“Sprinter” is named after a vehicle; it’s also a synonym for running. The artwork is of a vintage red Ferrari being craned on (or off) a yacht in Monaco. The symbolism is straightforward: these guys are going places. We get that exoticism from the very start, with a patter of languid, flamenco-flavoured guitar before the rapping begins. Beyond the guitar, there’s bass, drums and very little else – the point of the production is to not get in the way of two big personalities.
The duo’s tag-team raps are what this song is all about. They ad-lib over each other’s verses and split the chorus between them. It seems a genuine, rather than marketing-driven, collaboration – Central Cee first teased “Sprinter” in March by posting a screenshot of his text messages with Dave – and their palpable chemistry makes the usual rap boasts about money and women come from a place of collective abundance, rather than individualistic, zero-sum competition.
This is what drives the song’s success on TikTok, where it racked up 900,000 “creations” in two months. The meme was for duos to act out the chorus, taking one rapper each. It’s all a bit tongue-in-cheek – people draw moustaches and beards on themselves with marker pen, and fashion fake bling out of tinfoil – but fits with the song’s fraternal spirit. For Dave and Central Cee, it isn’t lonely at the top.
“Sprinter” comes at an interesting point in both artists’ careers. For Central Cee, it’s further confirmation of his status as a commercial juggernaut. In 2022, he became the first UK rapper to achieve a billion Spotify streams in a single year, in part due to his monster TikTok hit “Doja” – but “Sprinter” was his first actual number one.
For Dave, it shows he can’t be damned with faint praise as a “thoughtful” rapper. Both his studio albums, though excellent in parts, had a tendency to lapse into the kind of over-intricate narratives that get broadsheet newspaper critics excited, but don’t always make for good songs. On “Sprinter”, though, he delivers first-class punchline after punchline: “pistol came on an Irish ferry, let go and it sound like a tap dance”; “heard one of my tings dating P Diddy/ need twenty per cent of whatever she bags”; “heard that girl is a gold digger, it can’t be true if she dated you.”
Jon Caramanica, a New York Times pop critic and host of the Popcast podcast, named “Sprinter” his favourite song of the year. It’s the tune he “listened to the most or among the most” in 2023, he says. “It just reminded me of a great rap team-up from the 90s or 2000s.” No UK rap song has had as much impact stateside since the early days of Dizzee Rascal. “Everyone in a place that I go out to,” as well as everyone who might shop at the sophisticated streetwear label Aimé Leon Dore, “knows this song.”