Complex UK's Best Albums of 2021

It’s perhaps fitting that Dave’s second album opens with the familiar flicker and countdown of a movie projector sequence. Its title was handed to him by iconic film composer Hans Zimmer in a FaceTime chat, and *We’re All Alone in This Together* sets evocative scenes that laud the power of being able to determine your future. On his 2019 debut *PSYCHODRAMA*, the Streatham rapper revealed himself to be an exhilarating, genre-defying artist attempting to extricate himself from the hazy whirlwind of his own mind. Two years on, Dave’s work feels more ambitious, more widescreen, and doubles down on his superpower—that ability to absorb perspectives around him within his otherworldly rhymes and ideas. He’s addressing deeply personal themes from a sharp, shifting lens. “My life’s full of plot holes,” he declares on “We’re All Alone.” “And I’m filling them up.” As it has been since his emergence, Dave is skilled, mature, and honest enough to both lay bare and uplift the Black British experience. “In the Fire” recruits four sons of immigrant UK families—Fredo, Meekz, Giggs, and Ghetts (all uncredited, all lending incendiary bars)—and closes on a spirited Dave verse touching on early threats of deportation and homelessness. With these moments in the can, the earned boasts of rare kicks and timepieces alongside Stormzy for “Clash” are justified moments of relief from past struggles. And these loose threads tie together on “Three Rivers”—a somber, piano-led track that salutes the contributions of Britain’s Windrush generation and survivors of war-torn scenarios, from the Middle East to Africa. In exploring migration—and the questions it asks of us—Dave is inevitably led to his Nigerian heritage. Lagos newcomer Boj puts down a spirited, instructional hook in Yoruba for “Lazarus,” while Wizkid steps in to form a smooth double act on “System.” “Twenty to One,” meanwhile, is “Toosie Slide” catchy and precedes “Heart Attack”—arguably the showstopper at 10 minutes and loaded with blistering home truths on youth violence. On *PSYCHODRAMA* Dave showed how music was his private sanctuary from a life studded by tragedy. *We’re All Alone in This Together* suggests that relationship might have changed. Dave is now using his platform to share past pains and unique stories of migration in times of growing isolation. This music keeps him—and us—connected.

“Right then, I’m ready,” Adele says quietly at the close of *30*’s opening track, “Strangers By Nature.” It feels like a moment of gentle—but firm—self-encouragement. This album is something that clearly required a few deep breaths for Tottenham’s most celebrated export. “There were moments when I was writing these songs, and even when I was mixing them and stuff like that, where I was like, ‘Maybe I don\'t need to put this album out,’” she tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “Like, ‘Maybe I should write another.’ Just because music is my therapy. I\'m never going into the studio to be like, ‘Right, I need another hit.’ It\'s not like that for me. When something is more powerful and overwhelming \[to\] me, I like to go to a studio, because it\'s normally a basement and there\'s no fucking windows and no reception, so no one can get ahold of me. So I\'m basically running away. And no one would\'ve known I\'d written that record. Maybe I just had to get it out of my system.” But, almost two years after much of it was completed, Adele did release *30*. And remarkably, considering the world has been using her back catalog to channel its rawest emotions since 2008, this is easily Adele’s most vulnerable record. It concerns itself with Big Things Only—crippling guilt over her 2019 divorce, motherhood, daring to date as one of the world’s most famous people, falling in love—capturing perfectly the wobbly resolve of a broken heart in repair. Its songs often feel sentimental in a way that’s unusually warm and inviting, very California, and crucially: *earned*. “The album is for my son, for Angelo,” she says. “I knew I had to tell his story in a song because it was very clear he was feeling it, even though I thought I was doing a very good job of being like, ‘Everything’s fine.’ But I also knew I wasn’t being as present. I was just so consumed by so many different feelings. And he plucked up the courage to very articulately say to me, ‘You’re basically a ghost. You might as well not be here.’ What kind of poet is that? For him to be little and say ‘I can’t see you’ to my face broke my heart.” This is also Adele’s most confident album sonically. She fancied paying tribute to Judy Garland with Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson (“Strangers By Nature”), so she did. “I’d watched the Judy Garland biopic,” she says. “And I remember thinking, ‘Why did everyone stop writing such incredible melodies and cadences and harmonies?’” She felt comfortable working heartbreaking bedside chats with her young son and a voice memo documenting her own fragile mental state into her music on “My Little Love.” “While I was writing it, I just remember thinking of any child that’s been through divorce or any person that has been though a divorce themselves, or anyone that wants to leave a relationship and never will,” she says. “I thought about all of them, because my divorce really humanized my parents for me.” The album does not steep in sorrow and regret, however: There’s a Max Martin blockbuster with a whistled chorus (“Can I Get It”), a twinkling interlude sampling iconic jazz pianist Erroll Garner (“All Night Parking”), and the fruits of a new creative partnership with Dean Josiah Cover—aka Michael Kiwanuka, Sault, and Little Simz producer Inflo. “The minute I realized he \[Inflo\] was from North London, I wouldn’t stop talking to him,” she says. “We got no work done. It was only a couple of months after I’d left my marriage, and we got on so well, but he could feel that something was wrong. He knew that something dark was happening in me. I just opened up. I was dying for someone to ask me how I was.” One of the Inflo tracks, “Hold On,” is the album’s centerpiece. Rolling through self-loathing (“I swear to god, I am such a mess/The harder that I try, I regress”) into instantly quotable revelations (“Sometimes loneliness is the only rest we get”) before reaching show-stopping defiance (“Let time be patient, let pain be gracious/Love will soon come, if you just hold on”), the song accesses something like final-form Adele. It’s a rainbow of emotions, it’s got a choir (“I got my friends to come and sing,” she tells Apple Music), and she hits notes we’ll all only dare tackle in cars, solo. “I definitely lost hope a number of times that I’d ever find my joy again,” she says. “I remember I didn’t barely laugh for about a year. But I didn’t realize I was making progress until I wrote ‘Hold On’ and listened to it back. Later, I was like, ‘Oh, fuck, I’ve really learned a lot. I’ve really come a long way.’” So, after all this, is Adele happy that *30* found its way to the world? “It really helped me, this album,” she says. “I really think that some of the songs on this album could really help people, really change people’s lives. A song like ‘Hold On’ could actually save a few lives.” It’s also an album she feels could support fellow artists. “I think it’s an important record for them to hear,” she says. “The ones that I feel are being encouraged not to value their own art, and that everything should be massive and everything should be ‘get it while you can’… I just wanted to remind them that you don’t need to be in everyone’s faces all the time. And also, you can really write from your stomach, if you want.”

“Sometimes I’ll be in my own space, my own company, and that’s when I\'m really content,” Little Simz tells Apple Music. “It\'s all love, though. There’s nothing against anyone else; that\'s just how I am. I like doing my own thing and making my art.” The lockdowns of 2020, then, proved fruitful for the North London MC, singer, and actor. She wrestled writer’s block, revived her cult *Drop* EP series (explore the razor-sharp and diaristic *Drop 6* immediately), and laid grand plans for her fourth studio album. Songwriter/producer Inflo, co-architect of Simz’s 2019 Mercury-nominated, Ivor Novello Award-winning *GREY Area*, was tapped and the hard work began. “It was straight boot camp,” she says of the *Sometimes I Might Be Introvert* sessions in London and Los Angeles. “We got things done pronto, especially with the pace that me and Flo move at. We’re quite impulsive: When we\'re ready to go, it’s time to go.” Months of final touches followed—and a collision between rap and TV royalty. An interest in *The Crown* led Simz to approach Emma Corrin (who gave an award-winning portrayal of Princess Diana in the drama). She uses her Diana accent to offer breathless, regal addresses that punctuate the 19-track album. “It was a reach,” Simz says of inviting Corrin’s participation. “I’m not sure what I expected, but I enjoyed watching her performance, and wrote most of her words whilst I was watching her.” Corrin’s speeches add to the record’s sense of grandeur. It pairs turbocharged UK rap with Simz at her most vulnerable and ambitious. There are meditations on coming of age in the spotlight (“Standing Ovation”), a reunion with fellow Sault collaborator Cleo Sol on the glorious “Woman,” and, in “Point and Kill,” a cleansing, polyrhythmic jam session with Nigerian artist Obongjayar that confirms the record’s dazzling sonic palette. Here, Simz talks us through *Sometimes I Might Be Introvert*, track by track. **“Introvert”** “This was always going to intro the album from the moment it was made. It feels like a battle cry, a rebirth. And with the title, you wouldn\'t expect this to sound so huge. But I’m finding the power within my introversion to breathe new meaning into the word.” **“Woman” (feat. Cleo Sol)** “This was made to uplift and celebrate women. To my peers, my family, my friends, close women in my life, as well as women all over the world: I want them to know I’ve got their back. Linking up with Cleo is always fun; we have such great musical chemistry, and I can’t imagine anyone else bringing what she did to the song. Her voice is beautiful, but I think it\'s her spirit and her intention that comes through when she sings.” **“Two Worlds Apart”** “Firstly, I love this sample; it’s ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’ by Smokey Robinson, and Flo’s chopped it up really cool. This is my moment to flex. You had the opener, followed by a nice, smoother vibe, but this is like, ‘Hey, you’re listening to a *rap* album.’” **“I Love You, I Hate You”** “This wasn’t the easiest song for me to write, but I\'m super proud that I did. It’s an opportunity for me to lay bare my feelings on how that \[family\] situation affected me, growing up. And where I\'m at now—at peace with it and moving on.” **“Little Q, Pt. 1 (Interlude)”** “Little Q is my cousin, Qudus, on my dad\'s side. We grew up together, but then there was a stage where we didn\'t really talk for some years. No bad blood, just doing different things, so when we reconnected, we had a real heart-to-heart—and I heard about all he’d been through. It made me feel like, ‘Damn, this is a blood relative, and he almost lost his life.’ I thank God he didn’t, but I thought of others like him. And I felt it was important that his story was heard and shared. So, I’m speaking from his perspective.” **“Little Q, Pt. 2”** “I grew up in North London and \[Little Q\] was raised in South, and as much as we both grew up in endz, his experience was obviously different to mine. Being a product of an environment or system that isn\'t really for you, it’s tough trying to navigate that.” **“Gems (Interlude)”** “This is another turning point, reminding myself to take time: ‘Breathe…you\'re human. Give what you can give, but don\'t burn out for anyone. Put yourself first.’ Just little gems that everyone needs to hear once in a while.” **“Speed”** “This track sends another reminder: ‘This game is a marathon, not a sprint. So pace yourself!’ I know where I\'m headed, and I\'m taking my time, with little breaks here and there. Now I know when to really hit the gas and also when to come off a bit.” **“Standing Ovation”** “I take some time to reflect here, like, ‘Wow, you\'re still here and still going. It’s been a slow burn, but you can afford to give yourself a pat on the back.’ But as well as being in the limelight, let\'s also acknowledge the people on the ground doing real amazing work: our key workers, our healers, teachers, cleaners. If you go to a toilet and it\'s dirty, people go in from 9 to 5 and make sure that shit is spotless for you, so let\'s also say thank you.” **“I See You”** “This is a really beautiful and poetic song on love. Sometimes as artists we tend to draw from traumatic times for great art, we’re hurt or in pain, but it was nice for me to be able to draw from a place of real joy in my life for this song. Even where it sits \[on the album\]: right in the center, the heart.” **“The Rapper That Came to Tea (Interlude)”** “This title is a play on \[Judith Kerr’s\] children\'s book *The Tiger Who Came to Tea*, and this is about me better understanding my introversion. I’m just posing questions to myself—I might not necessarily have answers for them, I think it\'s good to throw them out there and get the brain working a bit.” **“Rollin Stone”** “This cut reminds me somewhat of ’09 Simz, spitting with rapidness and being witty. And I’m also finding new ways to use my voice on the second half here, letting my evil twin have her time.” **“Protect My Energy”** “This is one of the songs I\'m really looking forward to performing live. It’s a stepper, and it got me really wanting to sing, to be honest. I very much enjoy being around good company, but these days I enjoy my personal space and I want to protect that.” **“Never Make Promises (Interlude)”** “This one is self-explanatory—nothing is promised at all. It’s a short intermission to lead to the next one, but at one point it was nearly the album intro.” **“Point and Kill” (feat. Obongjayar)** “This is a big vibe! It feels very much like Nigeria to me, and Obongjayar is one of my favorites at the moment. We recorded this in my living room on a whim—and I\'m very, very grateful that he graced this song. The title comes from a phrase used in Nigeria to pick out fish at the market, or a store. You point, they kill. But also metaphorically, whatever I want, I\'m going to get in the same way, essentially.” **“Fear No Man”** “This track continues the same vibe, even more so. It declares: ‘I\'m here. I\'m unapologetically me and I fear no one here. I\'m not shook of anyone in this rap game.’” **“The Garden (Interlude)”** “This track is just amazing musically. It’s about nurturing the seeds you plant. Nurture those relationships, and everything around you that\'s holding you down.” **“How Did You Get Here”** “I want everyone to know *how* I got here; from the jump, school days, to my rap group, Space Age. We were just figuring it out, being persistent. I cried whilst recording this song; it all hit me, like, ‘I\'m actually recording my fourth album.’ Sometimes I sit and I wonder if this is all really true.” **“Miss Understood”** “This is the perfect closer. I could have ended on the last track, easily, but, I don\'t know, it\'s kind of like doing 99 reps. You\'ve done 99, that\'s amazing, but you can do one more to just make it 100, you can. And for me it was like, ‘I\'m going to get this one in there.’”

