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British hip-hop eyes a global tipping point

British rapper and singer Jim Legxacy's latest project, black british music (2025), slams together sounds from across and beyond the current U.K. rap scene.
Igoris Tarran
British rapper and singer Jim Legxacy's latest project, black british music (2025), slams together sounds from across and beyond the current U.K. rap scene.

During the second night of headlining shows at London's Wireless Festival this month, beleaguered giant Drake made a grandiose claim about the state of hip-hop hegemony. "No disrespect to America. No disrespect to my country. But, nobody can out-rap London rappers," he said as he brought the grime legend Skepta to the stage. "This is the best, this is the highest level. This is what I aspire to be." He seemed adamant on proving the theory that night, asking some of the city's brightest stars to make the case for him in performance: J Hus, Central Cee, Headie One and Dave. The comments, of course, incited a mini-uproar, mostly from Americans laughing off the whole sentiment. Sports commentator Bomani Jones leaned into consensus with a resounding eye-roll: "They don't even believe that s***."

Considering Drake's current vested interest in underselling stateside rap's potency, it's very hard to give the declaration any weight, but it also seems clear to me what he is referencing about British rap: the slappiness and force, that punchy quality in every insistent line delivery on songs like "Shutdown" or "Titanium." I personally believe Dave, the thoughtful London hood ethicist and social critic who has topped the U.K. charts and won the Mercury Prize, to be the best rapper in the world, and it's true that the scene is undeniably slept on, from Kojey Radical and Avelino to Pa Salieu and Wesley Joseph. But lost in the sensationalism of the claim were its terms of engagement. What struck me was not Drake's assertion itself, but the benchmark set by "out-rap" — a strange measurement for someone who has notably suffered not one, but two colossal lyrical defeats (at the hands of American rappers), and whose great contributions to rap canon are melody and perspective. Why would he even value such a metric? Why should they, given the rap climate? Truthfully, it felt like he was selling the movement short.

Drake's words were ringing through my head as I took my first listen to black british music (2025), the new record by Lewisham rapper/singer/producer Jim Legxacy — one of the best rap releases of the year, made, markedly, without much rapping. It's hard to imagine Legxacy "out-rapping" anyone, if he were even interested in such a thing, and yet he is one of the most exciting rappers on the planet. Knowingly, he toys with the distinction in the early moments of the project, dubbed a "mixtape." "She don't like no rapper, so I told her I'm a singer," he exclaims on a song called "new david bowie." The very name of the tape seems to shun the idea of genre all together: just "Black British music," as if it were a medley of things pulled from an overarching archive.

black british music (2025) is a jumbled, marvelous survey of 21st century U.K. rap, identifying connective tissue with Afrobeats, emo, drill and garage. Most pop music of the Black diaspora, even that of the U.K., treats either Africa or America as the fulcrum of cultural exchange, but Legxacy centers the British experience. "Black British music: We've been making asses shake since the Windrush," a DJ proclaims, nodding to the influence of Caribbean migrants on the British sound. The tape samples Wiley's foundational eskibeat style and Case's "Missing You," interpolates Hus and Snow's "Informer," features Dave and like-minded riser Fimiguerrero while channeling pop punk, hat-tips Giggs and Blade Brown but emulates Drake's R&B-by-osmosis approach to rap. Negotiating the many layers beneath any multicultural ethos is a practice not lost on Legxacy, a child of Nigerians who was inspired to make music at 19 after hearing Kanye West's The Life of Pablo. "A lot of us are technically the first British people in our entire lineage, and that has a huge cultural impact," Legxacy told Rolling Stone back in March. "Our identity is still at a point where it's malleable. We're figuring out what that is."

