I Thought I Was Better Than You

I Thought I Was Better Than You marks a new era for Baxter, and with this new era comes a new character. “Faux-
confrontational,” Baxter calls him. Here, not only is he recounting his childhood, but he’s also reckoning with it. Instead of
just swinging at his past blindfolded with a baseball bat, he talks openly about the toxic cocktail of being born into
unfortunately fortunate circumstances, with a persuasive surname but no structure or sense of responsibility with which
reap the rewards of it. “Really, it’s about being trapped in an awkward place between something you’re actually quite good
at, and somebody else’s success.” That ‘somebody else’ being his dad, Ian Dury. As one of the album centrepieces – Shadow
– agonisingly puts it: “But no one will get over that you’re someone’s son/Even though you want to be like Frank Ocean/But
you don’t sound like him, you sound just like Ian.”