“My biggest fear with this album is that people consume it like a compilation,” Justin Clarke—better known as Ghetts—tells Apple Music. “Just looking at the tracklist and spotting features, thinking that they can jump the tracks. This is a journey. It makes complete sense when you listen to it the way it’s supposed to be listened to.” For the east London rhymer—whose early story was one of countless pirate radio sets, sticky rave rooms and viral freestyles—the fight to be heard and respected on his own terms is nothing new. *Conflict of Interest* dropped with Ghetts aged 36 and is only his third studio album in a career that burst into life through cult early 2000s DVD series Risky Roadz. But this is one of grime’s most prolific, impactful and interesting artists. The teenage Ghetts (originally performing under “Ghetto”) helped embody the new scene and its infectious, unpredictable energy. A member of two seminal grime collectives (NASTY Crew and The Movement), Ghetts sharpened himself into a supremely versatile rhyming juggernaut, but somehow missed the mainstream acclaim afforded former teammates including Kano and Wretch 32 in the late 2000s. But as controversy, commercial limitation and censorship caught up with grime’s first wave, Ghetts was compelled to reclaim authorship of his story. “Tupac was a conflicted individual,” he says. “I felt that way for so long, too. I didn’t even understand my ting. I’m a black sheep in my family.” On *Conflict Of Interest*, all sides that make the man are laid bare for the first time. It’s an exhaustive-and-exhilarating cycle through the cavernous reaches of the MC’s mind. “Where I’m at now is that everything has to sound amazing,” he says. Whether it’s warm, throwback flows on garage tempos (“Good Hearts”), brutally honest chronicling of a past life in petty crime (“Hop Out”), crossover hits-in-waiting (the Ed Sheeran-starring “10,000 Tears”) or long-awaited reunions with former adversaries (“IC3” with Skepta)), this is the complete record Ghetts has been threatening to pull together for two decades. “I’m not here to compete with people that just want to make microwave music,” he says. “I want to be taken in on a worldwide level.” Below, Ghetts walks us through its story, track by track. **Fine Wine** “Wretch 32 titled this for me, I originally had it as ‘Intro’. I brought him by the studio as I was wrapping up the project: he’s someone whose opinion I rate and he’s got a great ear. This one stood out to him immediately, and at the end he said to me: ‘You know what? Your ting is like just like fine wine...and that should be the title!’” **Mozambique (feat. Jaykae & Moonchild Sanelly)** “This is a little different to the single version—we added some strings on at the beginning here to give a more special feel to the sound, and get some flow to the sequencing. When you listen to this album—particularly the flow and feel of the first few tracks, it’s meant to feel continuous, like a set.” **Fire and Brimstone** “In a way I guess this track is about my PTSD. In some situations it still comes to me, like when I’m in the car and the feds pull in behind me. I’m moving nervous. I’m fully insured and there’s nothing in the car; I have a license, but still, a bit nervous!” **Hop Out** “Writing this track was fun, running through my past life and all of my adventures. I’ve been noticing for a while now that nobody was really talking about other kinds of moves you could do on the roads. It wasn’t all about trapping in my days. Even though it’s all in my past, I’m being *very* real here, I’ll say that.” **IC3 (feat. Skepta)** “The fans have been asking me for this one for years! They really, really wanted me and Skepta to get one off together, after so long. I’m especially happy because we’re talking some real substance on this too. The clip at the end is taken from a set with Kano and Skepta on Logan’s \[Kiss FM\] show back in 2008. We’re all older, and Skepta and I are now fathers—but I always reflect on how we have such a long and deep history in this game together.” **Autobiography** “‘I know you’ve been through hell so I’ve got heaven for you/If you don’t tell your story they gon’ tell it for you.’ One thing about me: when I’m writing, I’ll just go with it and tell the whole story. It’s is the longest track \[on the album\] but the length is never that important to me. I had a lot to say here, so I said it all.” **Good Hearts (feat. Aida Lae)** “I had to have Mighty Moe \[from Heartless Crew\] open this track and he was kind enough to do so. I still remember seeing Heartless shut down Ive Farm—my first festival experience. It was just a tent in Leyton. It wasn’t even massive, but to a 15 year old, it kinda was. I saw Heartless going crazy in this tent in patterned Moschino outfits. They looked great and I remember the vibes in this place was like no other. I had this overwhelming feeling like *this* is what I want to do. Now, whenever I see or hear Heartless Crew—I’m not Ghetts—I’m that little boy.” **Dead To Me** “This song came about from an Insta live session I had. I was messing around at first, trying to get people to understand the levels. I asked someone to throw me a concept and I’d return in an hour, with the song done. People were telling me it was impossible but I came back in an hour with a finished track. The blogs started posting it up and eventually people pressed for it to make the album.” **10,000 Tears (feat. Ed Sheeran)** “Let’s be real: Ed is top three in the world. It’s Drizzy, Beyoncé, Ed. So when I wrote this track, I reached out to him and he turned around a verse in no time for me—that meant a lot. He loved what I was on and, honestly, to have one of the biggest artists in the world singing a chorus that I wrote is no small feat. I’m sure to the average, surface-level listener, they won’t believe it was me that wrote this song at first.” **Sonya (feat. Emeli Sandé)** “I wanted to write a song about escorts, but not from a male, judgmental perspective. I understand that in this life I’ve done things that can be judged harshly, so I’m not sitting here judging anybody. Are some of the things I’ve done for money in my life any better than escorting? In whose eyes? Who’s judging? That’s the perspective; I wanted to touch on subjects people are not speaking about on this album. And this is one of them.” **Proud Family** “When you’re putting together a solid body of work, I feel like you have to paint the *full* picture and that includes my family. This was one of the last tunes made for this album and it was the missing piece to the puzzle. I’m really tight with my family and making them proud means so much to me, on the day of filming this video with my them: my nan died. I had to shoot a block of videos the whole day and that was the hardest day of shooting I’ve had. I’ve never lost somebody as important to me as my nan, and my head was in such a weird space, but I was zoning in and found the strength to pull through. Now that I’m having my own children, I’m thinking about what I can do today that will affect my great-grandchildren—just experiencing a whole new range of feelings about family.” Skengman (feat. Stormzy) “Stormzy and I first worked together on \[2017 album\] *Gang Signs & Prayer* \[for ‘Bad Boys’\] but we also recorded another track for \[2018 album\] *Ghetto Gospel: The New Testament*. It just wasn’t leveling with ‘Bad Boys’ though, and I couldn’t bring myself to release it. It was sub-par. This time, I could feel I had something different. I was writing the track and forming the whole concept of the video in mind. I’m like, ‘Oh, this is crazy. And Stormz owes me a verse. Where’s Big Mike at?’ So, he’s come through, done the verse, and \[album producer\] TJ’s gone to work on post-production. If you listen carefully when Stormzy comes in, there’s a note going through it playing \[2018 freestyle\] ‘WICKEDSKENGMAN’.” **No Mercy (feat. Pa Salieu & BackRoad Gee)** “The studio session on this day was crazy, I’ve not had many sessions like that. The energy was wild. Pa is a lovely soul—he’s just one of those man you want to see win. As soon as I bucked him, it was like something that was meant to be. He told me that his friend was a big fan of mine, and once, when I was doing an open video shoot, they both pulled up. That was maybe three years ago. And that friend has now passed, but that’s something that I wasn’t even aware of and a nice moment for it came back full circle, for me and him.” **Crud (feat. Giggs)** “This was recorded in lockdown and, as soon as I made it, I could hear Giggs on it. He’s a man that loves music as much I do. We’re both so passionate about the art form of MCing. And we both gas our own ting equally! ‘I murdered that’: that energy. This might be our sixth or seventh track together. I’ve been working with the bro for at least 15 years now. And every time, we’ll argue about whose verse won on the riddim. For years and years after.” **Squeeze (feat. Miraa May)** “I’ll be honest. I couldn’t get from ‘Crud’ to ‘Little Bo Peep’ and make it make sense! Sonically, concept wise, I didn’t know how. For all of us involved in this album, we look at ‘Squeeze’ as an interlude—a long interlude—just to paint the picture and get us to the next track.” **Little Bo Peep (feat. Dave, Hamzaa & Wretch 32)** “I went round to my mum’s house and heard something playing from upstairs. It was my brother making a loop. It was kinda crazy and I was impressed. So I ran upstairs, laid down a quick idea and we slept on it for ages. After we made \[Hamzaa’s 2019 single\] ‘Breathing, Pt. 2,’ I knew this was the right track to call on Hamzaa and Wretch 32. I wanted my own version, or something in that vein and they absolutely smashed it. The track’s about being led astray. You might be addicted to something and that’s your Little Bo Peep. You’re a sheep to that, whatever it is.”

