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Grime

Burgaboy Lit Up the Luxe Life by Turning Drill, Grime, Garage and Bassline into a Summer Clubland Detonation with ‘Champagne and Restaurants’

Posted on 25 May 2026

After refusing to stylistically restrict his sound, Manchester’s Burgaboy has stormed from strength to strength, reaching his hard-hitting zenith with Champagne and Restaurants, a kinetic drop determined to send dancefloors into overload. Before Bassline became his language, hip-hop and R&B shaped his early world; one Manchester party shifted the frequency, and once the code clicked, he turned that energy into movement.

Champagne and Restaurants rampages through the intersections of drill, grime, garage, and Bassline, with bouncy techno-tinted happy hardcore elements acting as the catalyst of the anthem, which exhibits Burgaboy’s chameleonically expansive vocal range. From spitting tongue-in-cheek emcee vocal hooks to harmonising to bring soul into the mix, Burgaboy knows exactly how to make his hits high-octane in the most hedonically kinetic way possible.

The strobes of heat through Champagne and Restaurants against the sticky-sweet licks of lust make it the ultimate bass-heavy summer hit.

His vision now reaches beyond club edits and one-off moments. Burgaboy is building full Bassline bodies of work with the ambition to push the sound into album territory, treating it as a world-class force rather than a regional footnote. Manchester raised him, resilience sharpened him, and Bassline gave him the flag to raise.

Champagne and Restaurants is now available to stream on all major platforms, including SoundCloud.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

CRAZY JAMES struck alt-rap with asteroid-level force through ‘MAKE YOU BLUSH’ 

Posted on 7 April 2026
CRAZY JAMES

CRAZY JAMES more than lived up to his moniker with MAKE YOU BLUSH, a feral grime-leaning alt rap strike that lands with all the force of an asteroid ricocheting through the UK scene. Originally from Luton and now based in Milton Keynes, he has built his name through sheer discipline, sharp lyricism, and a refusal to rely on gimmicks, and that relentless self-built ascent feeds straight into the track’s uncompromising temperature.

MAKE YOU BLUSH is adrenalised with aggression, its bars sniping as they storm over the beat and hit their full force through dizzying instrumentals that leave your head in as much of a spin as JAMES’ delivery. The intensity feels cinematic, but never bloated; the slick production keeps the pressure high without letting the track tip into excess. It hits with the impact of being locked in a four-by-four room with a juggernaut on steroids. That same high-impact production runs across his LP, Unsigned & Unspoilt Vol 3.3, and here it proves why CRAZY JAMES has become one of the fiercest names circling independent UK rap.

With millions of YouTube views, strong Spotify numbers, BBC Introducing backing, and shows across Europe already under his belt, he is building this properly, release by release, with the kind of upward force the industry can’t shrug off.

MAKE YOU BLUSH is now available on SoundCloud. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

TC-EP – For Real: Tape-Deck Textures and Meditative Flow from a Diasporic Voice

Posted on 8 February 2026

TC-EP opens For Real by inviting you into a vibe-heavy headspace where introspection and textural scintillation take centre stage. In this saturation-rich mix, it almost feels as though he is soulfully waxing lyrical straight over a track lifted from a tape-deck. The wavy, warm lo-fi aesthetic instantly draws you in, giving a striking sense of intimacy while his meditative flow unfurls with the cheeky grit of grime, the dreamy transcendence of ambient electronica and the tempered soul and vibrance of Afrobeat. The rattles of the 808s sit against the choral ring of the guitars as they ascend through the mix, creating a juxtaposition that pulls you deeper into his vulnerable confessional on how reality bends, shifts and tries to shape itself around him. Through each bar, he moves across the contours of aspiration, desire and conviction with a style steeped in mindful wonder and raw self-possession.

What strengthens the release further is the foundation beneath it. Born in Zimbabwe, raised in Essex and now settled in London, TC-EP carries the sensibilities of the African diaspora into his sonic identity. His centre of gravity may be Hip-Hop, but he is of a generation for whom boundaries hold little meaning. His commitment to experimenting with new sounds, folding influences into each other and creating work that documents his short time on this strange spinning rock gives For Real an added emotional density.

The independent spirit, the genre-fusing instinct and the desire to express without inhibition all influence the atmosphere of the grounded single, which radiates warmth, playfulness and depth.

For Real is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Armor fixed raw truth into UK rap with Hood Anxiety

Posted on 15 January 2026

East London rapper Armor cut straight through urban mythmaking with Hood Anxiety, taken from his LP Excuse My Mess, which dropped on January 8th alongside an official music video that refuses polish in favour of truth. Built around a cascade of bravado-stripping questions, the track pulls listeners into reflection while rejecting the glamourisation of a lifestyle that often reads as a bitter necessity rather than a sweet victory.

