A fresh year brings fresh faces. A new crop of boundary-pushing, hungry artists is ready to own 2018. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be expanding our FACT Rated coverage of essential new acts with lists and interviews spotlighting the most exciting newcomers poised to take over the year ahead. Welcome to Rated Season.
The MCs and crews destined to rule the airwaves over the next 12 months.
With UK MCs blowing up off a single track, any predictions list written in January risks being outdated by February. That caveat aside, here are 10 MCs and crews who—at least for now—seem primed for a massive year. The strength of the current homegrown MC-led scene is evident: these names span a range of styles, from the poppiest afroswing to the bleakest drill. What unites them is raw hunger and undeniable talent. You can bet that at least some—if not all—of these artists will drop incredible music in 2018.
Skengdo x AM
As the drill scene churns out more grassroots hits, breakout stars are inevitable. Right now, Skengdo and 410 Crew alumnus AM look set to become the faces (or in AM’s case, the mask) of drill. Defying critics who claim drill’s lyrics are just recycled clichés, Skengdo and AM weave humour, complexity, and clarity into their tales of crime and violence.
During their recent, triumphant Fire In The Booth set, AM ordered a Chinese takeaway mid-flow and questioned his own hypocrisy—believing black lives matter while threatening to ruin an opponent’s life. In one truly unique bar, he switches to rapping in Morse code and binary code. His sharp skill is balanced by Skengdo’s effortlessly addictive hooks, turning hood reflections into club anthems. If the streets’ ecstatic reaction to their current 2 Bunny mixtape is any indicator, 2018 could be their year.
Octavian
Octavian has stirred up London’s A&R circles with only a handful of tracks. The reason is simple: his delivery is incredible. Sandpaper-rough syllables tear from his throat, even as he wraps them in rich melody. His latest track ‘Party Here’ should seal the deal if you’re not already sold—its beat flips between trap’s low-end and house-tempo 4/4 kicks, showing an artist confident enough to experiment. There isn’t enough Octavian music out yet to know if this is more than a flash in the pan—but even if it is, it’s quite a flash.
Loski
With most of Harlem Spartans seeing in 2018 behind bars, Loski is one of their few key MCs still free to carry the weight of expectations set by the Kennington crew’s unbeatable run of releases in late 2016 and early 2017. He seems to relish the task: with enviable energy, he’s dropped drill bangers like ‘Teddy Bruckshot’ and ‘Money & Beef’, both showcasing an impressively unpredictable flow. He’s also versatile—a few months back, his track ‘Forrest Gump’ leaked, showing Loski sing-rapping on an Afrobashment track not far from fellow Spartan TG Millian’s ‘Money on the Road’. If he keeps mastering styles, he’ll deliver some serious tunes.
SL
Having a massive hit with one of your first tracks isn’t always a blessing. For SL, it also came when he was just 15. His track ‘Gentleman’ dropped on Mixtape Madness’s YouTube channel in March 2017, racking up over 13 million views. A combination of his weirdly stretched flow—like a teenage Giggs—and a haunted, funeral-paced beat won fans as far as Toronto, which would mess with any kid from Croydon’s head. Silence followed, and it looked like SL might be a one-hit wonder.
Now it seems SL is here to stay. His follow-up ‘Tropical’ dropped on Christmas Day with visuals that completely ignored any tropical theme—SL performed in what looked like Swedish fjords rendered in 4K. As with ‘Gentleman’, the elements are familiar (deep 808 hits and bragging lyrics), but there’s a certain magic in the arrangement. If he can manage to release more than two tunes a year, his 2018 will be huge.
IAMDDB
It’s still remarkably hard for MCs outside London to blow up. Throw in the scene’s tired resistance to new female talent (check the comments on any Nadia Rose or Stefflon Don video if you doubt this is still an issue), and Mancunian rapper/singer IAMDDB’s sudden rise becomes all the more impressive. This ascent is largely due to her carving her own lane with considerable style, drawing on the slurry sing-song flow and spaced-out beats of American trap more than the drill or Afrobashment most UK artists favour. As such, she’s probably the artist on this list most likely to achieve mainstream success—and with the BBC Sound Of 2018 poll already giving her the nod, the mainstream is clearly paying attention.
Ramz
Anyone who claims the appetite for Not3s and J Hus-style afroswing singalongs was sated in 2017 has been proven wrong by the emergence of Ramone Rochester. Mitcham’s own Ramz scored one of the year’s biggest hits with ‘Barking’, an afroswing smash driven by an relentless earworm of a chorus. He’s spoken in interviews about his love of injecting hooks into his raps. Now signed to Polydor on the back of ‘Barking’, he has major-label clout to push that musical sensibility nationwide.
K-Trap
K-Trap is the streets’ pick right now. At first glance, he’s another driller sticking to the South London formula: always wears a balaclava in his videos and raps almost exclusively about selling packs and splashing opps. But Trap’s real talent is how he transcends those themes and makes the familiar feel fresh. His flow has such kinetic belligerence that syllables hit like snare smashes, reminiscent of the moshpit-causing, aggressive delivery of grime’s forefathers (in fact, it’s easy to imagine him demolishing a grime riddim). With a new mixtape due in 2018, he’s likely to remain the streets’ favourite for another year.
B Young
Hackney’s B Young is drawing a line between US autotune trap and the melodic sense of Afrobashment. On tracks like ‘London Boy’, the influence of big American trap stars is immediately apparent. But it’s on the guitar-driven rhythm of his breakthrough track ‘Jumanji’ that he delivers something truly unique, shining on a track that feels like a UK garage classic slowed to a zeitgeist-pleasing 100bpm. He’s created a big stir in a short time—and his next few releases could easily establish him as a major new player.
Trillary Banks
Trillary has been dropping a steady stream of bedroom-ready bashment tracks that have grown more assured over time. Ignoring the pressure on female MCs to lace their bars with sung vocals, Trillary sticks to a dry, languid delivery that’s in no hurry to do anything other than exactly what it wants. Her biggest tracks have been performed in Jamaican patois, but she’s not shy of occasionally switching into her own Leicester accent (as on ‘Doing It’) to prove she’s just as capable of rapping bars as she is dropping dancehall fire.
Zone 2
Peckham collective Zone 2 are one of the drill crews knocking loudest at the door. The definitive Zone 2 lineup is nebulous, but the core of PS, Narsty, Trizzac, Kwengface, Karma, L-R, and Skully were all present on their recently released instant classic mixtape, Known Zoo. While most drill has stuck to a fairly tight sonic palette, Known Zoo saw the Zone 2 collective pushing the boundaries of what the sound can achieve. The smart sampling of ‘No Hook’ and the Cadenza-produced jitter of ‘Trash’ show they have the ambition and vision to dictate where drill goes next.
Ian McQuaid is a DJ, A&R and journalist based in London. Find him on Twitter.
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