With her incisive lyrics and gift for harnessing classic UK garage samples, PinkPantheress very quickly became one of 2021’s breakout stars. Her debut mixtape, *to hell with it*, is a bite-size collection of moreish pop songs and a small slice of the 20-year-old singer and producer’s creative output over the nine months since her first viral TikTok moment. “I basically put together the songs that I put out this year that I felt were strongest,” she tells Apple Music. “I sat in the studio with my manager and a good friend from home whose ear I trust, and I said, ‘Does this sound cohesive to you? Are the songs in a similar world?’” The world of *to hell with it* is one of sharp contrasts existing together in perfect balance: sweet, singsong vocals paired with frenetic breakbeats, floor-filler samples through a bedroom pop filter, confessional lyrics about mostly fictionalized experiences, and light, bright production with a solidly emo core. “They’re all vividly sad,” PinkPantheress says of the 10 tracks that made the cut. “I think I\'ve had a tendency, even on a particularly happy beat, to sing the saddest lyrics I can. I paint a picture of the actual scenarios where someone would be sad.” Here, the Bath-born, London-based artist takes us through her mixtape, track by track. **“Pain”** “In my early days on TikTok I was creating a song a day. Some of them got a good reception, but ‘Pain’ was the first one where people responded really well and the first one where the sound ended up traveling a little bit. It didn\'t go crazy, but the sound was being used by 30 people, and that got me quite excited. A lot of people haven’t really heard garage that much before, and I think that for them, the sample \[Sweet Female Attitude’s 2000 single ‘Flowers’\] is a very palatable way to ease into garage breakbeats, very British-sounding synths, and all those influences.” **“I must apologise”** “This track was produced by Oscar Scheller \[Rina Sawayama, Ashnikko\]. I was trying to stay away from a sample at this point, but there’s something about this beat \[from Crystal Waters’ 1991 single ‘Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)’\] which drugged me. When we started writing it, Oscar gave me the idea for one of the melodies and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this actually is probably going to end up being one of my favorite songs just based off of this great melody that he\'s just come up with.’” **“Last valentines”** “My older cousin introduced me to LINKIN PARK; *Hybrid Theory* is one of my favorite albums ever. I went through the whole thing thinking, ‘Could I sample any of this?’ and when I listened to ‘Forgotten’ I just thought: ‘This guitar in the back is amazing. I can\'t believe no one\'s ever sampled it before!’ I looped it, recorded to it, mixed it, put it out. This was my first track where it took a darker turn, sonically. It really is emo through and through, from the sample to the lyrics.” **“Passion”** “To me, a lack of passion is just really not enjoying things like you used to—not having the same fun with your friends, finding things boring. I haven’t experienced depression myself, but I know people that have and I can attempt to draw comparisons of what I see in real life. Like it says in the lyrics, ‘You don’t see the light.’ I think I got a lot more emotional than I needed to get, but I\'m still glad that I went there. The instruments are so happy, I feel like there needed to be something to contradict it and make it a bit more three-dimensional.” **“Just for me”** “I made this song with \[UK artist and producer\] Mura Masa. I was sat with him, just going through references, and he started making the loop. I’ve never said this before, but I remember being like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to write anything good to this,’ and then it just came, after 20 minutes of sitting there wondering what I could do. The line ‘When you wipe your tears, do you wipe them just for me?’ just slipped off the tongue.” **“Noticed I cried”** “This is another track with Oscar Scheller and the first song I made without my own production. I held back a lot from working with producers, because I like working by myself, but Oscar is really good, so it ended up just being an easy process. He understood the assignment. I think it’s my favorite song I’ve ever released. It’s the top line, I’m just a big fan of the way it flows. I hope that people like it as much as I do.” **“Reason”** “Zach Nahome produced this track. He used to make a lot of garage, drum ’n’ bass, jungle, but his sound is quite different to that nowadays. So this was a bit of a different vibe for him. We made the beat together. I told him what kind of drums I wanted, what kind of sound and space I wanted, and he came up with that. With garage music, I just enjoy the breakbeats of it, the drums. It’s also quintessentially British. We birthed it. I think it’s always nice to go back to your roots.” **“All my friends know”** “I wanted to try something a bit different, and there were a few moments with this one where I wasn’t sure if I really liked it or not. After I stopped debating with myself it got a lot easier to enjoy it and I ended up feeling like it could actually be a lot of people’s favorite. The instrumental part of it is really beautiful; both producers—my friends Dill and Kairos—did a good job. It’s sentimental in a musical sense, and it’s sentimental in a personal sense as well.” **“Nineteen”** “This is a song that stems from personal experience, and kind of the first time in any of my songs where I’m like, ‘I’m actually speaking the truth here, this actually happened to me.’ Nineteen was a year of confusion, emotional confusion. I didn’t want to do my uni course, I wanted to do music. I didn\'t want people to laugh at me. I didn\'t want to tell myself out loud and then have it not happen. Internally, I was very sure and certain that it was going to happen, just because I\'m a big believer in manifestation. So 19 was that transition year. Once I\'d settled down and started doing what I loved, I felt a lot more comfortable, and actually, a lot more safe.” **“Break It Off”** “‘Break It Off’ was, I guess, my breakthrough track. It was the first time my name was being chucked around a fair bit. I fell in love with the original \[Adam F’s 1997 single ‘Circles’\] and I just wanted to hear what a top line would sound like on the track. So I found the instrumental, played around with it a little bit, and then sang on top. I think it got 100,000 likes on TikTok when I wasn’t really getting likes in that number before. The lyric is really tongue-in-cheek, and I think a lot of people on TikTok like tongue-in-cheek.”

