UK drill and Afroswing<\/a> in the mid-2010s, this is the latest evolution of homegrown rap culture. And while UK rappers such as Dave, Stormzy and Central Cee still sell out arenas, and Aitch charms the masses on I\u2019m a Celebrity, these new artists are starting to rival them for popularity while having considerably more edge.<\/p>\nThe kids at Electric Ballroom are friendly and eager to talk, and they all call the new sound \u201cunderground\u201d rap. I chat with Billy, one of three lads who have come down from Birmingham, and he reels off a list of artists who are pushing the scene forward: \u201cLancey Foux, Fimiguerrero, Len, EsDeeKid, Rico Ace, Fakemink, Jim Legxacy. Underground is exciting \u2013 it keeps getting more and more experimental.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pinning down the underground sound is tricky. Upcoming rapper Ceebo describes it as capturing the zeitgeist: \u201cConstant stimulation \u2013 dopamine overload.\u201d Fizzing, lo-fi tracks come and go in under two minutes, with everything cranked into the red. Crucially, Britishness is in the foreground, with older UK tracks used for samples, regional accents flourishing, and lyrics as likely to concern getting messy in small market towns as they are to imitate US gangster rap.<\/p>\n
Pushing the scene forward \u2026 Fakemink. Photograph: PR IMAGE<\/p>\n
The scene has spread through TikTok, Discord groups, Instagram and, most importantly, live shows of increasing size, something police forces often made impossible for earlier generations of drill and grime artists. (Many would argue the reason the underground scene hasn\u2019t been similarly policed is because there is a higher proportion of white and\/or middle class kids involved, both as artists and punters.) Promoters such as Aux (who also runs EsDeeKid\u2019s label) have become serious players in the live space, packing out regular showcases with hordes of young fans who, numbed by the overwhelming flood of social media, crave the chaotic, tangible joy of mosh pits and massive speakers.<\/p>\n
Now, with US rap in the doldrums \u2013 in October there were no rap songs on the US Hot 100 for the first time since 1990 \u2013 fans across the Atlantic are starting to pay attention to this maxed-out music. We may be witnessing the start of a new British Invasion: another star of the UK underground, Fakemink, was pictured hanging with Clipse and Andre 3000 in Los Angeles in November, and played Tyler, the Creator\u2019s festival there. \u201cI\u2019m a huge advocate of what\u2019s going on in the underground,\u201d says Kenny Allstar, the BBC\u2019s chief rap DJ and arguably the foremost authority on British rap. \u201cThe next generation are here.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the scene\u2019s biggest shows have taken place in London, the sound has spread rapidly across the country, drawing in kids from suburban towns in much the same way as punk did in the 1970s. Ledbyher, one of the few rising female artists in the scene, grew up in a council house in Norfolk, and listened to US rap until she was introduced to UK drill by a school friend and learned you could rap convincingly in an English accent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere drill might have been a very niche aspect of London life, the underground is commenting on a life that more of us find ourselves in,\u201d she says, while on tour around the UK. \u201cThe underground now, its lyrics relate to people growing up in High Wycombe or wherever \u2013 it\u2019s a commentary on British life.\u201d Originally coining the phrase \u201cbedroom drill\u201d for her sound, her tracks deal with relationships, dreams and depression \u2013 \u201cStep into my wreck of a ship \/ I don\u2019t even know whose wreckage it is,\u201d she raps on her Bad News freestyle, a hazy, rainy cut that nods as much to trip-hop as trap.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe producers might be from Scotland, Ireland; you have people from Canterbury,\u201d she says, and points out that YT, another of the scene\u2019s leading lights, attended an institution not generally known as an engine room for British rap: the University of Oxford. \u201cThere\u2019s not one place the scene is from.\u201d<\/p>\n
But everyone acknowledges one artist who has been fundamental to its growth. \u201cLancey Foux is a trailblazer,\u201d says Allstar. \u201cHe started in 2015, and couldn\u2019t be boxed in: not drill, or Afroswing, or trap. He was more outlandish with his approach to the music, using heavy melodic vibes with distorted beats. It created a new wave.\u201d<\/p>\n
He points to Foux\u2019s skittering, chiming 2015 track About It. \u201cIt was like nothing we\u2019d seen before. At that stage it didn\u2019t have its own genre \u2013 you just knew which artists fitted the sound as they didn\u2019t fit into any other mould. But if you went up to these artists and said, \u2018Are you underground?\u2019 they\u2019d probably say no.\u201d<\/p>\n
Punk aesthetic \u2026 Lancey Foux. Photograph: Elissa Salas<\/p>\n
Raised in Stratford, London by Ugandan parents, Foux, who turned 30 this week, agrees. He has consistently worked with the kind of woozy Day-Glo rap beats used by US megastars such as Playboi Carti and Travis Scott, with injections of UK slang, rhythms and bass, making a druggy-sounding, nocturnal music at odds with much of UK rap\u2019s social realism. In 2024 he started collaborating with a raft of new talent, on singles such as the 15m-streaming Black & Tan with YT, and the Conglomerate mixtape with Fimiguerrero and Len, which reached the UK Top 30. These projects signalled a shift away from the nihilism of drill to a weirder space, but as with most trailblazers, Foux is not keen on being boxed in by genre.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe term \u2018underground\u2019, it\u2019s very restrictive!\u201d Foux calls me, he says from LA, where he\u2019s shooting videos for his forthcoming album. \u201cEsDeeKid is one of the biggest UK artists, so why would you call him underground? This shit is big! YT, Fimi and EsDeeKid have bigger songs than other rappers in the UK. Not to say underground is a bad word \u2013 but this is our opportunity to name our sound, and I\u2019m calling it the overground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spirit of defiance \u2026 Jim Legxacy. Photograph: Igoris Tarran<\/p>\n
