Following his 2018 debut album B. Inspired, Manchester’s Bugzy Malone became the poster boy for the independently powered rags-to-riches rap hustle. Championing the power of positive thinking, the newly crowned King of the North was holding the hidden weight of his burden. “I felt a bit lost, and that can happen when you transition through levels so quickly, coming from the bottom,” he tells Apple Music. “I don't have a celebrity uncle, or any successful multimillionaire family members to give advice—on how to act, what to do—so you're finding your own way through.” In March 2020, the rapper eventually lost his way in near-fatal circumstances. “If it’s meant for you, then it's going to happen,” he says of the motorcycle crash that left him fighting for his life. “And anything after that is all about how you deal with it. Now, I’m able to demonstrate my attitude, and my mentality towards life’s trials. People have seen me, live in the flesh, get smashed to bits, come off a bike at 70 miles per hour, no helmet, fractured skull, and still keep on going.” Recovery complications included recurring blood clots and a bleed on the brain, but the rapper steeled himself for this, his second album. The Resurrection sees Bugzy dig deep. “When you're in a hospital bed, you can learn a lot about yourself,” he says. The torture of his prolonged hospital stay is recounted with sobering veracity (“Don’t Cry”), while his razor-sharp rhymes tackle the highs (“Bounce”) and lows (“Cold Nights in the 61”) and venture towards drill for the first time (“Salvador”). Proving there’s nothing like a near-death experience to place things into perspective, there’s also room to put to bed a long-standing feud with Tottenham MC Chip on “Notorious.” Read on as the rapper guides you across his soul-baring second album. “The Resurrection” “As a kid, a lot went on in my household, so I've got an up-and-down relationship with my family. The only person I’m in contact with is my mum, and we’d not spoken for maybe a year. Then the crash happened—and, obviously, COVID. At this point, I understand the things I've been through, and I can explain the trauma to my family better than they understand. I feel like they've hidden from it, I've faced it head-on. So on this track I’m leaving my mum a message, to start the track, in case we never spoke again, because at that point it was that tense between us. I'm at a stage now where I won’t write the lyrics—this song spoke to me so powerfully, I just got into the booth and told the engineer to record.” “M.E.N III” “‘M.E.N’ stands for the Manchester Evening News. And it takes me back to recording my [2015] Fire in the Booth with Charlie Sloth. The night before, I had a fight in a club, and because of the injuries someone sustained, the police were looking for me. The paper had my face in it, and this is the exact time I was doing the freestyle. With the bike accident last year, I was in the same paper again, so I decided to break it all down. Again, just to reflect the reality of it all. As long as I’m truthful, then I know at least I can be judged realistically.” “Don’t Cry” (feat. Dermot Kennedy) “I wrote this song when I had to go back to the hospital, with complications, almost as a mechanism to get me through it. The fact that I didn’t know what they were going to tell me when I got there—it was touch and go. I wanted to write this song from a vulnerable place and share what I was feeling then. Furthermore, I don't have to be the cool guy or the tough guy all the time. There’s no point if it’s not true to who I am and what I've been through.” “Cold Nights in the 61” “This is a bit of a reminder of where I've come from, and where I'm at now—and again, another opportunity to say it how it is. Being so vulnerable on ‘Don't Cry’ and saying certain things on ‘M.E.N III,’ I can’t let people forget that when I'm at full strength, they can’t lace my boots. And unfortunately for them, I’m back to full strength. So this is me exercising and being a bit reckless again.” “Welcome to the Hood” (feat. Emeli Sandé) “This is one of the songs that I wrote before the crash. It's a commentary on what it's like to be at the bottom. People in the middle or at the top, it's easy for them to say, ‘Oh, they're all lazy, they should get jobs, they need to do this and do that.’ The truth is I've just got an investment in people at the bottom, because it’s where I come from, even if I have climbed. This whole album is preaching my philosophy—that you can go from nothing to something.” “The Masters (Interlude)” “In my younger days—when things were good between me and my family—I was taught about art, so I’m paying homage to some of the masters I learned from. My mother took the time to teach me about so much, and I’ve always taken that inspiration with me on this artistic journey.” “Van Gogh Effect” “I’m trying to create pictures in the mind. I want it so that you can see it, effortlessly, and you don't have to think. With Van Gogh, they said his paintings were ugly when he was alive—people laughed at him. Starry Night is one of his most famous works, and the look and atmosphere on the night of the crash was reminiscent of it, and I tried to paint that on this song. People like the storytelling aspect of my work, so I thought I'd do it on level 9,000.” “Salvador” “I felt like a drill beat was the vibe I needed to talk about some of the stuff I needed to get off my chest. I’ve been hearing those guys [drill rappers] talk about what they’ve got going on—it’s the exact lifestyle that I’ve come from. So if I want to speak on drill, then I’ll speak on drill. I’ve lived that life.” “Ride Out” “I wrote this while I was still injured, looking back on some of the best celebrations I've had. And I feel like I’ve timed this well, because it’s pretty much celebration season right now.” “Bounce” “We’re still on the celebrations here. This section is getting into my life, currently. A lot of the foundations have been built with this album, and also with the film getting wrapped up, so the celebrations have to start!” “Notorious” (feat. Chip) “I know there’s some people out there like, ‘No way, they've made friends,’ because they loved the negativity of it. But if I was on the outside of it, I know I'd want to hear us on a track. How do they sound together? What does the video look like? Because the truth is: Throughout the whole situation, we never met. And we never spoke to each other directly. So this is the first time we've come together. It’s a positive thing. And in another respect, if the situation's not going to get physical, and it's not that negative, then why wouldn't you make it happen?” “The Immortals (Interlude)” “I’m interested to see the response to such a sophisticated section to close the album. I’ve gone quite deep on these songs, but I feel they’re a good lesson at the same time. This interlude sets it up so well, and it’s performed by a special, very intelligent person [Warner Bros UK President Josh Berger].” “Gods” “The sample here comes from a medieval cow-herding song; I think it was used in the fields in Sweden. There’s just something magical and enchanting about it to me. ‘What is God?’ and ‘What is religion?’—I’m really trying to break down these questions here, on a personal level.” “Angels” “I put a video out on Instagram for this track, and Guy Ritchie pops up. I’m on the hospital bed, and he messages just to show support. As a major fan of his work and philosophy on life—for him to decide that he's going to help me, psychologically, and guide me back to stability, it’s crazy. This is why I talk about the role that angels play in our lives. Before I know it, I’m training for a lead role in my second Guy Ritchie film. I met some great people, his friends and family, and each person played a role in leveling me up in different ways. I felt like exploring how that felt to me as an individual—comparing them all to the archangels.” “Skeletons” “Coming from Manchester, I’ve got a whole city full of skeletons and not just a small closet. Here, I’m discussing one—a particular story from a particular era. I'm talking about death and darkness, so this title was the right word to encompass that feeling.”