“Most of these songs are attached to a specific memory,” Central Cee tells Apple Music of his debut mixtape. “Some can be fully disclosed but others can’t.” There might be some detail held back, but *Wild West*, sees the London rapper recount a journey of passion and persistence with brutal honesty and vivid wordplay. “That’s the good thing about my music, I guess,” he says. “I’ll always talk about what’s current and what’s real to me. So you’ll get that feeling.” Circled by major labels as far back as 2016, a teenaged ‘Cench’ appeared on tracks with AJ Tracey, Dave and J Hus—but a breakthrough would elude him until a pivot to the jumpy drill sound heard on 2020’s “Day in the Life”. With his sound laid out, fans fell for his smooth grasp of song structure, the bright, evocative, tales of juvenile delinquency and the artist’s unshakeable ambition. *Wild West* sees that sound evolve and the (still independent) west Londoner stretch out grime’s horizons. Matched with a dream selection of beatmakers (including Frosty Beats, Hargo Productions and Chris Rich), ghetto love songs receive modern updates (“Commitment Issues”), brass sections light up skittering drill anthems (“Loading”) and lyrically, we’re give an all-access tour of an ultra-ambitious, searingly honest mind. “It takes a lot of *hard* work to be independent and go down this route,” he says. “You have to put more in, but it just works for me. I have a vision and it’s vivid, so it’s important that I get it out properly. If I leave it in the hands of others, it won’t come out how I want it.” Here, Central Cee opens up on the pleasure (and occasional pain) of rising through the ranks in the Wild West. **6 For 6** “On the day I made this track, ‘Loading’ had just hit the charts and I went into the studio feeling...kinda different. You can hear it. I’m describing that transition on this track, or the transition that I feel I’m making. I’m also speaking on things I haven’t touched on before. The funny thing is: I wasn’t going ‘six for six’ when I made this, I only had two tracks out. But I was looking ahead.” **Fraud** “I’m really feeling myself on this tape, I won’t lie. This track here, I’m just talking my s\*\*t. I’m speaking about my younger days on in the opening line, I’ll admit. How I was when I was 14 or 15.\" **Pinging (6 Figures)** “This track’s about taking risks. And yes, that was the big risk that I took \[turning down a six-figure record deal\] at the time. I know people often associate risk-taking with the roads and stuff like that but when it comes to the music industry—the roads can be similar, mad similar. And with those similarities, the main one is: we’re all out here taking risks.” **The Bag** “I’m feeling like this is a track for the shows. I can imagine performing at a festival with the whole crowd going crazy. When I made ‘Day in the Life’ in April \[2020\] and released it in June, I didn’t have any songs similar to follow it up with; I just dropped it and planned to go with the flow. So it was back to the studio. I’d been making music for a minute but just not this particular style. I had to throw myself in at the deep end and this was one of the tracks that I came up with.” **Day in the Life** “This track changed my life. Honestly, it’s a legendary song for me. I made it at a studio in the ends with maybe 10 man in there at the time. I had Box12 and A2anti, and a few other rappers from my area. I think I fed off the energy present that day—and the track’s come out crazy. Listening back to it, it was obvious that the ‘DBE’ (D-Block Europe) line would be controversial, but that wasn’t intentional. Especially because of the way I wrote it: listening to the beat playing in my car. I was recording voice notes along to it—freestyling, bar after bar, and it’s rolling off my tongue. So I definitely didn’t intend to call anyone out, but I realise that’s what it looked like and it was kind of p\*\*sing me off. So I had to address it later on \[2020 single\] ‘Molly’.” **Dun Deal** “When I’m writing songs there are probably three states of mind that I could be in; how I feel in the current moment, and sometimes I put my mind in the past, and other times it’s in the future. On this one I was putting my mind in the future and talking from that perspective. I say on the hook, ‘You could have done what I’ve done, but you ain’t on what I’m on’. I hadn’t really done much at the time, but I just knew that I was going to do *something*.” **Commitment Issues** “I remember being really frustrated when I made this track. Mainly because I was feeling like all of the producers I was working with had heard ‘Day in the Life’ and kept playing me drill beats. And I was still new to music then, I had a big song out but didn\'t really know if this was even what I wanted to do—go straight with *this* drill tempo. I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t end up being a limitation to me because I have all these different concepts in my head. So I said, ‘Let’s make a song for the girls. Let’s take a drill beat with a completely different concept.’ I don’t think I’ve really heard anything like this track and I knew if done right, then it would be a hit.” **Sex Money Drugs** “On the opening line I say, ‘I could have been laid up with shorty/But fuck it, the grind’s more important’. That’s what I was on that night. I really had to tell myself: ‘Fuck it’ and convince myself that was where I wanted to be was the studio. I could have been enjoying life that night, but it’s true: the grind *is* more important.” **Ruby** “This song is a bit different to the rest, it’s a bit more hypothetical. I feel like my mind just opens to all the relationships and all of the crazy situations I’ve experienced and kind of mushes them into one.” **Hate It Or Luv It** “Writing these songs is almost like a diary for me now, a chance to get things off my chest. I’m not sure where it comes from but I’m quite observant. I’ve always been that way. I can learn from other people\'s mistakes—whether that’s people around me, or people I don’t know that I see out at the pub. A lot of people have to learn the hard way before it becomes real. I think I can clock where someone’s going wrong and take a piece out of their book. With the way things are going for me right now I need that.” **Xmas Eve** “I feel like this is one of the gassiest on the tape for sure. It was a bit of a process to making this one too. I was putting lyrics together to a couple of different beats but to lay it down, I had to find the right one for it. Finally, I found the one that was just right for it and from there, I knew what time it was.” **Loading** “I knew this was big when I made it but we didn’t know it was top 20 \[in the UK singles chart\] big. And it all started from hitting the studio with the guys. They helped me find this one, flicking through beats. They let me know me know that I had to go with this one, and I wrote it up quick, in minutes and everyone liked it. I knew it was for sure a good song, I should say, not a *big* song.” **Tension** “This was produced by \[London producer\] BKay and recorded at \[London studio\] Wendy House. It’s in the ends but it’s a high-profile studio: real fancy and the booth is mad big, it’s just not what I’m used to. I’m used to more smaller spaces with the booth in the same room and shit. But at the same time, I feel like that environment rubs off on me and sometimes adds to what I’m saying. I wrote this on that day. I used to write most of my songs in the car because I could put the speakers up loud. I made ‘Day in the Life’ and other songs in my car—that was the best way for me, but then I lost my license and I haven’t been able to since!” **Gangbiz** “I didn’t write this as the outro but it works perfectly. It’s a bit of a summary, and it touches on more personal subjects, stuff I didn’t want to talk about too much on this tape. I do have a lot more heartfelt songs sitting in my notes, but I’m waiting for the next tape or for the right time to drop. On this one—I feel it gives a good balance between the jumpy drill sound and me telling my story. It works well to close out the tape.”

In 2019, Digga D’s “No Diet”—lifted from debut mixtape *Double Tap Diaries*—became a defining anthem of London’s sweeping drill sound. Armed with its explicitly instructional hook, the track stormed viral charts and workout playlists and looked set to pull the rapper a chair up at UK rap’s top table. This was all despite a 2018 order requiring him to receive police permission before releasing music, and forbidding the usage of certain lyrical terms and references. Life would get more complicated, however, soon after the success of “No Diet”. “I’m in jail—listening to all of these new rappers, thinking to myself: ‘They *all* sound like me!’” he tells Apple Music. “I’m hearing my ad-libs, and even my lyrics. That was happening.” *Made In The Pyrex* sees Digga D mount a defense of his status, celebrate his freedom and toast an insatiable creative drive. “I could be in the middle of anything,” he says. “If I find the right stimulus, I’ll write.” Stimuli are in no short supply here. He fires out vivid, street fantasies (“Woi”), cleans up online dating rumours (“Toxic”) and lays subtle jabs at challengers for fun (“My Brucky”). Fueled by a desire to finally express himself clearly despite his eventful rise, this second mixtape presents Digga D in his purest form. “We’re in the right place, right now,” he says. “We’ve even got Drake on drill now—it’s global. And it’s only gonna get bigger.” Below, Digga D talks us through his *Made In The Pyrex*, track by track. **Intro** “People have been saying I need to rap more, so I wanted to drop a lil’ verse with a funny chorus, just for them. It feels important to say that about half of this mixtape was written in jail.” **Bluuwuu** “‘Five jails in one year’—that line is all facts. I think I wrote this track when I was in \[HM Prison\] Pentonville. This one is for the streets. I tried to be a little playful with the approach but it’s still definitely for the streets.” **Chingy (It’s Whatever)** “This one’s a simple vibe, really. I guess I was brought up listening to all kinds of music and that included lots of old-school rap. Well, old school to me, and one I definitely remember hearing was ‘Right Thurr’ by Chingy. So, we decided to sample that. It’s a really, really catchy track, and now it’s my chorus.” **Bringing It Back \[Digga D & AJ Tracey\]** “Working with AJ just felt natural. We have different ways of going about our crafts, though. I’d say I’m less methodical than he is, but when we put it together it works well.” **No Chorus (feat. M1llionz)** “When I heard M1llionz was close by with his guys, we all linked up. The studio was right around the corner, so it all made sense. Now we’re sitting down. thinking of how we needed a sick chorus, and said, ‘Bun this. We don’t need no chorus.’” **Woi** “I made this in a cell with Unknown T last year. I could tell it was a vibe from T’s reaction, and everyone else’s after. From that I knew this would be my fresh home track.” **Clout Is Killing My People** “It’s like the title says. It’s as simple as that, literally. I did want to make this into a longer track but that would’ve caused a lot of mess that I didn’t want to get into.” **Folknem (feat. Sav’O & ZK)** “This one with Sav’O and ZK \[fellow members of the CGM hip-hop collective\] represents how we’ve been together in this game for so long. We actually met a youth club. We all bring individual styles and a bit of our cultures to the table. You’ve got Moroccan, Trinidadian and Jamaican culture, all mixed in one group of musicians.” **My Brucky** “When I was in jail, I had the G-Unit album \[2003’s *Beg for Mercy*\] with me and I would play ‘My Buddy’, over and over again. I guess it was stuck in my brain from there. So when I sampled the track, I wanted this to be a rap beat too.” **Gun Man Sound** “I’m just expressing myself as best as I can. All the crazy ad-libs and extras I think of at crazy times—like when I’m playing \[Call of Duty:\] Warzone. Inspiration for rhymes can come to me at any time. Even if I’m playing Warzone, I’ll jump off, write it down and I’ll get back to it later.” **Window** “I was going through beats and this one stood out straight away. I have to find the right kind of beats that I’m looking for because sometimes it feels like no-one will ever know the right sound for me. Sometimes I don’t even know myself. I don’t even know sometimes so how can anybody else? I feel like this has taken me so far, so I’ll keep doing whatever I want. If you wanna rock with it, then you can.” **Trust Issues (I’m Joking I Trust My Mum)** “This was a deep one. It’s something I really wanted to speak on too, just to be the one to shed light on what’s really going on out here. I have trust issues, and a lot of us do. In fact I think my trust issues have gotten worse!” **Toxic** “This track came about because somehow, I just kept ending up on the blogs! You know which ones. And then, I’d have girls hitting me up saying: ‘You’re toxic! You’re toxic!’ Constantly! So I’m feeling like it’s just easier to own it. Like, ‘What now?’”

That motherhood is transformative is an understatement. For those who have the experience, it can change who they are and how they perceive the world, with fresh eyes, an open heart, and a devotion so deep it feels like being unmade. Thus, it\'s fitting that Cleo Sol’s *Mother* begins with a monument to maternal love—its abundant patience and grace for which she has a new understanding. “The train never stopped, never had time to unpack your trauma,” the British singer-songwriter croons gently on the opening track, “Don’t Let Me Fall.” “Keep fighting the world, that’s how you get love, mama.” Likewise, “Heart Full of Love” is an ode to her own child (who adorns the cover) that strives to portray both the power of that singular feeling and the gratitude that’s leveled her in its presence: “Thank you for sending me an angel straight from heaven, when my hope was gone, you made me strong...Thank you for being amazing, teaching me to hold on.” The rest of *Mother* unfurls like a letter addressed to a little one who, once removed from the safety of the womb, may come to know cruelty more often than mercy. On the piano-laden centerpiece “We Need You,” she pours into whoever may hear it a reminder of their worth, while a choir summons the divine. “We need your heart, we need your soul,” they sing, “we need your strength through this cold world, we need your voice, speak your truth.” Similar affirmations pepper the album, as Cleo imbues the lyrics with a tenderness that lands like a hug; her voice itself is so elegant and serene these songs, despite the lushness of the instrumentation, nearly resemble lullabies. It’s easy to be given to pessimism, but what she offers here is a balm, brimming with the kind of compassionate optimism that only new life can bring.

