Dividing UK rap into sub-genres is tricky. Grime is fairly distinct, but trap, road rap and drill have a lot of overlap. So when rounding the best trap music to come out of Britain, it makes sense to keep our net wide, and to cover every UK rap sound that’s punchy and street-orientated but not classically grime.
Those criteria throw up a lot of good stuff. British hip-hop, if you haven’t noticed, is booming: rappers like Central Cee and Dave are ruling the charts and – at long last – having a big impact in the US too. Headie One, among others, has collabs with European MCs coming thick and fast. And sonically, as this roundup of the best trap music – and trap-adjacent music – demonstrates, the genre is (and always has been) a fountain of creativity. Get stuck into the albums and mixtapes below, for the rundown of UK rap highlights old and new.
Now an inarguable megastar – and a GQ cover star, no less – Central Cee’s best musical offering to date is his second mixtape, 23. The PinkPantheress-sampling “Obsessed with You” locked down the charts; “Eurovision” brought together rappers from Italy, Spain and France for a borderless posse cut; and the likes of “Straight Back to It” and “Retail Therapy” gave UK drill an accessible sheen without watering it down. On “Lil Bro”, Cench also shows off his narrative depth with a conversational song about the downsides of a life of crime. It all bodes well for whatever he has in store next.
After a decade putting out mixtapes, Tottenham’s Avelino finally released a fully-fledged album, God Save the Streets, in 2023. It was worth the wait: expansive without being too baggy, it incorporates inventive beats, plenty of melody and a couple of great features from long-time collaborator Wretch 32. Which is not to say it’s short of screwface-triggering bangers: “Vex”, with BackRoad Gee and Ghetts, is all machete-sharp synths and killer flows.
One of the most interesting threads in recent UK rap history is the burgeoning number of pan-European collaborations. Central Cee and Dave are particularly notable here – they’ve both got French number ones by doing features for French rappers – and so is Headie One. In fact, he released a whole mixtape on the theme, with a cover that illustrates all the countries, from the Netherlands to Albania, his collaborators come from. “22 Carats”, with France’s Gazo, and “Cloud”, with Germany’s Luciano, are particular highlights. It’s the only drill album that’s a plausible substitute for Duolingo.
Most of the music here is relatively new, reflecting the fact that trap and its offshoots were generally secondary to grime in the 2010s. The biggest exception was Giggs: his “jheeze” ad-lib is etched into the mind of every UK rap fan, as is his track “Talking the Hardest”, in some corners referred to as Britain’s alternative national anthem. Walk in da Park, his debut album, has a similar magnetic style: Giggs’s deep, slow voice was like no other flow at the time, or indeed any flow since. A true classic.
J Hus sounds like no one other than J Hus. His music takes in the harder edges of UK rap as well as the compulsively dancey beats of afroswing, and it’s all slathered with his croaky flow and memorable (and frequently very witty) lyrics. Common Sense is his first album, and probably still his best, with party anthems like “Did You See” and “Spirit” butting up against unvarnished spurts of aggression like “Clartin”. In a genre full of charismatic figures, no one has as much charisma as Hus – he can even turn his soft drink order (Fanta, no ice please) into a killer line.
Remember the drill parody song “Man’s Not Hot” by Big Shaq, aka Michael Dapaah? The instrumental was borrowed from “Let’s Lurk”, the menacing, Giggs-featuring title track of 67’s 2016 mixtape. If you think any of the lines about urban crime here are invented, they might not be – 67 are, according to London’s Metropolitan Police, a criminal gang linked to murder and drug trafficking. This music is dark, dangerous, and the definition of “don’t try this at home”.
One of 67’s most prominent members is LD, who wears a Phantom of the Opera–style mask – a relic of when, under his previous persona, Scribz, he was slapped with a two-year ban on performing due to his violent lyrics. Who’s Watching was released in 2021, while he was serving time in prison for drug dealing. If you’re looking for unfiltered, street-level songs, they’re all here: crack cocaine, knives and much more. But LD is too intelligent a rapper for anything here to descend into boring caricature: “Labour” cleverly leaps between the word’s multiple meanings (work, the political party and the phase of pregnancy), while “Rich Porter” is an example of how a very gritty tale can be made catchy with the right flow.
A Headie One and Fred Again collab seems unlikely, but back in 2020, when they were both still on the come-up, they did a whole mixtape together. Headie’s raps are laid over experimental electronic production that’s quite out-there compared to Fred Again’s more dancefloor-friendly recent stuff, and there are stellar cameos from FKA Twigs, Jamie xx and Sampha too. It’s a bit off-piste for both of them, but it’s also an example of how the best trap music coming out of the UK pushes sonic and as well commercial boundaries.
Nines was, for years, a stalwart of road rap, the forerunner to UK drill and trap. With Crop Circle, his second proper album, he took a step into the spotlight. The production is smooth and glossy, with a lot of reference to US hip-hop, but Nines’ lyrics never stray that far from his past life as a weed dealer. “I See You Shining” is an ode to hustling that 50 Cent would be proud of, and on “Venting”, Nines goes bar-for-bar with Dave and comes off pretty well.
A member of the Kennington drill collective the Harlem Spartans, Loski has had a formidable solo career ever since his debut mixtape, Call me Loose, was released when he was just 19. His precociousness comes across as borderline arrogance – which, when you’re making music that goads authority figures as much as this, isn’t a bad quality to have. “Money and Beef” and “Cool Kid” have the classic rap magic of making crime sound catchy.