That exploration of figuring things out is, somehow, balanced with the confidence of knowing oneself. Legxacy's curiosity is both inward- and outward-looking, producing little vignettes from his life and the sounds that shaped it, pieced into a mosaic that revels in contradictions and polarity: "Broke but I never was a miskeen / On the block, I was listenin' to Mitski," he raps on "father." His breakout project, homeless n**** pop music, also stuffed a lot under one umbrella — turning Soul for Real into something you could gwara gwara to and giving Miley Cyrus her own riddim — but there is a heightened intuition at play here. All Legxacy songs bear an emotional residue, and yet these ones have a sense memory colored, more than anything, by the loss of his sister, who died of sickle cell anemia. "I've always been scared of being myself / Of letting my heart speak before I speak," he sings on "issues of trust." "Since you left our lives, I'm blaming myself for all the things I said and I never said." It feels like he's saying them now — or, if not saying, then expressing subconsciously, letting the heart speak — manifesting the muddled feelings brought on experiencing grief and prosperity simultaneously.

There is a poignancy suffusing these performances, a curse following the artist from room to room, taking up all the oxygen, even at the club. No one has ever made "bringing all the racks out" sound as glum as he does on "stick." Legxacy told The New York Times he set out to "make a futuristic version for the present based on what has existed in the past," and doing so swirls cultural and personal histories, generating songs that can be both brash and unguarded. He delivers most of his raps in the kind of singsong cadence that has become nonregional in recent years, but he uses it to deploy hometown slang and scan his city. His voice is distinctly mellow, subdued yet euphonic, lending itself to acts of subtlety — but when he presses, as on the hook for "d.b.a.b," indignation isn't far from his grasp. There is a quiet, pent-up rage looking to seep out, so much he is still working through, which pushes him ever forward, rendering a triumphant yet loss-stained depiction of home that reverberates like an echo. In his invoking of music throughout the diaspora, Legxacy is capable of bravado ("i just banged a snus in canada water") and contrition ("'06 wayne rooney"), if never exactly in the ways you'd expect, but he is at his best teasing out the tension in between.

On songs like "stick" and the Dave-featuring "3x," he glides along pattering rhythms, but the movement isn't weightless; it bears the stress of his baggage like an albatross. "I got n****s tryna check me out of pride / I got gyallie tryna hit me on the side / I got 'nuff people preyin' on me," he lays out on the latter, letting out the last line like a sigh. Still, in the tight guest spot that follows, Dave notes that he believes Jim has made his sister proud. The moment comes a few songs after the younger rapper has dropped a reference to "Wanna Know," Dave's 2016 collab with Drake, so you can imagine what the sentiment means to him — how there is a loop closing here, a torch being extended, a tradition being passed on. (In a way, it also feels like an exchange of favors: Legxacy co-produced "Sprinter," Dave's 2023 single with Central Cee, which became the longest-running No. 1 rap hit in U.K. charts history.) Somehow Legxacy straddles the lines of confession and homage impeccably. The futurism is in the integration of his system, as he becomes a one-man sound clash of British music.

Legxacy seems to be using this project to close the distance between "Black" and "British" as signifiers — navigating two overlapping forms of displacement and selfhood, seeking the connective space where individuality meets community. You could think of black british music (2025) as a reflector for all Black British music, and its release comes at a productive time for U.K. rap. There is a rich history, dating back to Dizzee Rascal, JME and The Streets, but there has never been more outside awareness of the culture than right now, and a few of the local stars are responding to the increased attention in new ways.

Any convo on the state of the scene must begin with Central Cee, U.K. rap's first true international success story. On the cover of his debut album, Can't Rush Greatness, from January, he wears a skully with the British flag and holds up a massive Queen Elizabeth chain. Cee's vision of British rap is one of global conquest — not diasporic inquiry, as with Legxacy, but social influence. A lot of the record feels like it's conspicuously reaching across the pond, flexing the achievement of simply having succeeded where other British music has failed. "I hear them talkin', seein' the tweets, I'm seein' the forums / Seein' them mention everyone else but me like say that I'm not important / All of the moves that I make in America's makin' it easier for them," he raps on "No Introduction." He's in Beverly Hills and Miami, hitting Rodeo Drive and flaunting his Columbia deal. There are logical team-ups with Dave and Skepta, but also strategic partnerships with Lil Baby and Lil Durk, and a cheeky collab with British expat turned ATL shooter 21 Savage called "GBP." "Nobody else from London's gone Hollywood, just Cee or the boy Damson," he boasts on "CRG." When he puts himself on top of the U.K. game on "Must Be," it feels less like sovereignty and more like marking off a section of a Go board, where acquiring more territory is necessary to truly win.