“I’ve had a lot of controversies in my short period being an artist,” slowthai tells Apple Music. “But I always try making a statement.” In 2019, there was the Northampton rapper’s establishment-rattling appearance at the Mercury Prize ceremony, hoisting of an effigy of Boris Johnson’s severed head. A few months later, sexualized comments he made to comedian Katherine Ryan at the 2020 NME Awards caused a fierce Twitter backlash and prompted the Record Store Day 2020 campaign to withdraw an invitation for slowthai to be its UK ambassador. Ryan labeled their exchange “pantomime” but it led to a confrontation with an audience member and slowthai’s apology for his “shameful actions.” Since releasing his 2019 debut *Nothing Great About Britain*, then, the artist born Tyron Frampton has known the unforgiving heat of public judgment. It’s helped forge *TYRON*, a follow-up demarcated into two seven-track sides. The first is brash, incendiary, and energized, continuing to draw a through line between punk and UK rap. The second is vulnerable and introspective, its beats more contemplative and searching. The overarching message is that there are two sides to every story, and even more to every human being. “We all have the side that we don’t show, and the side we show,” he says. “Living up to expectations—and then not giving a fuck and just being honest with yourself.” Featuring guests including Skepta, A$AP Rocky, James Blake, and Denzel Curry, these songs, he hopes, will offer help to others feeling penned in by judgment, stereotypes, or a lack of self-confidence. “I just want them to realize they’re not alone and can be themselves,” he says. “I know that when shit gets dark, you need a little bit of light.” Explore all of slowthai’s sides with his track-by-track guide. **45 SMOKE** “‘Rise and shine, let’s get it/Bumbaclart dickhead/Bumbaclart dickhead.’ It’s like the wake-up call for myself. It’s how you feel when you’re making constant mistakes, or you’re in a rut and you wake up like, ‘I really don’t want to wake up, I’d rather just sleep all day.’ It’s explaining where I’m from, and the same routine of doing this bullshit life that I don’t want to do—but I’m doing it just for the sake of doing it or because this is what’s expected of me.” **CANCELLED** “This song’s a fuck-you to the cancel culture, to people trying to tear you down and make it like you’re a bad person—because all I’ve done my whole life is try and escape that stereotype, and try and better myself. You can call me what you want, you can say what you think happened, but most of all I know myself. Through doing this, I’ve figured it out on a deeper level. When we made this, I was in a dark place because of everything going on. And Skep \[Skepta, co-MC on this track\] was guiding me out. He was saying, ‘Yo, man, this isn’t your defining moment. If anything, it pushes you to prove your point even more.’” **MAZZA** “Mazza is ‘mazzalean,’ which is my own word... It\'s just a mad thing. It’s for the people that have mad ADHD \[slowthai lives with the disorder\], ADD, and can’t focus on something—like how everything comes and it’s so quick, and it’s a rush. It’s where my head was at—be it that I was drinking a lot, or traveling a lot, and seeing a lot of things and doing a lot of dumb shit. Mad time. As soon as I made it, I FaceTimed \[A$AP\] Rocky because I was that gassed. We’d been working here and there, doing little bits. He was like, ‘This is hard. Come link up.’ He was in London and I went down there and \[we\] just patterned it out.” **VEX** “It’s just about being angry at social media, at the fakeness, how everyone’s trying to be someone they’re not and showing the good parts of their lives. You just end up feeling shit, because even if your life’s the best it could be, it just puts in your head that, ‘Ah, it could always be better.’ Most of these people aren’t even happy—that’s why they\'re looking for validation on the internet.” **WOT** “I met Pop Smoke, and that night I recorded this song. It was the night he passed. The next morning, I woke up at 6 am to go to the Disclosure video shoot \[for ‘My High’\] and saw the news. I was just mad overwhelmed. Initially, I’d linked up with Rocky, making another tune, but he didn’t finish his bit. \[slowthai’s part\] felt like it summed it up the energies—it was like \[Pop Smoke’s\] energy, just good vibes. I felt like I wouldn\'t make it any longer because it’s straight to the point. As soon as it starts, you know that it’s on.” **DEAD** “We say ‘That’s dead’ as in it’s not good, it’s shit. So I was like, ‘Yo, every one of these things is dead to me.’ There’s a line, ‘People change for money/What’s money with no time?’ That’s aimed at people saying I changed because I gained success. It’s not that I’ve changed, but I’ve grown or grown out of certain things. It’s not the money that changed me, it’s understanding that doing certain things is not making me any better. If I’m spending all my time working on bettering myself and trying to better my craft, the money’s irrelevant. I don’t even have the time to spend it. So it’s just like saying everything’s dead. I’m focusing on living forever through my music and my art.” **PLAY WITH FIRE** “Even though we want to move far away from situations and circumstances, we keep toying with the idea \[of them\]. It plays on your mind that you want to be in that position. ‘PLAY WITH FIRE’ is the letting go as well as trying to hold on to these things. When it goes into \[next track\] ‘i tried,’ it’s like, ‘I tried to do all these things, live up to these expectations and be this person, but it wasn’t working for me.’ And on the other foot, I *tried* all these things. I can’t die saying I didn’t. You have to love everything for how it is to understand it, and try and move on. You’ve got to understand something for the negative before you can really understand the positive.” **i tried** “‘Long road/Tumble down this black hole/Stuck in Sunday league/But I’m on levels with Ronaldo.’ It’s saying it’s been a struggle to get here. And even still, I feel like I’m traveling into a void. You feel like you’re sinking into yourself—be it through taking too many drugs or drinking too much and burying yourself in a hole, just being on autopilot. It’s coming to that understanding, and dealing with those problems. It’s \[about\] boosting my confidence and my true self: ‘Yo, man, you’re the best. If this was football, you’d be the Ballon d’Or winner.’ We always look at what we think we should be like. We never actually look at who we are, and what our qualities are. ‘I’ve got a sickness/And I’m dealing with it.’ I’m trying. I\'m trying every avenue, and with a bit of hope and a bit of luck, I can become who I want to be.” **focus** “From the beginning, even though I’m in this pocket of people and this way of life, I’ve always known to go against that grain. I didn’t ever want to end up in jail. You either get a trade or you end doing shit and potentially you end in jail. A lot of people around me, they’re still in that cycle. And this is me saying, ‘Focus on some other shit.’ I come from the shit, and I pushed and I got there. And it was through maintaining that focus.” **terms** “It’s the terms and conditions that come with popularity and...fame. I don’t like that word. I hate words like ‘fad’ and ‘fame.’ They make me cringe so much. Maybe I’ve got something against words that begin with F. But it’s just dealing with what comes with it and how it’s not what you expected it to be. The headache of being judged for being a human being. Once you get any recognition for your art, you’re no longer a human—you’re a product. Dominic \[Fike, guest vocalist\] sums it up beautifully in the hook.” **push** “‘Push’ is an acronym for ‘praying until something happens.’ When you’re in a corner, you’ve got to keep pushing. Even when you’re at your lowest. That’s all life is, right? It’s a push. Being pulled is the easy route, but when you’re pushing for something, the hard work conditions your mind, strengthens you physically and spiritually, and you come out on top. I used to be religious—when my brother passed, when I was young. I asked for a Bible for my birthday, which was some weird shit. Through this project…it’s not faith in God, but my faith in people, it’s been kind of restored, my faith in myself. Everyone I work with on this, they’re my friends, and they’re all people that have helped me through something. And Deb \[Never, guest vocalist\]—we call each other twins. She’s my sister that I’ve known my whole life but I haven’t known my whole life.” **nhs** “It’s all about appreciation. The NHS—something that’s been doing work for generations, to save people—it’s been so taken for granted. It’s a place where everyone’s equal and everyone’s treated the same. It takes this \[pandemic\] for us to applaud people who have been giving their lives to help others. They should have constant applause at the end of every shift. We’re out here complaining and always wanting more. I don’t know if it’s a human defect or just consumerism, but you get one thing and then you always want the next best thing. I do it a lot. And there’s never a best one, because there’s always another one. Just be happy with what you’ve got. You\'ll end up having an aneurysm.” **feel away** “Dom \[Maker, co-producer and one half of Mount Kimbie\] works with James \[Blake\] a lot. They record a bunch of stuff, chop it up and create loops. I was going through all these loops, and I was like, ‘This one’s the one.’ As soon as we played it, I had lyrics and recorded my bit. I’ve loved James from when I was a kid at school and was like, ‘We should get James.’ We sent it to him, and in my head, I was like, ‘Ah, he’s not going to record on it.’ But the next day, we had the tune. I was just so gassed. I dedicated it to my brother passing. But it’s about putting yourself in your partner’s shoes, because through experiences, be it from my mum or friends, I’ve learnt that in a lot of relationships, when a woman’s pregnant, the man tends to leave the woman. The woman usually is all alone to deal with all these problems. I wanted it to be the other way around—the woman leaves the man. He’s got to go through all that pain to get to the better side, the beauty of it.” **adhd** “When I was really young, my mum and people around me didn’t really believe in \[ADHD\]—like, ‘It’s a hyperactive kid, they just want attention.’ They didn’t ever see it as a disorder. And I think this is my way of summarizing the whole album: This is something that I’ve dealt with, and people around me have dealt with. It’s hard for people to understand because they don’t get why it’s the impulses, or how it might just be a reaction to something that you can’t control. You try to, but it’s embedded in you. It’s just my conclusion—like at the end of the book, when you get to the bit where everything starts making sense. I feel like this is the most connected I’ve been to a song. It’s the clearest depiction of what my voice naturally sounds like, without me pushing it out, or projecting it in any way, or being aggressive. It’s just softly spoken, and then it gets to that anger at the end. And then a kiss—just to sweeten it all up.”

