Jim Legxacy’s third album, released today, is a love letter to one thing and one thing only: Black British Music. Casting references to UK rap greats over diverse production spanning pop punk, indie folk, and more, the project evokes nostalgia for anyone who came of age in the UK in the 2000s – an era of screenmunching DMs, broadcasting relationship updates on BBM, and sharing Sneakbo freestyles via mobile infrared on the back of the bus; powerfully illustrating how these experiences have shaped British youth culture today. Legacy, after all, is central to Jim’s identity.

The project marks a crystallisation of the producer-rapper-vocalist’s inimitable style. Where his 2021 debut Citadel sat much closer to a traditional rap project, for the most part seeing Jim drop straight bars over lo-fi UK grime and drill instrumentals, he has since leaned into a more colourful pop sound. Shrewdly titled homeless n***a pop music, Legxacy’s 2023 follow-up album increasingly replaced his own rap verses with interpolations of drill classics “Let’s Lurk” and “Homerton B” – contrasting these with his own vulnerable vocals. It was these intergenerational collisions that led many to proclaim Jim one of the most exciting prospects in UK music today, and it is these that he has doubled down on today’s Black British Music. 

Teasing the album in his Dazed cover story last year, Legxacy described Black British Music as an amalgamation of “Akala, [Nigerian-born writer and slavery abolitionist Olaudah] Equiano, Smartwhip [laughing gas] and weed”. Throughout the album, Jim recontextualises lyrics from the likes of J Hus, Giggs and Skepta against his own personal accounts of heartbreak, homelessness and banging snus in Canada Water. Meanwhile, in the only traditional rap verse on the project, UK legend Dave (who Legxacy produced smash hit “Sprinter” for last year) pays further homage to the canon of Black British Music with lyrics referencing “Sprinter” and Sneakbo’s “Touch Ah Button”.

At its most personal level, this cultural pastiche gives a window into the sounds that permeated both Legxacy’s and many other Gen Z Brits’ childhoods. Black British Music marries the drill and grime that reverberated through Jim’s Lewisham stomping grounds with Mitski and David Bowie, revealing a fragility that exists behind the often stoic rap genres. Most widely, however, the album arrives as a potent reminder of how these staples of Black British music are, for many, the defining sounds of 21st-century Britain – something we could all do well to remember given UK politicians’ recent attempts to define Britishness by increasingly narrow margins. 

In this spirit, below, we break down how Jim Legxacy remixed UK rap and grime culture in ten of his most iconic tracks. 

“CANDY REIGN (!)”

homeless n***a pop music hit “candy reign (!)” has been removed from streaming platforms multiple times for alleged copyright infringement, but thank God Jim Legxacy never wavered in his vision. The offence originates from Legxacy’s sampling of Soul for Real’s 1993 R&B hit “Candy Rain” but, elsewhere, the track also interpolates lyrics from UK grime-turned-2010s-pop star Tinie Tempah’s 2006 classic “Wifey”. Legxacy enlists both of these love-stricken tracks to tell his own tale of 21st-century heartbreak, along with the support of a second UK rapper who spits: “You can go and tell your old n***a he can go and lick his own wizz, he’s a dub” – ID please! 

“DJ”

Also landing on Legxacy’s sophomore breakthrough album, “DJ” layers the refrain from Unknown T’s drill classic “Homerton B” underneath Jim’s ethereal vocals and production that sits somewhere between jersey club, indie, and R&B. On the track, Legxacy laments how an ex-lover never fulfilled their promise to teach him how to DJ but, to our ears, he sounds pretty good at it already. 

“OLD PLACE”

Between lyrics lifted from Kennington drill pioneers Harlem Spartan’s “Grip & Ride” (“If we turn up now, weapons out, are you gonna back your [boy]?”) and Legxacy’s own description of a friend who seemingly turned their back on him, “old place” weaves a narrative of friendship and betrayal. “We used to feel at rest in each other's presence, but now we wait on karma to strike each other,” Legxacy sings on the track, while Harlem Spartan’s set-tripping refrain taunts in the background. In Legxacy’s case, it seems that his boy didn’t back him. 

“BLOCK HUG”

While 67’s 2016 single “Let’s Lurk feat. Giggs” may have quite literally kickstarted the now-globally dominant UK drill sound with its confronting displays of London gang culture, Legxacy’s 2023 release “block hug” tells a more vulnerable story. Interpolating masked 67 member LD’s hook, espousing his ‘love for the gang’, Legxacy sheds light on the broken homes that populate London’s ends, lamenting lost friends, absent parents, and chilling on the block while still being afraid of his ex.