Something different is occurring across Jordan Adetunji's A Jaguar's Dream, released the same week. From Belfast (by way of London), the vocalist and rapper went viral on TikTok for the 2024 single "Kehlani," named for the singer, blending drill and R&B via a sample of Summer Walker's "Potential." The U.K. and New York City drill scenes are tightly interwoven — many of the best Brooklyn drill songs, including Pop Smoke's "Dior," were produced by kids from London — but "Kehlani" is far more Cash Cobain than M1onTheBeat, and Adetunji sounds less like he's from the U.K. than simply of the internet. Vocally he rests somewhere between trapsoul pioneer Bryson Tiller and bionic man Don Toliver; like fellow chameleon skaiwater (who broke through with the Jersey club-inspired "#Miles"), there is nothing to outwardly identify him as a Briton. Singers from the U.K. often lose their accents in performance; British rappers have been defined by them, sometimes to their detriment. Adetunji represents a new crop of MCs not beholden to the quirk, existing in the Drake tradition of being so melodic that rap feels largely like an outline. A Jaguar's Dream brings to mind Legxacy's comment about malleability, the U.K. identity being less rigid (Adetunji is also the child of Nigerians) — except that where Legxacy's music is as personal as it is kaleidoscopic and as homegrown as it is untethered, Adetunji's music seems as if it has been hollowed out primarily into a receptacle for outside sounds.

And perhaps that's fine, considering how many other mainstays of U.K. rap have released albums this year demonstrating the breadth and personality of the place. Little Simz, Loyle Carner, AJ Tracey, John Glacier and Wretch 32 all put out offerings that are distinctly British but also singular. (Kae Tempest, too, though mileage may vary there.) Simz's Lotus marks a creative rebirth from one of England's greatest lyricists, as the highly conceptual auteur defines her sound without her longtime collaborator Inflo, following the title's metaphor of transformation by expanding her emotional and aesthetic palettes to crackling effect. Loyle Carner's hopefully ! finds an earnest spoken-word artist loosened by fatherhood, drawn into a doting posture by his understated live band. With Don't Die Before You're Dead, AJ Tracey bridges grime and drill with skittish, somber flows, even flipping Playboi Carti's "R.I.P. Fredo (Notice Me)" into a modern eskibeat reinvention. John Glacier's Like A Ribbon is a striking debut marked by stony flows and skittering rhythms, the juxtaposition of which makes for a kind of dissociative experience. HOME?, Wretch 32's first album in six years, is like black british music (2025) made by a U.K. rapper of the previous generation, and of Jamaican lineage; with songs called "Black and British" and "Windrush" back-to-back, it's roots-tracing and asylum commentary all in one, delivered with unshakable conviction.

If there is a key difference between HOME? and black british music (2025), it's in that question mark. The former is an album of belonging, and rightfully so, seeking relief for doubts he recently posed to The Guardian: "I'm here, but am I accepted here? Or am I just tolerated here?" Displacement will always be the subtext of U.K. rap, but black british music (2025) seems to understand that your identity is yours and yours alone, pulling from a wellspring that is borderless, even spiritual. It is not something that can be taken or overwritten. In a certain sense, the album honors the interconnectedness of these British stories, the broader tapestry they weave together, but also the idiosyncrasies that make each story its own. "This that Blue Borough s***, I hope you're listening," Legxacy repeats twice, referencing his Lewisham hometown. It's a folk refrain that he and many others will repeat, ad infinitum, until they are heard.

Copyright 2025 NPR

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Sheldon Pearce
[Copyright 2024 NPR]