UK Not Grime or UK Rap, so what do you call it?

I was explaining to my friend what niches feel like 🤔

As someone who participated in radio, making music and getting played on 1Xtra under the tag name Mojo, one of the best feelings for me was creating music and wondering who was listening to it.

Over time, I realised that as a fan, I always felt artists who were lyrical, went against the grain and were unique in the way spoke about their perspective. I love championing people who are sick at storytelling and I definitely felt like my favourite UK artists no longer had to come from either Grime or Rap, I just appreciated people who can drop bars when it was showtime — you sharpen your skills in the playground, pirate radio or through clashing.

This year confirmed something for me, I will always appreciate UK lyricists.

In 2019, I started showcasing my taste in this music as I was learning to code under the theme #practise hours. It just felt boring coding in silence, music made the time pass and after so many people DM’ed me asking “who is this by?”

I thought to myself, I can do this for days.

I’m exploring what it means to be an artist again, but this time, doing it with side-projects by buildings things I want or know how to build because I have built them for myself or someone I care about. I’m also curious about tools that serve music creators and the cultural data that hasn’t really been unlocked in a useful way. I would code, but no-code tools give me the chance to design features rather than writing 100s of lines of code 🤷‍♂.

This space in music has got its own lane - it's not Grime or Rap but these man can drop hard-hitting bars on melodic beats and it feels like a beautiful science and as indie upcoming artists they haven’t got big backing but in 2019, many of these artists don’t need to. Get enough streams on something like Spotify, and you can be one of these secret millionaires.