Against All Odds is the second outing from Camden-based N-Dubz, the moniker of three South London school-friends. Following on from the somewhat unexpected success of their first album Uncle B, the trio have switched record labels, taken a strongly bouncy route, and released the new LP. Evidently, someone at All Around The World records has bored into my brain; scooping out my apathy and replacing it with instant enjoyment. Yes, against all odds, I am struggling to get Against All Odds out of my head.

Scouting around doing some research for this piece, you notice two things: the years preceding 2007 were pretty uneventful for any real success and that they’ve all got silly nicknames. Dappy, Tulisa and Fazer, however, have skipped headily away from the hackneyed pseudo hip-hop beats of their first average release and fallen heavily into the mainstream. I’m not sure how this is going to sit with fans of the first trip down synth-street, but for a new convert it’s enjoyable, if a little shallow.

With a bit of messing around with format, the record is superbly produced and follows the archetypically stylish route of the alternative follow-up. It’s got an intro, and an outro, it’s got lashings of well-known hip-hop stars: Playing With Fire Ft. Mr. Hudson – the stand-out track on first listen – or Suck Yourself Ft. Chipmunk. These aforementioned lashings, however, strike a somewhat discordant note; the mish-mashing of commercial floor-fillers and mellowed out solo tracks just don’t slot together that nicely. It’s hard to gauge of the mood of the album because it’s bouncing all around the different areas of your head: “You’re up / quick / slow down / faster / harder / gently!” It doesn’t make any sense at all.

Before I drag myself unwillingly away from the criticisms, I must first point out two of the greatest lyrics of all time which feature on this album. The first is the one you’ve probably heard being blared out of Citroen Saxos at 3am on a Tuesday morning: “I’ve been searching all over Facebook, and I can’t seem to find you”. Call me cynical but to me this is just pandering to a hoard of screaming thirteen year old fan-girls; just as rockers in the 70s would stir up crowds by saying the town name over and over again, this seems hollow and superficial. Not to mention utterly terrible. Somehow it doesn’t come close to my second favourite, though: “Never have I seen a man run that fast, I’m surprised that he never done a poo-poo.” Ha-ha-ha. It’s fantastically stupid. Whereas the former is a depressing indictment of vacuous idiocy in the teenage generation, the latter is a sublime self-parodying prod at the needlessly sexualised and disgusting lyrical wanking featured so prominently in mainstream hip-hop. That or they’re truly that stupid.

So, yeah, it flips from cacophonous to silence at the blink of an ear-lid, it’s fairly shallow, and probably a bit rushed, but it’s just so damn hard to dislike it. Playing With Fire swoops effortlessly from soaring vocals to grimy allusions of unrequited love and self-torture; lay over some Mr. Hudson and you’ve got an undeniably winning combination. Suck Yourself, the ‘duet’ with Chipmunk (you might know him as the one who wants to kill himself) is incredibly well put together for a record of this speed. Yeah you have to ignore the lyrics – unless you enjoy “nigger, nigger, nigger” (paraphrased) – but that’s not too hard to do, the tune is so much more interesting. No one can understand Londoners anyway.

Before I finish myself off (yes, I enjoyed it that much), I should give special mention to two of the other tracks: No-one knows, and Number 1 (the N-Dubz remix). The former is a dreary, windswept council estate ballad; crepuscular and hauntingly beautiful. This could be the stand-out track of the album, if you ignore Hudson. The latter gets mentioned because as far as I can tell it’s the same track as on Stryder’s debut. Granted they collaborated on it, but I find that a little strange nonetheless.

So what do I think? I think it’s good. It’s not going to revolutionise anything, I don’t think it will sit well with devout fans of the harder first album, but I think it’s the right move. It’s safe: interesting collaborations, moderately adept solo efforts, beautiful production, and tightly structured. Think of it as the opposite of the first album; this one will fade into the annals of nothingness after thirty or so listens, whereas the first took that long to sound good.

It probably won’t draw in the accolades as Uncle B did, but for a follow-up it ain’t not too bad at all, bruv.