Loski has come onto the UK Music Scene with one sight, the top. Within two years of him releasing his first couple of singles, he dropped a full length mixtape, which expressed Drill Music and Afrobeats alike, to its finest degree. A young man, growing up in the South London District of Kensington; with dreams of being a footballer shattered after a career changing injury, it was the road life that Loski found himself turning to next. Like a lot of kids his age (16 at the time), he became caught up in the trapping lifestyle of his area. However, with this only being a few years ago; it was all happening as Drill Music, a new, rawer sub-genre of rap with harsher realities, was emerging.
To quickly bring you up to date with London Drill, as this is the first in our Across The Pond series, Drill started popping off in the UK back in 2015. It flooded the news for promoting violence, more specifically gun violence, which of course in the UK is a rather big no no. It is seen to glorify the lifestyle of crime, selling drugs & gang shootings, despite the rising deaths we’re seeing as a result of these very things in the UK. Whether or not you see it as this yourself is up to you, that’s the beauty of music, however you can imagine the headlines: “Drill, the ‘Demonic Music linked to rise in youth murders” for starters.
So a 16 year old Loski, living the road life sees the emerging Drill scene and starts writing bars, quickly noticing he has a talent for it. Loski reminisces, “50 Cent is hard but we don’t relate to him as much. Chicago drill artists were young and in the streets like us, so we related to them more. ‘Oh, they’re only 15/16 – they’re just like us,” & it’s fair to say his early adaptations of the genre helped shape the sound of London Drill Music. At the age of 16, Loski saw the music as more of a fun thing to do, saying he started it as a way “to let everyone know ‘this is my area’. I wanted to show everyone that ‘this is us’. But everyone liked it and it brought more attention than I expected.”... yeah you could say that.
Since his early releases Loski has gone on to release his full length project Call Me Loose which dropped in 2018. It featured other Drill artists such as Headie One (who’s just hit Number 6 in the Official UK Singles Chart with his new song ‘18HUNNA’ last week [7/1/19]) and showed Loski experiment with other genres such as Afrobeats. One of his most popular songs from the project was ‘Forrest Gump,’ I literally could not escape the song for months: it was everywhere. After the release of Drake’s Scorpion, Champagne Papi took to his Instagram story to post the album artworks of projects that inspired the project. Guess who made the list amongst names like Kendrick Lamar… Loski and Call Me Loose. I remember seeing the post at the time and thinking that it was completely mad that such a big name was taking an interest in an 18 year old’s first project from the streets, but it just goes to show how great this tape was.
When it comes to Loski’s top releases, it’s pretty hard for me to pic my top 3. At just 18 years old, he’s had an abundance of hits among the scene but these stand out the most for different reasons.
Hazards
H- H- Hazards. (Sorry, you’re going to have to get used to that effect, it’s a Drill speciality). Right at the beginning of Loski’s career, he drops the song which made his mark on the scene and helped sculpt a quickly evolving sound. “Like all I hear is sku-du and du-du, like uh uh, No one ain’t banging,” Loski calls out other ‘opps’ that are all talk and no… shooting. The flow he carries through this song is seen throughout his music to date and it set the tone for his future.
Forrest Gump
His first major radio station big hitter. What he calls Afro-Drill, this song is different to Loski’s normal hard hitting bars. Afrobeats is a staple for clubs here in the UK and Loski showcasing his ability at cultivating the genre was a wise move. The UK’s Biggest Radio Station (BBC Radio 1) works on a system whereby how much interest a song is gaining across different platforms will depend on how many times the song gets played that hour. Loski’s ‘Forrest Gump’ was in heavy rotation daily. Big numbers.
Splash
I can’t lie, this is my favourite Loski tune to date. From Call Me Loose, the track just hits hard and the flows are quite unique. I remember when I first heard the Migos really dominate that Triplet Flow and I could see how it was something new; a trend setter. Now, I’m not saying Loski single-handed shaped the genre, but in the same way when you hear the Migos – you know it’s them, Loski is unmistakable. For me this is the best example of his signature style
So what’s next for Loski? The last big moment we had from him was just before Christmas when he was the first guest on Charlie Sloth’s new Fire In The Booth show, which left with Charlie as he went from BBC Radio 1 and 1xtra to Apple Music’s Beats 1. Loski had said if he were to re-create Drake’s infamous, Drill-Flow ‘LinkupTV Behind Bars,’ he would do it it better than Drake did it. Lo and behold, Charlie’s debut show featured exactly that, you can decide yourselves if it was better! Loski announced his new mixtape ‘MAD MOVE’ on the 10/01/19 (sorry if that’s backwards for some of you) which will arrive on the 1st March, and it’s set to do big numbers. At the end of last year, Loski was featuring on tracks alongside big names such as Krept & Konan, so he’s set up for a fantastic drop. Back in 2018, he also said “I want to have a label one day” & currently the rapper has signed with a branch of Sony Music called ‘Since ‘93’. Although I think we’re more likely to see him build upon his career this year than see him fully launch his own label, it would be cool to see what comes of that statement. Regardless, this is Loski’s year.