The video sharpens that intent. It visualises the raw reality Armor waxes lyrical on, turning Hood Anxiety into one of the most bruising expositions UK rap has delivered in recent years. The darker realities of trap life sit in full in an era of austerity, when postcode disparity and institutional pressure remain impossible to ignore. Armor places those forces under a harsh light, fixing attention on the systems that decide who gets breathing room and who stays boxed in.

Even under that lyrical gravity, charisma still hums through the track. Armor’s witty, cerebral wordplay carries a natural ease, giving the listener space to reflect without draining momentum. His smooth, impassioned cadence anchors the song, landing with the same contemplative weight found in voices like George the Poet and Kae Tempest, yet filtered entirely through his own lived perspective.

Instrumentally mellow and restrained, the track carries weight through intention rather than volume. Where pride often surfaces as a coping mechanism, Armor captures resignation to a broken system and reframes it through honesty. Hood Anxiety fixes that moment in time, giving listeners something solid to sit with and a sense that articulation itself becomes a quiet form of release.

Hood Anxiety is now available on all major streaming platforms. For the full experience, stream the official music video on YouTube. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

‘Warning’ by Davvo Bars and ZIZA Turned A Dark Urban Fever Dream into Grime-Laced Reality

Posted on 24 August 2025

Deep, dubbed, and speaker-obliterating beats act like harbingering oscillations of conviction in Davvo Bars’ latest single, Warning, featuring ZIZA. With North London stamped into his cadence, the rapper bares his teeth as he waxes lyrical, delivering unfuckwithable energy in a track that proves him fearless in production as well as performance.

Warning isn’t stitched from the expected grime templates; it is a twisted, almost carnivalesque sonic beast, darkened at the edges yet pierced by harmonies innocent enough to feel like a fevered hallucination of a school choir. That juxtaposition sharpens the menace, showing listeners the full repercussions of fucking about and finding out.

Davvo Bars has long been cutting his teeth behind the scenes, writing for pirate radio in the early 2000s and later making his mark as a sound engineer before earning attention through collaborations with Fire in the Spoof. His debut solo single, I’m Not Dave, marked the start of his rise, but Warning signals the shift from contender to serious presence.

With his wit as quick as his Machiavellian motifs, he transcends anything currently pushed by GRM, proving grime can collapse into something darker and stranger as long as there are pioneers prepared to push into the shadows of unchartered terrotory. Looking ahead, his forthcoming multi-disciplinary project, Project Alpha, will extend his narratives into film, charting masculinity, loss, and fractured identity in North London. We’re already desperate for the drop after getting hooked on Warning.

Warning is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube.


Review by Amelia Vandergast

‘Illegal Ring’ Struck with Midwest Heat and RnB Conviction in Will Ellsworth’s Fire-Brand Single

Posted on 12 July 2025

With an RnB backbone strong enough to carry the weight of Midwest hip-hop and drill’s relentless drive, Will Ellsworth’s Illegal Ring featuring Sincerely… Jxdie and Nolo Ruffin sets the speakers ablaze with a chaos that knows exactly what it’s doing. From the moment the production kicks in, it becomes evident this track wasn’t built to sit politely on playlists; it was made to detonate.

Illegal Ring ricochets between raw confessionals and fired-up declarations of unshakeable loyalty. It’s all heat, no hesitation. The chemistry between the three artists could boil steel; the momentum builds with Ellsworth’s hook, explodes in the verses, then settles into something almost serene before roaring back with a vengeance. It’s a pressure cooker of pain, power, and purpose.

Rather than hiding behind polish, Ellsworth lets every scab and scar show, creating a sound that hits harder because it’s rooted in experience, not industry trends. As a writer, producer, and artist, he’s sculpting movements. His influence is already beginning to ripple through the underground, and with over 10k views on the official video; his command over cultural tides is impossible to deny.

The drill elements don’t just lurk in the shadows, they puncture through the reverb-heavy gloss of RnB, grounding the track in something far more visceral. In a world spinning on shallow content, Illegal Ring keeps its boots firmly planted in realness.

Illegal Ring is now available on all major streaming platforms; for the ultimate experience, stream the official music video on YouTube. 


Review by Amelia Vandergast

Joe 410 & Drexdelean Turned Struggle into Strength on Hip-Hop Anthem, ‘Street MVPs’

Posted on 26 June 2025
vhttps://open.spotify.com/album/1ZTTCsEW19soqKGMp3Dvkm?si=gA1KKu21SVSKqOc2B_mlcw

Joe 410 and Drexdelean shook the underground to its foundations with their new hip-hop heater, Street MVPs. It’s raw, relentless and gritty as they come, dripping with enough cinematic intensity to make Scorsese jealous. The grime-edged beats run deep beneath ghostly backing vocals that haunt the air, adding an otherworldly flavour to this heavy-hitting anthem.

Lyrically, the bars land sharp and fierce, swinging with a precision that’s practically surgical. Joe 410 and Drexdelean aren’t here to play nice; their words are ammunition, each line another round fired off in defiance. Anyone who’s fought against odds stacked sky-high, who wears adversity like Kevlar and walks into every space ready to own it, will instantly recognise themselves in these verses.

