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Headie One: 'In prison, the only thing not taken away from you is yourself'

The Tottenham rapper is UK drill’s biggest star – and counts Drake as a fan. He talks about how his music gave him a way out of crime, and the difficulty of leaving his old life behind

The north London district of Tottenham seems to offer up a rap icon for every generation. Hip-hop group Demon Boyz were among the first to shed American accents in the 1980s; in the late 00s, 16-year-old MC Chip declared himself a “grime scene saviour”, and cracked the glass ceiling of a resistant music industry. More recently, Skepta has led British rap into the mainstream, winning the Mercury prize in 2016.

The district where riots blazed in 1985 and 2011 is now soundtracked by UK drill, a rap subgenre that found its way to the country from the South Side of Chicago, with MCs riding like dirt bikes over revving, lurching bass to punctuate sometimes bleak accounts of life on the roads.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3jYDMfR
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