CONGLOMERATE

The wildest internet rap scenes of the last few years, from the head-scrambling shudders of rage to plugg’s heavenly glide, have largely been dominated by Americans. But that’s starting to change thanks to a zany crop of Brits mangling and remaking these subgenres. YT and Lancey Foux’s “Black & Tan,” a contender for song of the summer ’24, crams in so much convulsive percussion you almost miss the rappers’ dignified English accents. They brag about how they can make crowds explode in Miami, Tennessee, or Surrey Quays over an Ambezza beat clearly inspired by jerk (aka Milwaukee lowend). A few MCs lead this wave, among them Lancey, Fimiguerrero, and Len. And rather than trample each other to the top, these three artists have combined forces to create a new narrative. Their debut collab tape, CONGLOMERATE, rings out like a war cry: Don’t fuck with the UK underground.

Of the three, Lancey has the supreme reputation, collaborating with stars like Yeat and Sexyy Red and palling around with Kanye. He practically spawned a new microgenre (“dream rage”?) by coating the subgenre’s cybernetic steel with psychedelic glitter. But the hottest right now is the Nigeria-born Fimiguerrero, who’s coming off a relentless run of TikTok hits and the eclectic hyper-jerk of his album New World Order. Raised in the hood in Stockwell, Len is the least renowned member of the trio, but maybe the most tonally tantalizing. His spectral melodies thrill on album highlight “Excuse My French,” whose bejeweled bass smacks like OsamaSon moshpit rap for posh Kensington kids.

Throughout CONGLOMERATE, the trio foils each other in hypnotic ways. Fimi hits the rawest, with barely any Auto-Tune or reverb, just locked-in, clenched-fist flows. He delivers flexes with such forceful phrasing that every word pops: “I get paid in euro, dollar, peso, even yen,” he boasts on “Excuse My French,” spacing each syllable perfectly in the pocket. “I didn't die trying getting rich, like 50 Cent.” Constantly cloaked in smoke, floating across the mix like a phantom, Len thirsts after hotties amid the lightfoot skitter of “After Life” and confesses his rap dreams to his disapproving mum on “Ozempic,” the album’s prettiest song. The slickest but most inconsistent is Lancey, who only appears on six of the album’s 13 main tracks (plus one of the three songs on the album’s deluxe version). His naturally emotive tone makes him sound slightly devious, like he’s the dark horse hiding behind his homies waiting to attack—or to deliver a spontaneous absurd image, like “too burnt, I'm filled with cheese, a nigga be splurgin' out” that makes you picture Lancey as a human toastie.

CONGLOMERATE parades around the world: One moment, UK producer Stay Flee Get Lizzy is big-upping every compass direction in London. The next, Fimi’s getting laid in the Alps over an avalanche of Jersey club kicks on “Wet Mouth.” It’s so easy to borrow subcultural sounds in a surface-level way, like Kanye’s foray into Brazilian funk. Rather than taking underground styles and abstracting them for pop palatability, CONGLOMERATE mostly draws from local scenes that have been globalized and tries to inject a proud regionalism back into them. “Osbatt,” a reference to a fashion brand by the British-Zimbabwean designer Sliksyd, filters the bionic rattle of rage through UK drill percussion and sub-bass. “Ankle Lock” sounds like Xaviersobased’s “Special” plus wiggly new-jazz synths plus enough pomp for the Queen’s royal jubilee. Some tracks still end up sounding like shapeless translations of translations of sounds, like the aptly titled “Spanish Guitar,” which infuses UK melodic trap with vaguely Latin plucking. But the beat has such a fun pit-a-pat, it’s hard to resist bopping your head to Lancey’s tiki-taka calls.

Is this album’s raison d’etre just a branding exercise? Maybe, given the very MBA-student title. Recognizing the hype, the growing chorus around a “new London movement,” Fimi, Len, and Lancey are yelling at the world to invest. That doesn’t mean the album is devoid of depth—Fimi descends into a sobering verse about addiction and eviction on “Silhouette”—but there’s a lot of forgettable flexing and forced cosmopolitanism. But the way each rapper plays their part in the carnival—no one trying too hard to steal the show or lamely tossing in the towel—really makes the album come alive. Fimi showers the songs in sweet nuggets of detail, about girls whose butts are so BBL-big he calls them Diego Costa and his mother’s peculiar TV-watching habits. Len lends a seductive touch, his whispery vocals transporting the listener to a late-night lounge. Lancey’s cyborgian warbles inject some bounce when you least expect it. Really, like any enterprising startup founders would do, Fimi, Len, and Lancey identified a gap in the market and figured out how to fill it well.