Skepta released The Fork and Knife on November 6, 2026, his sixth studio album and his first solo album in seven years. The Skepta The Fork and Knife album runs 15 songs in 55 minutes, out now through his own Big Smoke Records under exclusive licence to Epic Records, as listed on the album’s official Apple Music page.
The wait is part of the story. His previous solo album, Ignorance Is Bliss, arrived in 2019, and this one was first announced on New Year’s Day 2024 under the flipped title Knife and Fork. What landed this morning is a producer’s album as much as a rapper’s one, built from grime, garage, house, jungle and electronic music, with Skepta working as rapper, writer and producer at once.
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Skepta The Fork and Knife Tracklist in Full
The full sequence runs: Secrets of Patriarchy; Outside featuring Novelist; Cold Shower featuring Project Pat; Currency; Pandora’s Box; Revenge; Magic; Gas Me Up (Diligent); Melody; Aloe Vera featuring Asake; Chippie with Aya Nakamura; Broken Hearts featuring Central Cee and Jorja Smith; Innocent Smile featuring Suggs and Chase and Status; Belly featuring Frisco, Bossman Birdie, Kibo, Mayhem NODB, JME, Kruz Leone and Queenie; and Victory Lap with Fred again.. and PlaqueBoyMax. iimiTV published the sequence ahead of release in its Fork and Knife tracklist post; this release post owns the album’s arrival.
The guest list maps the record before a note is heard. Project Pat brings Memphis rap history into track three. Asake carries the Afrobeats connection on Aloe Vera, a pairing Skepta first teased in December 2025. Aya Nakamura makes Chippie a bilingual record, and Broken Hearts pairs Central Cee, the current face of UK rap’s chart era, with Jorja Smith. Belly closes the guest run as a full posse cut, eight voices deep, before Victory Lap ends the album where the club side of his recent work began.
Seven Years, Edited Down to 55 Minutes
The long build was deliberate. By April 2026 Skepta was telling interviewers he had picked 17 tracks for the record, and the finished album landed at 15. In his Guardian interview ahead of release, he admitted the process had tested him, saying, as reported from that interview:
This album has been winding me up. But I think I’ve actually made something here that is what the people want from me.
The years between albums were not empty. He poured energy into club culture with the Mas Tiempo project, kept a festival headline presence, and rolled this record out patiently: Gas Me Up (Diligent) first landed in January 2024, produced by Cardo, and Victory Lap followed in June 2025. Pandora’s Box arrived on October 23, a quieter and more reflective single, and Innocent Smile, released September 18, pulled ska and breakbeat into the album’s world through Chase and Status and Suggs.
A Family Story Carries the Title
The title comes from a story his mother told, recounted in the release coverage: her father saw fine cutlery in a hotel and said the family had to work hard so that one day they would eat with fork and knife. Eating with fork and knife, in that story, was never really about cutlery. It was about a Nigerian immigrant family’s work adding up to a seat at the table, and a Tottenham artist who now runs his own label turning that inheritance into a sixth album’s thesis.
That framing explains the album’s range. The opening run, Secrets of Patriarchy, Outside, Cold Shower and Currency, carries the direct energy that made Skepta the figurehead of grime’s second wave, the run that runs from Konnichiwa’s Mercury Prize win in 2016 to this record. The middle of the album widens into melody and collaboration, and the closing pair, Belly and Victory Lap, frames the whole thing as a lap of honour that is still hungry.
A Release Week Built Like the Old School
The rollout finished the way it started, in rooms rather than on timelines alone. Skepta debuted Pandora’s Box, Aloe Vera and Innocent Smile at Reading Festival in August, performed Innocent Smile and Pandora’s Box on Later with Jools Holland on BBC Two on November 1, and marks release day with an intimate show at The Cause in London instead of an arena. Larger European rooms follow: Elysee Montmartre in Paris on December 1, La Madeleine in Brussels on December 2 and the Gashouder in Amsterdam on December 4.
For an artist of his stature to launch an album in intimate rooms is a choice about control and closeness, and it matches a record that keeps returning to home, family and origins. The Fork and Knife is available now on Big Smoke and Epic. Start with Innocent Smile for the celebration and Pandora’s Box for the confession, then play the whole 55 minutes in order. This is a sequenced album, not a playlist dump, and it earns the full listen it asks for.
