Name: BXKS

Where She’s From: Luton

When She Started: “Officially in 2020. That’s when I dropped ‘Packed In!’”

Genre: UK Rap/Grime

File Next To: Chy Cartier, Cristale, AJ Tracey

Sounds Like: “I guess you could say my sound is grime-esque. There is definitely an essence of grime in everything I do. I enjoy music at 140BPM a lot. I also feel like I’m still discovering what my sound is because I don’t know; people ask me all the time and I really don’t know. Some people who listen to my music say it’s heavily influenced by grime, while other people say it’s like a new wave of something.”

First Music That Inspired Her: “The first song that made me want to do music was probably AJ Tracey’s ‘Packages’—what a banger! He was one of the first people I heard do grime on drill beats; like, his cadence was proper different from all the other rappers that were around in that era of 2015/2016. I liked what he was doing, and I was like, ‘I can definitely do this. What do you mean man’s spitting 140 on a drill beat?’ I was so convinced I could do that, too. These times I didn’t even know how to rap! But yeah, AJ Tracey’s ‘Packages’—what a classic.”

UK rap culture is often pointed out for being too London-centric, with rappers in other cities and towns flying the flag for the scene in their own ways. In Luton, just one stop away on the East Midlands trainline, Nafe Smallz is loved for his contributions to the trapwave movement and collaborating with the likes of DBE and Nines, and someone looking to further cement Luton’s musical legacy is none other than shooting star BXKS, aka Bxksintokyo.

While people tend to incessantly divide male and female rappers, BXKS is regarded as one of the coldest out—regardless of gender—with her arrival on the scene gaining her the respect of her peers and her growing audience. Before rap, athletics was at the forefront of BXKS’ mind, proudly telling TRENCH that if she wasn’t an artist, she would be “one of the flyest athletes on the track! Just as fly as I am now, but on the track. I went to a sports college, and I did athletics from the age of seven up until I was in college. I would have been a 100 metre sprinter; I used to train with Team GB.”

Growing up, BXKS’ household was filled with music, especially reggae and gospel: “They’re probably the two main genres I listened to.” She credits both genres for inspiring the way she structures her songs, predominantly focusing on producing music that has substance and depth, adding: “I always want my music to have meaning.” Many of us in the UK grew up with Channel U on our TV screens, which gave us the opportunity to connect with Black British genres like grime and road rap. For BXKS, it was a real eye-opener. “I accidentally found Channel U because, at the time, there were mostly American channels, but then I found two or three that played music from here, so I was like, ‘Oooh! What’s this, then?’ Seeing young people from that early era doing their thing... I literally found out about Skepta from watching Channel U.”

BXKS was immersed in church as a child, and that’s where her passion for music began to take shape. “I grew up in church and I could sing really well,” she says, “but I realised that being a singer wasn’t something that was gonna be exciting to people. In a weird way, it’s not a shock if a woman can sing well, if that makes sense? But if a woman can rap well—like, if she’s spitting—then it’s exciting. So I was thinking, ‘Let me try and see if I can learn.’ Around that time, me and my brothers used to link up and do freestyles in the car and I never used to join in—I would just rap in my head. While I was doing it in my head, I was thinking of stuff that was really good. So I went home, slapped on a Drill Type Beat and tried to spit to it.”

It might be hard to imagine now, but there was a time when BXKS couldn’t rap and hadn’t even considered it as a career. “I’m even surprised I got this far,” she explains, “but it would be nice to have a project that solidifies me like how Lauryn Hill and other artists have—that body of work I could leave behind and be super proud of. I’m not searching for a hit song or a viral moment—I just like the idea of making good music that sticks and does really well.” With UK rap constantly evolving and the post-drill era ushering in a sense of simultaneous uncertainty and excitement, BXKS has found her footing and she knows what she’s good at, but her sound is constantly changing. “My sound is heavily influenced by grime, which is integral to everything I make,” she says, “so it’s nice I’ve kept the essence and haven’t lost it. I like to play around with dance music a lot too; I think it keeps things interesting and fun.”

This year has been an impressive one for the rising MC. “It was almost like a rebranding,” BXKS tells us. She wasn’t keen on the music before her latest EP, One Time, nor the deal that she was in: “I just gave the label a lazy second project because I wanted to get out of that deal. So when it came to making One Time, I wanted to be really intentional about the music I was putting out. I wanted to put myself in the right position and in front of the right audience, and I think One Time really did that. ‘Back It Up’ and ‘Cheque’ are such a good balance of me being able to make a dance hit while rapping. I literally put my trust in my team; I was like, ‘They believe in me so let’s work together and make this bang!’ The machine, which is my team—Kehn and Ghadir—made the rollout possible.”

BXKS ends 2024 on a high with the bright lights of ‘25 looking ever more enticing. When asked what her highlight of the year was, she beams: “Doing my headline show in Japan! It was amazing because I’m a big believer in going where the love is, and that’s not to say I’m not loved in the UK, but I’d rather double down on who I am—Bxksintokyo—and do my first headline in Tokyo. That’s my niche. No one else could have done that.”