Growing up steeped in hardship, hip-hop was always Joe 410‘s voice; from navigating poverty and violence to surviving stints behind bars, he’s channelled every struggle into music that hits harder because it comes straight from lived experience. This track is a defiant call to arms for anyone who’s ever clawed their way back up from rock bottom. If you know, you know. Get this tune blasting and let the streets know you’re here to stay.

Street MVPs is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.


Review by Amelia Vandergast

UK Rapper, AK CEEZ, Reloaded Reality and Resilience in ‘Ricochet’

Posted on 22 May 2025
https://soundcloud.com/ak-ceez/ricochet

UK Rap titan in the making, AK CEEZ, has launched ‘Ricochet’ with the kind of dark, gritty instrumentals and scathing bars that leave no safe corners for complacency. Each line lands with dominance and razor-edged conviction, slamming into the psyche and refusing to fade, while the beatwork and scratchy turntable effects draw you further into a world built on raw truth and unvarnished experience. Meanwhile, there’s an arresting ease in the production, making no effort to soften the punch; the polish here is purely for impact, not for comfort.

AK CEEZ is rapidly rewriting the script for Scottish hip-hop, turning pain into poetry and struggle into something sonically formidable. Since stepping into the booth for the first time in 2024, he’s set the scene ablaze with his ability to channel trauma, identity, fatherhood, and the full weight of lived experience into rhythmically hypnotic, lyrically charged releases. With a reputation already cemented by Wordplay Magazine’s recognition for his “top-tier lyricism, eminent flow and unique sound,” he’s set on dominating every playlist in his path.

‘Ricochet’ is a track forged for the real UK rap faithful—nothing diluted, nothing left unsaid. Every lyric is delivered with the self-assurance of someone who knows precisely where he belongs: right at the apex of the rap hierarchy. The resilience radiates through the relentless cadence, proving AK CEEZ isn’t just up and coming, he’s already fully actualised and taking no prisoners. With each scalding verse, he marks his territory as an artist with purpose, designed to motivate, move, and last.

‘Ricochet’ is now available to stream on all major platforms, including SoundCloud.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Big C brought the house down with his grime anthem, Work Out

Posted on 27 April 2025

There’s workout music, and then there’s the adrenalising anthem Big C cooked up with ‘Work Out’. Dropped on April 10th with an official video already pulling in over 10,000 views, Big C delivered a grime-charged pulse-pounder that throws motivation straight through the speakers. With all the viral potential of ‘Put a Donk on It’, Big C has every chance of becoming the Blackout Crew of this generation.

The UK-based artist, who splices grime, rap, and house into fresh, high-energy fusions, tailored ‘Work Out’ for fitness fanatics, gym warriors, and anyone needing a sonic caffeine hit. If you’re struggling to find the motivation to pump the iron, stick this on your playlists and get hyped by the vibe that sneaks motivation around the anthemic dance-worthy beats.

Big C quite literally brought the house down with this grime anthem. The body-moving basslines don’t just fire up your muscles — they light a fire under your ambition. Every verse punches with the precision of a heavyweight fighter, while the beat races ahead like it’s got something to prove.

For anyone seeking a track to sweat, stomp, and smash through limits to, ‘Work Out’ is the pure sonic adrenaline your playlists have been crying out for.

‘Work Out’ is now available to stream on all major platforms. For the full experience, stream the official music video on YouTube. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Equation Billionz became UK rap’s most unreckonable renegade in ‘Billionz Affair’

Posted on 16 April 2025

Dropping on April 11th with an official video that confirms his evolution from rising name to underground juggernaut, Billionz Affair proves that Equation Billionz has found far more than a foothold in the UK rap scene. His rapid-fire, grime-licked cadence lands with the head-spinning force of Busta Rhymes, while the boom-bap-infused beats ensure the floor beneath your speakers doesn’t get off lightly. But it’s not just the production or vocal delivery that hooks—it’s the unshakeable energy of an artist who’s done with waiting for his moment and is now making it.

As Equation Billionz waxes lyrical about staying on the grind and rising through the kind of adversity that would flatten most, the resilience hits harder than the hi-hats. Billionz Affair is an ode to fortitude without the preachy overtones—he makes you feel the fire in his determination and the weight of everything he’s carried.

Having started his musical trajectory at 13, Equation Billionz already made international waves with his collaboration with Teni Makanaki and racked up over 12 million streams with Broken Hearted Crook – Remix, which earned him a Spotify plaque. The name isn’t a gimmick—it’s a mantra. “Equation” reflects the balance he chases between health, wealth, and kindness, and with Billionz Affair, he’s adding undeniable respect to the mix. The track doesn’t ask for validation; it exudes self-earned worth from every bar and bassline.

Billionz Affair is now available to stream on all major platforms; for the full experience, watch the official video on YouTube. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast.