Dan-O of Freemusicempire wrote "He opens the album in a therapist[']s office getting personal right off the bat and giving you a setting that makes sense so you don't feel awkward. Confession and self-reflection may be nothing new in rap, but they’ve rarely been done with such skill and imagination. Saying no will not stop you from seeing our ads, but it may make them less relevant or more repetitive. Coinciding with the album's release, Dave released another single, "Streatham" on 7 March, via a music video. The album features Dave's piano playing, while Smith assisted with Baroque influences, including strings, brass, harps, as well as more contemporary music through the use of drums and the synthesizer.

A concept album, Psychodrama follows the narrative of a therapy session, primarily detailing the impact of Dave's elder brothers' prison convictions, along with his struggles with mental health, strained relationships, and the tough social conditions that confront poor black youths. PSYCHODRAMA went on to earn Dave the Hyundai Mercury Prize Award on the 19th of September 2019, as well as an Album of the Year BRIT Award on the 18th of February 2020. He's so in love with finding the depth in art, the kind of depth that resonates, that working harder to achieve it doesn't bother him in the slightest. His full length debut on Daptone Records is equal parts raw feeling and elegance and exudes confidence and charm.It encompasses a record label, pressing plant and online magazine, and collaborates with artists and musicians to create stunning audio-visual shows. Pitched as excerpts from a year-long course of therapy, these 11 songs show the South Londoner examining the human condition and his own complex wiring. We wrote "Picture Me" during that session and the relationship developed into us working together on Dave's first and second EPs 6 Paths, and Game Over. His piano playing and musicality are phenomenal, as well as the diverse influences we both draw from, so it’s a great blend.

We're truly in the presence of someone leading a remarkable generation of UK rap and I have no doubt we'll look back at Psychodrama as a seminal piece of art in this movement.Sam Higgins of The Line of Best Fit lauded Psychodrama as "a record that's suffocatingly intense", concluding: " Psychodrama isn't an album to stand up and rejoice to. Expanding on the Baroque influences on the album, Smith said, "We knew from the beginning that we’d be drawing from a very wide musical palette of strings, brass, harps, and hard-hitting drums and synths.

On the 2nd of July The album officially became BRIT Certified Platinum, marking it as Dave’s first Platinum project. Following the release of Psychodrama, Dave landed the three highest charting new entries on the UK Singles Chart for the week of March 15, with album tracks " Disaster", "Streatham" and " Location", debuting at numbers 8, 9 and 11, respectively. The Independent labelled Psychodrama as "one of the most thoughtful, moving and necessary albums of 2019 so far", complimenting the concept and lyrical content: "Tracks are at once astute and deeply personal in how they capture vignettes of everyday life and spin them into important lessons.Dave’s riveting and poetic at all times, documenting his experience as a young British black man and pulling back the curtain on the realities of fame.