HBK

Genre-splicing Londoner Yxng Bane believes in the novelists’ adage that you should write what you know. “Keep living your life, just going and telling the story,” he explained to Beats 1’s Julie Adenuga. “That’s how you can’t run out of creativity.” Over a series of successful singles, his impassioned and incisive lyrics have documented various trials and triumphs—and that continues on this full-length mixtape. Rapping melodically to trap beats and singing over poppier cuts seasoned with Afrobeats and R&B, he draws on subjects that have been among the fundamentals of great storytelling for centuries, including love (“Needed Time,” “Trust”), success (“Problem”), loyalty (“Loyalty”), and, at his most absorbingly candid, family and struggle (“Better”).

Perhaps best known for his dancehall remix of 2017’s biggest earworm ‘Shape Of You’ and his Top 10 hit with Yungen,