The Growth of UK Rap

 

Hello folks, I am back… but not with an artist or album review. This will be another post where I talk about something I’ve noticed in today’s music industry. The topic for this week will be on the rise of UK rap and my predictions for where it will end up in the future. When I was growing up and attending middle/highschool, there was a show that I watched that revolved around analyzing rap music and the location where the music came from. It was called NOISEY, and I loved every minute of it. I specifically remember the episode that talks about UK Grime, and how it was a growing sound that had yet to reach American charts. Well, years later, I can say that I think UK rap has broken those international boundaries. I think there’s a lot of reasons for this, and a good amount has to do with our own artists from America giving the stage to many known artists now like Skepta. A memorable example would be Drake’s album “More Life” and notable features from famous UK rapper Giggs. When I saw this in high school, I thought it was awesome because I saw a sense of comradery in the rap game through famous rappers giving a chance to the lesser known ones. But, after that, I don’t think I saw anything crazy besides the occasional feature of famous UK rappers here and then.

                Flash forward to when I found out about Pop Smoke and his song, “Welcome to the Party.” I don’t know if you guys are fans of the music website ‘Genius’, but I definitely am. I get a lot of inspiration from analyzing lyrics and where music comes from, and this was very much the case here. I learned through Pop Smoke and later rapper Sheff G this new genre of rap called NY Drill. While it did carry similarities to the well known Chicago drill scene, I was amazed by the blends it had with modern UK Rap. The notable characteristics for the drill scene was mostly having a very aggressive beat followed by a very aggressive rapper that can talk his talk and throw out his threats. What wasn’t seen coming was how well dark UK beats can fit in this category of drill beats. From here, I knew that not only was NY drill going to blow up, but also the UK scene as well.

                Flash forward to now. TikTok has been an amazing platform in these last years in its accessibility to people of all ages. What TikTok also does now is help certain songs get popular through trends and allow unheard music to get attention. This last week I heard this song “Body (Remix)” with UK artists Tion Wayne and Russ Millions. The second I heard this song, I was hooked. Each feature was amazing and the more I kept watching the video, the more I was hooked to the visual effects. This song is blowing up big time on TikTok, having users saying that they can’t get the song out of their head and that they want to listen to more. While I am happy to see other types of rap getting their due attention, I wondered why this particular form of rap was taking so long to grow.

I noticed that there are definitely some issues regarding this form of rap. One is mainly that this rap scene isn’t being respected as much in other countries because of the similarities that UK rap has with American trap styles. While UK rap does draw heavy influences from American rap, a lot of people that I’ve talked to have told me that this style of rap doesn’t do anything different but rather just copy what we’ve already been listening to. This harsh criticism also attacks the voices that we hear in this genre, having European accents be put in a negative light as they “mispronounce” words in their versus. This harsh criticism for me just looks like a negative mentality that tries to gatekeep certain rappers from being acknowledged for their music. This look that I’ve seen on UK rap is disturbing because it’s allowing preconceived biases to control how we value something as beautiful as music. I do think this mentality will definitely shift over time, but it’s something the UK rap scene will have to deal with for the time being. However, once that mentality does switch, I do think that UK rap can have amazing possibilities in how they appear in our local music charts. What do you guys think? Feel free to let me know in the comments, and I hope you all have a great week!