“Fifth records are actually a lot of people’s best records,” James Blake tells Apple Music. “You’ve had all the practice of making albums, taken a few different directions, and by then have usually reached your thirties where you’ve got a bunch of stuff out of your system. So you finally decide to just be yourself. And suddenly, everyone’s thrilled.” *Friends That Break Your Heart* is Blake’s fifth album. While he’s too coy to personally anoint it his best work, the record does feel invigoratingly apart from the North London-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s first four. There’s the emotional payload of any Blake enterprise, but here he detonates through an earthier and more unguarded sonic arsenal. “It’s the most direct songwriting of anything I’ve done,” he says. “Whether it’s a sad song or an uplifting song, each emotion I’ve gone for is a more raw version of that thing on at least the last two records. I was working stuff out on those records, and I am here, too, but at 32, I’m starting to become more sure of myself in lots of ways. This record is very sure of itself.” The title here suggests a twist on a classic breakup album—a documentation of how we negotiate non-romantic partings. “There doesn’t seem to be a protocol for how to treat someone who’s breaking up with a friend,” he says. “We’re expected to move on pretty quick from deep lifelong friendships. But you can’t make old friends, as they say.” Can the COVID-inspired events of 2020 and 2021 take the blame for the demise of certain relationships? “I think what’s happened partly makes the topic of this album so pertinent,” he says. “We lost some of the parameters that kept friendships together. And it’s been a time for analyzing and reflecting what the qualities in friends that you actually need in your life are—and facing up to your own failings as one. Being an infantilized C-list pop star doesn’t really set you up to be the best friend in the world. But also, when I needed them and help most, I realized that most of those people just didn’t know what to do.” Blake has been candid about requiring that help in the past, and fortunately, the various COVID lockdowns proved beneficial to the creation of this record—which had a positive knock-on effect for his mental health. “I realized that I actually have a lot of control over my mental health,” he says. “What the lockdowns did was force me to say, ‘I can actually do this. I can actually block this out, and actually lift myself out of certain things.’ Previously I’d relied on other means. And I think that allows music to flow easier because being present and overcoming mental ill health is good for creativity.” Below, Blake takes us through his beautiful album, track by track. **“Famous Last Words”** “I don\'t agonize over tracklisting. I think it\'s like a DJ set, and a DJ set needs its peaks and troughs and moments of reflection. I spend so long writing the actual song and producing the song, by the time it comes to sequencing the tracklist, I\'m like, ‘Oh god, just put it in an order, man.’ This isn\'t a love song. But it is kind of a love song. It\'s kind of a breakup song. It\'s weird. I think it blurs the line between friendship and romance. With friendships, it’s not necessarily that the feelings are romantic, but you can genuinely love someone and it hurt like that.” **“Life Is Not the Same”** “You meet some people and they can just have an effect on you. It could be that they just sparkle, and you’ve got no idea why, but you’re doing things differently, or saying different stuff to impress them, and it doesn’t mean you’re weak or easily influenced—well, maybe it means you’re easily influenced a little bit—but it takes a special person to do that. I can take accountability for being willing to bend for someone. Certain people, for example, have taught me that I needed to develop a thicker skin and that I was too ready to give up control to someone else. I clearly needed to have more self-belief, because if I was so easily swayed then maybe I’d miscalculated my own self-worth.” **“Coming Back” (feat. SZA)** “I was doing a session with \[US artist and songwriter\] Starrah, who casually mentioned SZA was going to come by the studio. So I played her a bunch of stuff, she sang over it, and we hit it off straight away. It took a while to figure out how to produce what we landed on, though. Long story short: My production wasn’t hitting. You could hear that SZA and I sounded good together—but I hadn’t figured out how to best support her vocal because it was a song with no chorus. We are used to those structures as a society, so when you start taking apart those structures, you’ve really got to replace it properly. A bit like gluten-free bread. I realized I needed to put a donk on it, essentially. I just had to make it more banger-y. I tried doing the ambient thing, I tried making it really beautiful, and it didn’t work. I have it in my locker, and occasionally that power needs to be drawn upon.” **“Funeral”** “This song is all me, done on a very sunny but slightly miserable day. I was thinking about how it feels not to be heard, and to worry that people have given up on you. During lockdown I specifically felt that. It had been many years since I had really popped up and done forward-facing stuff like interviews.” **“Frozen” (feat. JID & SwaVay)** “Quite a spooky instrumental, and my vocals come in a little off-kilter, a little creepy. JID and SwaVay kill it over a beat I actually originally wrote for JID. It ended up not really fitting his record, which I found very lucky because secretly I wanted it for myself. It felt a bit like when you set someone up to cancel on you—my favorite feeling. Jameela \[Jamil, Blake’s partner and co-producer on the album\] suggested putting SwaVay on it because I’d been working with him for a couple of years. Totally right. Good A&R instincts.” **“I\'m So Blessed You\'re Mine”** “The album is sort of split between these Frankenstein’s monsters that were very exciting to put together and songs that happened very quickly. This was somewhere in the middle, and I got to work with some of my favorite people on it—Khushi, Dominic Maker, Josh Stadlen, Jameela. I want to get out of the way so we end up with the best piece of music we can make. And maybe have a nice chat about something before we start. There was no chatting back on album one, say, because I had way too much social anxiety.” **“Foot Forward”** “Metro Boomin is back! He knows I’m often into his more esoteric stuff so played me this piano sample he’d made on the MPC \[music production center\] that sounded like it was from the ’70s but had this Metro-y bounce on it. I started improvising in the studio, and I remember seeing him dancing in the booth because it sounded so up. It felt very anthemic. Eventually I turned it into a song with Frank Dukes and Ali Tamposi—another genius who wrote the chorus melody.” **“Show Me” (feat. Monica Martin)** “Monica is an incredible singer and incredible person—she’s fucking hilarious, and we’ve become friends. The song felt quite bare without her. It needed someone to step in, and it had to be exactly the right person, otherwise it’s not going to work. Again, Jameela made the suggestion. She came into the studio with Khushi and I, did the take in exactly the way I imagined, and it was glorious. I was just so excited, she was excited, it was a lovely moment.” **“Say What You Will”** “Ah, those those dreamy ’60s vibes. This is my favorite song I’ve written in years. It’s the song that carries the most meaning in terms of my overall life. It’s more representative of my headspace as a whole, and I like songs that have a wider commentary baked into them. I was pleased with the reaction to it because I really tried to communicate where I am right now in an authentic way. At this point in my career, it can’t be any other way. The formula to putting a song out has never changed. A good song will out in every single scenario. It needs to resonate with people, or it will disappear. And I know that feeling—I have released songs that for whatever reason have not resonated with people.” **“Lost Angel Nights”** “It’s about a lot of things, but primarily it’s about worrying that you’ve missed your shot. And *maybe* there’s a little bit of finger-pointing in there as well. The way people take your original essence, copy it and move on, really. I’ve been super lucky in my career, but I think there was a time where there was a lot of looking at what the shiny new thing is, doing that, then moving on. You don’t need them anymore. It happens to a lot of people, but you have to contend with being a permanent person, a permanent artist. I want to be here for as long as I can and be as naturalistic and true to myself as I can be, and what other people do doesn’t affect that.” **“Friends That Break Your Heart”** “Perhaps weirdly, it was album title first, then this song. I wrote the melody in the car on the way to meet \[US songwriter and producer\] Rick Nowels. There were a couple of others that we didn’t put onto the record, but this one was just standout right away. It was a really fun process, because he just played the keys and I was left to singer-songwriter duties for once. The line ‘I have haunted many photographs’ is something we can hopefully all relate to—well, hopefully not, actually, because that would be terrible, but I feel like that’s a common feeling.” **“If I\'m Insecure”** “I like to go out on something either where it’s all harmonies or it just feels huge. This is the latter. It’s an apocalyptic love song—the world is ending, but you’re in love, so it’s all right. Which maybe captures where we are as a society in 2021, so perhaps I’ll come to think of this record as one big externalization of my COVID experience, but that wasn’t the original intention. I make a load of music and then eventually realize, ‘Oh, yes, roughly, it was about this.’”

