The
Tottenham Rapper is
UK drill’s biggest star – and counts
Drake as a fan. He talks about how his
music gave him a way out of crime, and the difficulty of leaving his old life behind
The north
London district of Tottenham seems to offer up a rap icon for every generation. Hip-hop group Demon Boyz were among the first to shed
American accents in the 1980s; in the late 00s, 16-year-old MC Chip declared himself a “grime scene saviour”, and cracked the glass ceiling of a resistant music industry. More recently, Skepta has led
British rap into the mainstream, winning the Mercury prize in 2016.
The district where riots blazed in 1985 and 2011 is now soundtracked by UK drill, a rap subgenre that found its way to the country from the South Side of
Chicago, with MCs riding like dirt bikes over revving, lurching bass to punctuate sometimes bleak accounts of life on the roads.