Skepta has revealed the full tracklist for The Fork and Knife, his first solo studio album in seven years, out November 6, 2026. The 15-song Skepta The Fork and Knife tracklist closes a wait that started on January 1, 2024, when he first announced the project under the reversed title Knife and Fork.
The album follows 2019’s Ignorance Is Bliss and arrives through his own Big Smoke Records with Epic Records. Four of the fifteen songs are already in the world, which means the tracklist reads less like a teaser and more like a map of the rollout so far: the singles that carried the year, placed in their album positions alongside the deeper cuts nobody outside the studio has heard yet.
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The Fork and Knife tracklist in full
The printed sequence runs “Secrets of Patriarchy”, “Victory Lap”, “Gas Me Up”, “Outside”, “Cold Shower”, “Currency”, “Pandora’s Box”, “Revenge”, “Magic”, “Melody”, “Aloe Vera”, “Chippie”, “Broken Hearts”, “Innocent Smile” and “Belly”. The list was revealed on the back of the vinyl edition, printed inside a map of Nigeria, with a diamond chain carrying a fork and knife pendant laid across the song titles. It is a deliberate piece of presentation: the album’s Nigerian British identity is built into the physical object before a needle ever drops.
Two collaborations anchor the middle of the record. “Aloe Vera” pairs Skepta with Asake, a link-up he first teased in December 2025, while “Chippie” is a zouk-flavoured R&B collaboration with French-Malian star Aya Nakamura. At the other end of the scale sits “Belly”, a fierce eight-minute grime closer packed with verses from a younger generation of MCs, with north-west Londoner Kibo standing out, before Boy Better Know members JME and Frisco join Skepta himself on the closing verses. The sequencing tells a story on its own: heritage at the front, family and crew at the back.
Singles that carried the rollout
“Gas Me Up” dates back to 2024 and also plays over the credits of Tribal Mark, his film about a Nigerian immigrant in London. “Innocent Smile”, built with Chase & Status and Suggs, landed in September. “Pandora’s Box”, released October 23 through Big Smoke under licence to Epic, is the album’s reflective centre: a subdued, introspective single that slows the tempo instead of chasing the dancefloor, issued after a stretch where Skepta’s public focus sat with the club culture of his Mas Tiempo project.
The live rollout has matched the records. At Reading Festival in August he debuted “Pandora’s Box”, “Aloe Vera” and “Innocent Smile” in the same set while the artist Slawn spray-painted live on stage. This week he performed “Innocent Smile” and “Pandora’s Box” on BBC’s Later… with Jools Holland, eleven years after his first appearance on the show. Release week starts at The Cause in London on November 6, with Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam dates following in December.
“This album has been winding me up.”
That was Skepta’s own summary of the 33 months between announcement and release, given to The Guardian ahead of publication. The same interview fills in the record’s emotional register. “Revenge” is described as a memoir of mid-career missteps, later redemption and resilience after twenty years in music, and the swagger of the early records is tempered across the album by reflection. The official album description places grime, garage, house and jungle inside one frame, with 1980s Nigerian British imagery and football culture shaping the visual world.
Why this album matters beyond grime
Skepta’s solo catalogue runs from 2007’s Greatest Hits through the Mercury Prize winning Konnichiwa to Ignorance Is Bliss, and the seven-year gap is the longest of his career. In that time he released EPs, the Fred again.. collaboration Skepta .. Fred in 2025, and house records under Mas Tiempo, but no full solo rap statement. The Fork and Knife is therefore a test of something bigger than one release week: whether grime’s most decorated elder statesman can still set the terms for a genre that now treats him as history.
The early evidence says the hunger is intact. The guest list bridges Afrobeats, French pop and the BBK foundation crew. The singles move between a film-credit rap record, a ska-tinged link-up with Suggs and a slow, dark confession. Vinyl and CD editions are on sale for collectors. On Friday the full fifteen songs arrive together, and the tracklist that fans have been reading like a puzzle since the vinyl reveal finally becomes a record. For an artist who announced this album on the first day of 2024, November 6 is the deadline he set himself, and he has met it on his own label, on his own terms.