In 2001, Mexican cartel boss Joaquín \"El Chapo\" Guzmán famously escaped a maximum-security prison. Twenty years later, the rapper with a nickname (“Trapo”) inspired by Guzmán was looking for his own piece of freedom following his 2020 debut album *Street Side Effects*. “I was overthinking the music, the lyrics, the beats—I was in a bad way,” K-Trap tells Apple Music. “So I took some time. Now I’m back to doing whatever I want—and it’s working.” *Trapo* sees the South London MC return to his mixtape roots (a time known as his “masked era,” before abandoning the disguise in 2019), make use of some blistering drill cuts from the sound’s top architects (M1onthebeat, Ghosty), and lift up a pick of rising, hungry MCs—many also from the South London borough of Lambeth, which lays claim to birthing the UK’s drill sound. “For a long time, it wasn’t like this,” he says of rising up. “Here, it all seemed like a myth. But as soon as we started to see people from close to our reality make moves, like Krept & Konan and 67, that inspired a lot of talent here growing up. So I’m doing the same for those that I can.” Read on for K-Trap’s track-by-track guide to his fourth mixtape—and some of that blistering talent. **“Warm”** “This is \[British presenter and comedian\] Yung Filly speaking on the intro. It’s from a voice note that he sent me when I dropped this song—it’s his joint, so I felt like I had to have him here.” **“Pick ’n’ Mix”** “This is one of my favorites, and it’s maybe a bit of a different one for me. It is drill, just not as dark, but it’s all about the wordplay on this one.” **“Maths”** “DoRoad is my bro. He’s from Gipsy Hill, too. Although he’s been in and out of music, he’s now here to stay, trust me, he’ll go far, he’s a one of one. The hook on this, ‘Tell me if you really do road, tell me if you really do trap,’ I’ve had in mind for ages, waiting for this track.” **“Tape Night”** “I feel like I got in my bag here. It works well sometimes when there isn’t too much thinking, I’m just putting words together.” **“Ying”** “This is another linkup that my fans have been asking for. Look out for PR SAD—I think he’s cold, and he’s coming up quickly.” **“Elon Musk”** “This beat is by a young producer that hit me up on Twitter and I gave him a chance. I think it’s sick, it charged me up to write to it—and I guess during lockdown Elon Musk was always coming up, it’s like he was stuck in my head.” **“Billie Jean”** “I had a good time working with Lotto Ash on this one. At times, I find the music game weird and the rappers even weirder, but I really rate him. It was our first time meeting, and it was great. We bounced ideas and got straight to work on some hard \[M1onthebeat\] production.” **“Love It”** “I made two more songs the night I recorded this with \[UK producer\] Ghosty that didn’t end up making this project. It was late, and at this point, he’d already left the studio. So I hooked up the beat and recorded this right at the end of the sessions.” **“Addiction”** “We had to get creative on this one. The vocals under the beat might sound like a sample, but trust me, it’s not; we got a singer in to lay some vocals down. My managers, engineers, and the rest of the team, we all chip in and get it done—that’s just how we work.” **“Free C Roy”** “Firstly, C Roy is a serious man—he was my manager when I first started rapping. And similar to me, he didn’t know much about what he was doing, but he was *there*. He was supportive and he’s in all my early videos. I spoke to him the day I recorded this, and he thought I was lying when I mentioned the title. He’ll find out soon.” **“Intentions”** “This is another one of my favorites. I dunno, it’s like this beat takes me somewhere. Sometimes people only wanna hear one side of things, but you have to provide a more conscious side. It’s necessary.” **“She Wanna”** “This is one of the last songs made. At this point I knew I definitely needed a song for the ladies, but I know I wasn’t about to make a lovey song, and eventually I worked this concept—I know there’s girls out there that relate to this fully.” **“RRR”** “This one’s hard. I really like how DoRoad and Youngs Tef come in. We all bring our own unique styles, flows and deliveries to this.” **“Trending”** “With fashion, I’m only going to tell you about what I’m into. In the past, I’ve mentioned brands that you won’t see me wearing now, but it is what it is, you can’t rub it out, that’s part of the come-up.” **“Help”** “This track sums me up as an artist: As much as I’ll tell you about the crud and all of that stuff, I’ll tell you what it comes with. When you hear ‘Help,’ from anyone, it’ll make you stop and think more about life. This track is the story of so many others, and it started out as one line and grew and grew.” **“Fighting”** “This track is me getting a little bit more off my chest, to close the mixtape. Truthfully, I’m fighting a battle, man—but I’m understanding a key fact of life: It will carry on. No matter what. This game ain’t based on sympathy.”

Like so much of our lives, M1llionz’s debut mixtape, *Provisional License*, didn’t go entirely to plan. Born Miguel Rahiece Cunningham, the rapper’s early career almost entirely spanned a pandemic. To build up over a year’s worth of thriving material and never perform live is a bizarre turn of events, but fortunately, for M1llionz, it’s been the making of him. “Coming through in the last few years means you don\'t know what to expect,” M1llionz tells Apple Music. “People tell you, but you need to experience it for yourself. You\'re seeing all these people that know your songs and everybody\'s been indoors for like two years listening and taking note of what\'s going on.” Even in the booth, he had to learn quickly. He confesses that it wasn’t until April 2020’s “Y PREE” (his fifth solo single and sixth overall) that he felt confident enough to pursue music as anything more than a hobby. This, it has to be mentioned, was three months *after* he delivered one of the most swaggering, self-assured freestyles for Kenny Allstar’s Voice of the Streets series. It’s tempting to wonder whether that confidence stems from being so vividly different from his UK rap contemporaries. Everything from his flow to the beat selections to the way he carries himself seems unique. Does he feel part of the drill scene? “I don\'t think so at all,” he says. “The beats have that drill influence, but my flow and my content? Not at all.” The influence of drill does ring through this tape—thanks in part to the influence of producers including Bkay, Ghosty, Honeywoodsix, and Jevon—but just like the garage-owing “B1llionz” and the dancehall-soaked “Y PREE,” there’s so much more to M1llionz’s *Provisional License* than 808s and hi-hats. Here he walks us through his debut mixtape, track by track. **“Intro”** “This was produced by Jevon and Honeywoodsix. I had most of the songs for the tape, but everybody was saying I needed an intro. So I went in and wrote it there and then. We switched up the beat a couple of times—at first, the intro is slower, the second beat\'s a bit more jumpy, then by the third beat, it gets even crazier. I wanted it to build up to lead into the second song.” **“Pedestrian”** “This track was produced by H1K at the end of 2019. So, to be fair, I can\'t remember specifically, remember how that went, but I do remember that when I did record it, everybody liked it, but I just didn\'t end up releasing it. So, obviously, I saved it and for whatever reason I held on to it all this time, and it turned out to be the right decision.” **“Bando Spot”** “This is one of the more catchy tracks. It\'s jumpy, there\'s a lot of flow changes, and it\'s a bit different for me as well, because my personality comes out on this one. It’s a nice one to get the party going as well. As for the 50 Cent \[‘Candy Shop’\] sample, that was my idea. I was in the studio with Honeywood and I started singing the hook, he said, ‘Yo, you might as well just sample that,’ and it just worked.” **“Air BnB” (feat. Headie One)** “I was in the studio and decided I wanted Headie One on a song. So I did my bits in the day and I linked him later in the night and he filled in his bits. It’s a natural one when you hear that one. In the studio, it sounded mad. Everyone says it’s one of the best songs on here, but I don\'t know.” **“Badnis”** “I started recording this a little while ago, but it wasn’t quite there, something was missing. Then, when we got the voice note of the yard man talking about guns and placed that at the start of the intro, I think that sealed the song. The intro adds a bit of character to it and sets the scene for what I’m talking about.” **“Mobbin”** “I want this one to be like \[2020 single\] ‘Lagga,’ basically. Obviously, it’s not on here, so I haven’t got a mad, head-banging, crazy go-nuts song; hopefully that\'s what this does. It’s something for people to smash up the house to, basically. I didn’t want to recreate it exactly, but I wanted something similar for this tape.” **“Provisional License” (feat. AJ Tracey)** “The sample alone brings the tune up, but the lyrics and the hook are very catchy, too. There\'s a bit more meaning to this one. I’m saying my mum wants me to be surrounded by different people, positive people, but I\'m obviously doing what I\'m doing. Don’t get me wrong, she’s happy for me, but she was unsure at first. Obviously, every parent\'s going to be like that, but I think it\'s more the content of what I’m saying. After a while, she realized it’s just entertainment, isn\'t it? So she\'s going to be happy either way.” **“Jail Brain”** “I wrote some of this in jail, the first bit at least. So it would have been like 2019. I like the beat and I feel like I’m just flowing for ages. I only recorded the first bit, but \[British producer\] Bkay was like, ‘Yo, you need to finish it, finish it, finish it.’ So when I went to America at the end of 2020, I ended up finishing it. It\'s aimed at the ladies, but at the same time, men can relate to it also. It’s just life.” **“How Many Times” (feat. Lotto Ash)** “I was sent this track with the chorus already on it. So once I heard it, I said, ‘This is ridiculous. I need this.’ And I ended up recording it—it’s one of my favorites because it\'s a lot deeper than it appears. It\'s like people won’t realize how many times you\'ve done something or how many times you\'ve tried to elevate...it could be anything. People don\'t walk in your shoes, and you don\'t walk in other people’s. So neither side are really ever going to understand. You’ve just got to keep persevering and keep it going.” **“Adrenaline”** “I don\'t know, everyone thinks this track is mad, except for me. I just think it\'s a normal song. I did this ages ago, and even recorded a video in Dubai for it last year. Obviously, that didn\'t end up coming out, but I was convinced to have it on here.” **“Regular Bag”** “That was Jevon and Honeywood again. I think the flow change here is crazy. Each sequence I\'d do like a four-bar, change it to a completely different flow, and switch it again. The hook\'s catchy as well. It\'s like on ‘Adrenaline,’ but I think the verses are more lyrical.” **“Hometown” (feat. Jevon)** “This one’s definitely my favorite. It’s produced by Jevon, again, and it’s a deeper one to end on, to balance things out, and the hook from Jevon\'s really catchy.”

“We’re not new anymore,” Young Adz tells Apple Music. “We’ve dropped countless great bodies of work, and picked up platinum and gold singles—all independently. And I understand that when you first start popping, everything’s fresh, and it’s easy to get lost in the sauce for a minute. But this lifestyle: Cars, jewels, and trips is also not new to us, so it’s time that we get back to the music.” On their sixth full-length, the prolific South London collective (comprising Young Adz and Dirtbike LB) settle in with their status as kings of expansive, melodic UK rap. Originally formed in 2017 as a vehicle to draw the talented Adz back into the underground rap fold, DBE has built a hazy wonderland of Auto-Tune-layered confessionals, coupled with chilling lyricism and sordid imagery acquainted with the fast life. “We didn’t get our confidence from rap,” Young Adz says. “These personas come directly from the life we were living before we got into this.” Alongside recently freed affiliate Lil Pino, features for M Huncho, Tion Wayne, Central Cee, and Migos member Offset ensure the 23-track tape is a starry affair. “This is the same vibe and feel \[of the first installment\],” Young Adz says. “But we’re giving it to you times ten.” There’s some diverse subject matter here, though. The pair open up on getting clean from their vices and reiterate their faith in Islam (“Black Sheep”), and newlywed Adz revels in his loved-up status (“Don’t Go”). But at its core *Home Alone 2* reaffirms the group’s dominant, radio-owning sound and unrelenting drive, with wintry rap on their rising status (“No Competition”) and incomings (“UK Duty Paid”) while confronting their suffering and repression (“Money Can’t Buy,” “Patek Pain”). “The focus is on growth,” LB says of his expanding role within the group dynamic. “If we stay in the line that we’re in, then there will be none, so, wherever we are, we’re only trying to elevate.”