“HIT IT LIGHT IT TWIST IT”

Closing off homeless n***a pop music is ethereal afrobeat-tinged outro “hit it light it twist it”. There’s somewhat of a full circle moment to be found in Legxacy’s interpolation of Skepta’s 2015 single “Nasty”, released at the peak of grime’s second wave, which was sparked by his preceding single “That’s Not Me”. On the track, Skepta raps: “Told you before this year is the year that the real fake n***as get left in the rain” – a commitment to success which held true as much for Skepta’s landmark 2015 album Konnichiwa as it did for Jim Legxacy’s homeless n***a pop music eight years later. 

“AGGRESSIVE”

In order to paint a picture of a relationship on the rocks, Jim Legxacy enlists two classic UK rap samples on the stand-alone single “Aggressive”. Arriving first are the lines: “No, someone said that cab stopped suddenly and it all went downhill from there”, lifted from this deep-cut interview with Wiley and Bashy in which they witness a car crash, and are then subsequently approached by a driver to provide a witness report. Landing soon after are interpolations of grime star Chip’s pop-crossover track “Oopsy Daisy feat. Dyo”, singing: “You messed up once, I messed up twice, but how many times are we gonna try again?” These references to UK rap deep-cuts are then reinforced in the track’s music video, which is shot entirely on the 2010s London essential: a Blackberry phone. 

Also of note: despite landing as Legxacy’s first single since his hiatus following homeless n***a pop music, and also featuring the deep-voiced narrator present throughout Black British Music, “Aggressive” is notably absent from today’s release.

“STICK”

Landing as the first song on Black British Music after the opening skit “Context”, Legxacy affirms his return to music following his 2024 hiatus. Once more, Legxacy enlists the support of Skepta, whose lyrics “Man I been going through it” from 2019 Ignorance is Bliss track “Going Through It” bubble throughout the track. 

Elsewhere, “Stick” features vocals from 21-year-old Birmingham-born singer Joe Stanley to deliver the chorus – unlike “candy reign (!)”, at least, it seems that “Stick” won’t fall victim to any copyright stings. 

“SUN FEAT. FIMIGUERRERO”

In addition to direct interpolations, Black British Music also sees Legxacy pay homage to the canon of UK rap in his own lyrics. Case in point is the Fimiguerrero-featuring afrobeat-esque track “Sun”, on which Legxacy raps: “Did you see what I done? Came in a black benz left in a white one, grew up a hoodlum, I came with the bonsam, I left with a bad one”. These lines are an almost exact repeat of the J Hus’ 2017 summer anthem “Did You See” – himself a pioneer of the afroswing sound that Legxacy references in “Sun”’s production. 

Elsewhere, Fimiguerrero also references Cench’s iconic “Sprinter” line, “I just put nine gyal in a sprinter” in his verse, rapping: “Black gang and she loving my demeanour, how I got six gyal in a four-seater”.

“I JUST BANGED A SNUS IN CANADA WATER”

“This that blue borough shit I hope you’re listening,” Jim Legxacy repeats in the chorus to south London anthem, “I Just Banged A Snus In Canada Water”, referencing the blue colours of Legxacy’s home borough Lewisham. In the track’s second verse, Legxacy then pays homage to fellow south Londoners Giggs and Blade Brown’s hood classic “Hammer Em Down”, rapping: “This that Giggs and Blade Brown up in the kitchen shit, but by the time you holla man/hollowman I’m on some different shit”. For context, the video to “Hammer Em Down” features Giggs and Blade Brown cooking up illegal substances in a council flat kitchen, while Hollowman is Giggs’ pseudonym.

“3X FEAT. DAVE”

Finally stepping outside following his appearance on the Jim Legxacy-produced 2023 mega-hit “Sprinter”, Dave’s “3x” verse is full of references to UK rap classics. He opens the guest feature with a reference to their previous collaboration, rapping: “She was thick but she thinner now, didn’t wanna know but she finna now”, an inversion of Cench’s opening “Sprinter” lines: “Mixing codeine up with the phenergan, she got thick, but she wanna get thin again”. This is then followed by “Big .45 for my enemies”, a reference to the .45 calibre pistol which appears across much of dancehall music, as well as the UK grime scene that it inspired through London’s significant Caribbean population (for example, this Flowdan track). 

Rounding things off, Dave then pays homage to Brixton legend Sneakbo’s generational 2011 “Touch Ah Button” freestyle with the lyrics: “Forgive me, excuse me Whitney, what you want cah I want have a pickney”. “Touch Ah Button” itself is an indispensable part of (Black) British music history, foregrounding the dominance of the afroswing sound across the 2010s with its UK rap remix of Vybz Kartel’s original of the same name, and on it Sneakbo raps: “I’m sorry, excuse me shorty, what you doing cos I want have a party”.