Crucially, as with mod, punk or Britpop, the scene top-loads on Britishness. The songs are full of British samples \u2013 everything from Bizarre Inc\u2019s rave classic Playing with Knives on the track Ayia Napa by west Londoner Feng, to flashes of decades-old Dizzee Rascal vocals on the latest Ceebo record. Jim Legxacy\u2019s latest mixtape is titled Black British Music (2025), and Afrosurrealist\u2019s debut album is called Buy British. In a spirit of defiance against the far-right appropriation of the union jack, artists have been plastering British flags all over their artwork. \u201cI think I would die if I had to leave this country,\u201d rapper Llondon Actress croons on his biggest hit Country, its artwork fringed with more union jacks.<\/p>\n
Director Lauzza has a YouTube channel featuring music videos he has made for scene leaders Jim Legxacy, YT, Foux and others. He explains that the scene is trying to take control of the meaning of Britishness.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of young people are not the most patriotic,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re not proud of the economic mess of a country that they\u2019re living in. So to be able to reinvent the union jack to mean something new, creating our own Britain and our own culture that we can be proud of, that feels right.\u201d But none of the rappers are using England\u2019s St George\u2019s flag. \u201cEnglish is more ethnicity, whereas British is more of a culture,\u201d Lauzza says. \u201cThat\u2019s why Jim [Legxacy] is able to use the flag and talk about being British \u2013 he\u2019s representing something.\u201d<\/p>\n
This played out in the recent video Lauzza and Jim made for the track \u201806 Wayne Rooney. Responding to Legxacy\u2019s attempt to create a nostalgic indie-rock track ready for Match of the Day, Lauzza recreated the aesthetics of a mid-00s Fifa video game, complete with Jim in a pixelated Manchester United kit. It was a heady rush of UK nostalgia, and for the 24-year-old Lauzza, a response to the country\u2019s current misery.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe news is just negative, negative, negative: it can be very draining for the average young person,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re all just reaching for the last time we remember being truly happy, when you could come home from school and slap on Fifa and nothing else mattered. These artists are the same age as a lot of these fans \u2013 and their music is about a lot of similar struggles.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Not everyone is as comfortable with the use of flag iconography. Ceebo has just released Blair Babies, his third mixtape in as many years, featuring three tracks produced by the ever-influential Legxacy. On tracks such as Jook, Ceebo grapples with growing up skint in Brixton over a beat that has a soft, magical glow, creating a curious tension between the sweetness of nostalgia and the reality of inner-city life. And as the title Blair Babies suggests, he is exploring Britain\u2019s recent past with a critical eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lot of conversations about Britishness,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of us are children of immigrants. We\u2019re not considered British, but we\u2019re not exactly natives of our parents\u2019 countries. So the idea of being Black British has become more visible in our generation\u2019s minds; the exploration of \u2018British\u2019 as a term for children of countries that have been ravaged by British colonialism is the scene\u2019s way of wrestling with an identity that hasn\u2019t really been laid out for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ceebo is ambivalent about the prevalence of the flag in the scene. \u201cA lot of artists want to have their cake and eat it,\u201d he says with a sigh. \u201cBut they\u2019re not smart enough to walk the line between reclaiming something and just appropriating it. It\u2019s essentially a symbol of violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walking the line \u2026 Ceebo. Photograph: Patrick Sear<\/p>\n
He reflects on the fact that his music is now being listened to by white suburban kids around the country. \u201cWhether or not people from the underground realise it, we are shaping the youth of this country\u2019s thoughts and feelings towards Black Britishness. We have to approach it as a dialogue with the people who are consuming it, and this matters a lot more than hype moments.\u201d<\/p>\n
But as that hype snowballs, and more and more rappers jump on the kind of distorted rap beats Lancey Foux popularised, on his new record Foux himself is taking a left turn into dance music. His argument for doing so sums up the spirit that has inspired this generation. \u201cWhenever they start loving you too much for how you look and how you sound and how you dress, shake it off. Don\u2019t get too comfortable in satisfaction. Do something new. It\u2019s not as narrow as a style of rap or a style of music; it\u2019s down to the alternative-ness of what you\u2019re delivering.\u201d At the beginning, he says, \u201cNo one, including myself, cared about being big \u2013 it was more punk.\u201d<\/p>\n
This punk aesthetic is most visible now in the way the new generation have embraced live shows. As mainstream acts chase digital streaming and online connections, Foux has built a fanbase through an almost anachronistic route in the streaming age: the hard graft of constant touring.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe music that we make is live music,\u201d he says. \u201cEveryone in this space, your biggest flex is hitting the stage. Streams and all these things other rappers worry about have only become relevant recently. The real crown on the head is knowing you\u2019ve dropped a song that is going to go crazy live. That\u2019s how you get your rank.\u201d<\/p>\n
I mention the sold-out EsDeeKid show to him, and he\u2019s not surprised. \u201cI know EsDeeKid wants to be a big touring artist \u2013 I can see it and feel it. Him, Fimi, YT, whoever: it\u2019s a big shift happening, it\u2019s great. We\u2019re making superstars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Century by EsDeeKid is out now on XV Records\/Lizzy Records. Daytona by Lancey Foux is out now on RCA Records. What\u2019s the Reason? by Ledbyher is out now on Island Records. Blair Babies by Ceebo is out now on Liberation Records.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s early November and London\u2019s Electric Ballroom is heaving. The warm-up DJ drops Fetty Wap\u2019s 2014 smash Trap…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-331853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}