Rimzee

With an aspirational, street-level perspective, impassioned rhymes, and a fierce delivery, East London's Rimzee has become a soundtrack of the struggle. Born to a single mother in London's Upper Clapton neighborhood in 1991, he began getting attention after putting together his first freestyles in the late 2000s. In 2010, he broke out with "2010 Freestyle," a soulful track filled with matter-of-fact death threats and dense imagery of life on the block. By 2012, he parlayed that success into a sizable buzz before unloading The Upper Clapton Dream, a project laced with vicious freestyles and anthems for other block-dwellers from around the UK. After spending six-and-a-half years in prison for shooting at an unmarked police car, Rimzee returned with Upper Clapton Dream 2, an equally relentless project that marked his return to rap prominence, a destination reached through a healthy mix of lived experience, passion, and craftsmanship.