby, so it’s not like this is something I’m forced to do!” Rick explains of the new project, which has been released on Nas’ Mass Appeal label and Elba’s 7Wallace imprint.

Revealing he has “plenty more” unreleased albums locked away in the lab, the hip-hop legend continues: “If you manage to get a job that’s your hobby, you never work a day in your life, right?” With VICTORY, the primary goal, he says, is to strike back against ageism in hip-hop culture and prove that a 60-year-old can still get the party rocking.

Asked exactly what victory looks like in 2025, a smiling Slick Rick answers: “It looks like breaking the rule book. They say most athletes, once you hit about 45 or so, that it’s all downhill from there, right? But rap music is not athletic! It doesn’t require you to be physically fit to be at the top of your game. You can expand your mind’s growth and still get better with age. I want to show the value of the elder statesman… and that you’re never too old to paint pictures.”

To celebrate the release of VICTORY, I spoke to Slick Rick at length. Fortunately I managed to sneak in a few questions about his fabled back catalogue, while we also touched on New York City landlords, immigration, and being associated so heavily with the rise of hip-hop bling. Our conversation has been lightly condensed for clarity.

I’ve always loved your 1999 deep cut “Memories“, where you rapped about sharing a mattress with five family members, yet still finding ways to be happy. Why was it important to share that sentiment with the world?

SLICK RICK: I mean, back in the ’70s, it was crazy! In America most [inner-city] houses had a lot of roaches and shit like that. That was before you could really buy good roach spray, you know what I’m saying?

Your people are already poor. You’re also climbing up from Jamaica as immigrants! All the brothers on the block are making fun of you for having to work three jobs. It was crazy tough! But as long as there’s love [at home] you can still be happy, even in a little roach-infested place.

There were a lot of things you had to persevere through when you made it over to America. One of those was the crack era. What impact did that drug have on New York City? Did it all feel part of a wider plan, and how exactly did it change Baychester, the Bronx?

SLICK RICK: First there was the heroin generation, because those were our parents and grandparents. They had got hooked on drugs after returning from fighting in Vietnam, so a lot of Blacks and Puerto Ricans were suddenly addicted to heroin. They had fat hands [from injecting too much]. After that, there was the crack generation!

It did look like someone was trying to keep our people in their place, you know? Crack was a reminder that we weren’t high class, but more like lower bottom. We had to climb through all of that [as rappers] and then get to a safe place, where we could re-build our finances and personal health.

Another Slick Rick’ song I feel is underrated is 1994’s “All Alone“, which is such a beautiful ode to single mothers. When you rapped so softly about “the consequences of being used as an object” there was a rare empathy in your voice for the plight of working class women, which wasn’t too big in hip hop culture at the time.

SLICK RICK: Women are the reason men exist, so it’s good to show a man [in rap] having compassion and empathy for women, or supporting the Black sister really going through it. That song was dedicated to my own mother, but also all the mothers, period! In the hood we always came home to a female supervisor. Even when I went to my friend’s house, there was always a mother in the background keeping the house stable and 100% warm and loving.

There’s a through-line around empathizing with the poor that stretches all the way to your new music. Especially “We’re Not Losing” and your lyrics about politicians brain-washing the public over Mexican immigrants. As someone who has been pursued by immigration agents yourself, does the way Trump is deporting and hunting down immigrants sting?

SLICK RICK: Yeah, pretty much. Everybody wants to tweak the government to be a better government, you know? Whether immigrants or not, we all carry that same mindset of wanting to raise healthy children and to try to be decent to one another.

Another really topical song is the satirical “Landlord,” which touches on what it’s like being a landlord when there’s tenants bringing cockroaches and mice to your properties. It’s already ruffled some feathers online. You first invested in property in the 1990s, right?

SLICK RICK: Nah, I think it was more like the mid-1980s.

What’s the best and worst things about being a landlord in New York City?

SLICK RICK: The worst thing is everything you heard on the record. The good thing is around financial stability. Owning property means I know I have something to fall back on, so you don’t have to depend on your next album or whatever the heck.

I’ve only got two properties, so it’s not a big deal! The only time it [damage to my properties] occurred was when I went away for a while. When I came back, I couldn’t expect it to look as good as it looked when I first bought it, right? At least I still had it!

Right now in New York City and London a lot of young people are protesting against private landlords, claiming they’re putting up rent without improving living conditions. Just to flip the perspective a little: Do you have empathy for those tenants who are being mistreated and going through that stress? Does it feel like this is an era where a lot of landlords just aren’t looking after their tenants the way they should be?

SLICK RICK: Well, I guess it’s each one’s each one, because as long as you’re making a profit and your place is clean and tidy and the tenants are happy, it should be all good, right? It’s not my place to tell the government how to set their prices. The government is allowing the landlords to raise their prices, so it becomes impossible [for tenants] to live comfortably. That’s not the case for me, because I just do me as long as my mortgage is paid or whatever. Everything else is profit. You want your place to look nice and to be a reflection of you, right? Both sides should be happy.

You’ve always been so good at doing impersonations and shifting into different rapping voices. I think you were one of the first male rappers to rap from a female perspective, for example. That spirit continues on the new album with “Foreign,” where you pretend to be your grandad towards the end of the song. Do you feel a bit like a character actor?

SLICK RICK: That’s just me having fun, you know? That song also shows the culture of sampling within hip hop. With “Foreign” I was taking my father’s old Jamaican records and chopping them up to try to impress him. Even though I went out of my way, I know grandpa is still gonna say: “This is trash!” The different voices make the music more visual to be honest. It gives it more of a three dimensional thing. You want the listener to get a vibe like they’re in a rolling movie.

There was a tweet that went viral the other day where somebody said that conceptual storytelling in hip-hop is now dead and that contemporary rappers just aren’t sticking to topics the same way your generation did. Do you agree?

SLICK RICK: Well, if the industry is not nurturing a craft, then it’s gonna die and it’s also gonna wither, right? The craft of hip-hop came from nowhere around 50 years ago, and it had no parents! So it’s my job to maintain its parenthood and continue to help it grow.

Are there any rappers from the new generation you’d like to work with?

SLICK RICK: I’ve never really thought about it like that. I just sit around and wait for people to call me [for features]. I guess I like Nas and Busta Rhymes. I like the Wu-Tang-Clan. [Laughs.] I like Beethoven. I like how Westside Gunn and Griselda was feeding into that Wu-Tang branch!

What I would say is new rappers don’t always have to be so much about bravado, you know? You can be normal, too, and show a relatable side of human co-existence in your songs. People get bored of Superman! You can’t just keep on pushing that Superman personality forever. There needs to be more variety.

I can’t speak to you without talking about your jewelry. The blinged-out look is so iconic that people literally go dressed as Slick Rick for Halloween. I wondered what the chains and the diamonds represent, and is there one piece that means more to you than the others?

SLICK RICK: It’s more like dressing up a mannequin for me, you know? You put some ice and an African American vibe on it, so it’s more enjoyable for the audience to look at. When it comes to jewelry in hip hop, it’s been like watching my baby grow!

When we were younger, we had these things called silver medallions. Everything you could get in gold was also in cheaper silver, and I remember there was this silver Mary piece with a red ruby. I took a lot of pride in wearing that piece to school. Over time that silver turned into platinum and gold, and it got to the point where I was advising Harry Winston on luxury jewelry designs.

That’s quite some journey.

SLICK RICK: Life is like a Cinderella story. I heard those hip-hop beats and then I decorated them. Now, I’m able to sit back and enjoy all the beauty that this music has brought to my soul.

VICTORY is out now on Mass Appeal/7Wallace. A vinyl release will come out later in the year.