As you can hardly have failed to notice, these are high times for UK rap. It’s a genre whose biggest stars regularly reach the top of the charts: Stormzy’s forthcoming third album is among the year’s most hotly anticipated and a recently published list of 2022’s biggest-selling singles so far features entries for Dave, Aitch and D-Block Europe. It’s all a long way from the days when the Mercury – always keen to nominate, and occasionally hand its award to, worthy British MCs – looked like it was doggedly supporting an area of music the general public had little interest in.
Little Simz has a high media profile – she’s critically acclaimed, has earned the praise of Kendrick Lamar and the patronage of Lauryn Hill, and has already won an Ivor Novello award for her 2019 album Grey Area – but commercially, at least, she seems to exist at one remove from the UK rap gold rush.