“If I watch something, it’s to get me away from the real world,” Blanco tells Apple Music. “I stay aware of that when I write and bring it to my music. So, even if lines seem abstract, trust me, the fictional and nonfictional always relate in some way. The details are intertwined.” On *City of God*, the London rapper encodes bright, swirling rhymes that call back to his troubled teenage years (as a member of Kennington drill collective Harlem Spartans), among a surreal inventory of the pop culture in which he found an escape. Much like the acclaimed Brazilian film that shares its title, Blanco’s debut full-length deals with cycles of violence, poverty, and loss of innocence across a hazy summer that ripped his crew apart. To capture the full picture, however, required the patience for several takes. “The hard part is saying ‘OK, it’s done,’” he says. “How can you tell? I think I’ve had to rewrite and record over on most of the songs here, because I want it perfect, every time. The first time is only the draft.\" On productions from 169, Sango, The Elements, and Alexay Beats, Blanco visits stuttering baile funk (“TSG”), hard-hitting drill (“Cerberus”), and spacious Afrobeat instrumentation (“Too Late”)—channeling the intensity of his coming-of-age in nonchalant style (“Talk like I’m 40, I’m 21/You ain’t been where I’ve been, ask anyone,” he declares on “Fala”). “I’m influenced by those that stay true to who they are,” he says. “Whether it’s artists, or characters from \[Japanese manga series\] *Naruto*. If you look at these titles, and the tempos, it’s all me being myself.” Here, he talks us through each track. **“Pain”** “This track is inspired by a character from *Naruto*. His name’s Nagato, but his alias is Pain, and he’s a character I can relate to in so many ways.” **“The Great Escape”** “At first, I was skeptical about jumping on this track, because I don’t see myself as a drill artist. I never did. It’s the sound that I started with, I guess, but everyone else kinda placed me there—I wasn’t set on it long-term. It was refreshing working with Cee, though—he’s really doing his thing on drill right now.” **“Asura & Indra”** “Working with Sango on this song was lit. We made maybe three songs, and this is the first out. The fans have been wanting us to work together for a *while*. Seriously, they would tag him \[online\] on my music more than any other producer. Asura and Indra are more characters from *Naruto*—they’re basically the founders of *everything*. Even if it looks like a show for kids, it’s complex and involves some real political battles.” **“Dennis Rodman”** “I used to follow basketball a little here and there, and a player I liked was Dennis Rodman. I like that he was his own man. So, why not dedicate a song to him? This is my first track with \[UK producer duo\] iLL BLU. They sent the beat and said, ‘Do whatever,’ and I took care of the rest.” **“Cerberus” (feat. K-Trap & Loski)** “If I could have had it my way, I would have released this project with no features. Then I thought, ‘Nah, these guys need to be on the project.’ I even had an idea to give them each separate songs, but I feel like this way is better.” **“Shippūden”** “Yeah, I know, another *Naruto* reference, flippin’ hell. I’ll never forget the night I wrote this song: I had another song prepared for this beat, it was weak, and I had a session the next day! I said to myself, ‘You’re not going in with this weak-ass song.’ So, I had a nap, woke up at 3:00 am, and stayed up until 5:30 am, just writing until I was happy with it.” **“Magneto”** “I heard Dave’s ‘Professor X’ \[on 2019’s *Top Boy* compilation of tracks inspired by the show\]. I was like, ‘This is a bop.’ And I like his thinking outside the box, so I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m \[Marvel Comics character\] Magneto. Let’s do it.’ Shout-out to \[UK producer\] 169—he turned up with this beat, and I knew it was the right one.” **“Time Out”** “This track just kinda happened to come together. I was with \[UK producer\] LiTek, and he whipped up this delicious beat. It just made me feel a way, man. I had to spit some truth to it. The voice on the intro is from an old Voice Note I received from \[deceased Harlem Spartans rapper\] Bis a few years ago. I heard it again recently and thought, ‘Yeah, I want this in.’” **“Fala”** “This is one of those songs where the beat determined everything that I say. I think I liked \[the beat\] so much, I recorded two versions at one point, but this here is the most recent version. ‘Fala’ is a Portuguese word; it means ‘Speech.’” **“Itachi”** “This is the last *Naruto* reference, man! Itachi is a fictional character who slaughtered his own race and spared his brother, for the better cause. Sounds crazy, but his ideology and intelligence I really admire.” **“Surveillance”** “For this track, it was good to see NSG at work \[in the studio\] and contrast it with myself. First, they get the harmony down—they figure out how it’s gonna sound, without lyrics, and they add those in later. And we also had to fit seven verses on the track, so there was discussion on where I would come in, and \[UK producers\] The Elements helped me find the perfect spot to jump in.” **“TSG”** “This is possibly my favorite song on the tape. I’ve been sitting on it since 2019. It’s just the beat—I love it. As soon as I hear a beat I’m feeling, I’m writing to it. I don’t waste a second. Tory Lanez does the same thing, I heard. You have to attack, straight away.” **“Too Late” (feat. Ama Lou)** “Ama Lou, people love her! I think she heard \[2020 single\] ‘Anakin’ and reached out to me about getting in the studio. It took a while, but finally we made it happen. She’s quite similar to me—she’s a perfectionist, too, and even though we only made two tracks before she had to fly to LA, we’ve planned to make more music, for sure. This is just a taster.” **“Safe Space”** “I’ve never really shown this side of me before. So, I nearly didn’t include it on this project. I thought, ‘Maybe it’ll suit the next one,’ then I had a last-minute change of heart.”

“I’m devoted to letting my voice be heard,” Shaybo tells Apple Music. “I’ll always tell it how it is. I’m not tolerating any rubbish or submitting to no one—and my music represents that.” On her debut mixtape, *Queen of the South*, the South London MC presents an unapologetic ode to Black womanhood and self-discovery. In her early teens, she connected with rap crews around London, which brought her into contact with Brixton MC Sneakbo, from whom she derived her stage name. She then followed her own path, underscored by releases including “Anger” and “Dobale”—a track celebrating her Nigerian roots—while confirming her pen game and earning co-signs from industry tastemakers. *Queen of the South* reflects both her hard exterior and a more sensitive side. “I’m speaking about everything women go through,” she says. “From domestic violence and abuse to heartbreak.” Written and recorded during lockdown, the collection chronicles Shaybo’s experiences during a time of transition—in the world and her personal life. “Making this music was about me understanding my journey and understanding me as a person,” she explains. “That’s why this tape is very raw. It’s very Shaybo from back in the day, before I got into the music industry and got a deal. It’s me before I changed and transitioned my life. I think that’s why it means so much.” Here, she guides us through her debut release, track by track. **“Real One”** “This track is all about the idea that guys need to be in charge, and they always have to run the show. I’m saying, ‘You guys are little boys to me.’ I’m all about female dominance and I wanted to start the project off with that message.” **“Friendly” (feat. Haile)** “I wrote this last year during lockdown with \[UK singer-songwriter\] Haile, about how I’m in the club. I’m not friendly. I see guys as temporary—unless you’re trying to be my husband and put a ring on it. Until then, there’s no point for me. That’s just my personality. I’m friendly to the right person, but until then, I’m fine standing alone. Society expects women to be quiet, submissive, and in the house. But you don’t have to. I’m trying to break society’s expectations and rules.” **“Bad Gyal”** “I can’t be tamed, so I want someone who understands that and can handle me. I only want real people around. I want people that will understand I can’t be silenced. You’re not going to teach me how to behave. I’m a bad girl, for real. This song is something girls can dance to in the club also. Lockdown is over now, and we’re out here. There’s going to be festivals, so I wanted a track that people can vibe to and feel the music.” **“Broke Boyz” (feat. DreamDoll)** “I’m a feminist, so this is another song on women empowerment. DreamDoll and I didn’t get the chance to meet as we made this song during lockdown. Shout-out to her, though—she’s definitely a real one and we bonded on that. It was also a pleasure to have an American feature because, I think, sometimes when we \[UK artists\] make music with Americans, they don’t share it, so I was just happy to see that my art was embraced from her end as well. She did *the most* for me, so I really appreciate that.” **“Dem Blues”** “This track is just me rapping and being cocky about it. I’m believing in my own sauce. I believe I’m the Queen of the South, I believe I’m hard, so it’s just me telling everyone, ‘Look at me now!’ I feel proud to have been able to change my situation. I’m such a workaholic and where I’m trying to take \[my music\] is bigger than just the UK, so I still have a lot more work to do. But I haven’t had time to just sit back and reflect on my journey and think, ‘Wow, look how much I’ve accomplished’ because I’ve been so busy trying to get this tape out.” **“Mud”** “I’m speaking about my pain on this song. I’m going through a transition period right now, and I’m not used to certain things that I’m dealing with. I’m not in the same environment that I used to be in, but that’s still where I come from. I made this to say, ‘I used to be a certain way, but I’m changing, I’m evolving, and I have to focus.’ My reasons for doing music are much bigger than myself. I’m trying to change my life and a lot of other people’s lives in the process.” **“My Sister” (feat. Jorja Smith)** “Jorja is my twin. We naturally get along and understand each other, so making this song was such a vibe. It wasn’t a difficult process whatsoever. I feel like every woman can relate to the things that I’m saying on this song, because women don’t speak about domestic violence, abuse, and the pain they\'ve gone through. We don’t explain why we have trust issues or why we’re traumatized, especially in the Black community. It’s not something that is spoken about enough, so I wanted to use my voice to put that out there.” **“No Worries” (feat. Wale)** “You know when you get to meet the people you look up to? This was that for me. Wale is an amazing person. He’s been so supportive of me throughout my journey. We met through my A&R, DJ Semtex, who he knows very well. So, we all sat in the studio and he loved ‘No Worries’ when he heard it, so it happened naturally. In the song, I’m reflecting on how much life has changed. I’m at peace now, and that’s something that he could relate to.” **“Carry & Go”** “I embrace my Nigerian culture, so I wanted to make a song that spoke to that. I’m speaking Yoruba in the song and experimenting with different things for a pop and Afrobeat sound. Again, I’m speaking on my heartbreak in a long-term relationship, where I went through so much disrespect and abuse, and then changing it and turning all of that into something happy. Women going through a breakup can just listen to this track and be reminded of their strength and be able to move on and do your own thing.” **“Good Time”** “I’m such a workaholic, and in lockdown I had to work ten times harder. I had to keep going through all of the restrictions. So, I wanted to make a song about the way I was feeling. I just want to live my life and be able to let go and be me. It’s crazy because, as I’m going through these songs, I’m realizing how much I’ve been writing about my experiences and what I’ve gone through in the past year.”