Name: Kasst 8

Where He’s From: Toxteth, Liverpool

When He Started: “I’d say I started messing around with music from about 10 years old, making little freestyles and that. I probably started taking it a bit more seriously around 12, but really taking it seriously was around 2018.”

Genre: Grime/Rap

File Next To: Tremz, Aystar, Mazza_L20

Sounds Like: “A lot of the fundamentals probably come from grime, but I wouldn’t say I only make grime music; I just make whatever comes naturally. If someone asked me what kind of music I make, I honestly wouldn’t have a single word to give them.”

First Music That Inspired Him: “I’d say it was more a mixture of everything I was listening to growing up. From about 6 or 7 years old, there was a lot of grime around me, but also garage and dancehall. But, if I really think about it, I could easily say 50 Cent, Get Rich Or Die Tryin’.”

Liverpool’s relationship with rap has always felt slightly complicated. For years, the city existed outside the centre of UK rap and grime conversations, despite producing wave after wave of talent. While a small handful of rappers from the city, such as Aystar and Tremz, have banged on the door of UK rap popularity in recent years, Kasst 8 feels part of a new generation that is looking to take Liverpool to the next level.

There’s definitely grime running through the foundations of what he does. You can hear it in the flows and his ability to hold his own alongside the country’s biggest hitters (see: DJ Mak 10’s Grime Scene Saviours set), but Kasst’s sound feels destined for more than just one scene. Growing up in Liverpool, his musical influences came from all directions at once: his older brother played Skepta and early grime classics like “Pow!”, while his sister was heavily into UK garage, So Solid Crew and the rest. Meanwhile, dancehall artists like Mr. Vegas and Elephant Man were constantly playing around the house via his mum.

Listening to him explain it, you realise his music makes sense because it sounds exactly like that environment: chaotic, blended and impossible to categorise neatly. “I just hear a beat and do what feels right,” Kasst 8 tells TRENCH. “A lot of the fundamentals probably come from grime, but I wouldn’t say I only make grime music.” That unpredictability is what makes this MC stand out right now. Tracks like “Subliminals” with Saint Ludo, or his appearance on Kenny Allstar’s Voice Of The Streets, don’t sound engineered toward one audience or trend; they sound like someone documenting the world around them in real time. One of the moments he speaks about most passionately is getting a wheel-up at Chip’s Grime Scene Saviours event in London, standing alongside legends like D Double E and Big Narstie. For Kasst, the moment represented acceptance from a culture he’d spent years studying from the outside looking in. “You can’t buy that,” he said. “The DJ genuinely wheeled it because the crowd reacted.”

That obsession with grime started early: Kasst says he was making “little freestyles” from around 10 years old before properly taking music seriously around 2018. When we speak about influences outside of the UK, he immediately mentions 50 Cent and his classic album, Get Rich Or Die Tryin’. Which, in a strange way, also makes sense. There’s a similar coldness and directness running through some of Kasst 8’s music, but filtered through Liverpool’s slang, humour and perspective. What’s perhaps most interesting, though, is how much pride he has in Liverpool’s creative scene. Rather than sounding isolated from the wider UK conversation, he speaks about the city like somewhere finally beginning to realise its own potential. He points towards younger artists, clothing brands, creatives all building simultaneously, describing the scene as “the healthiest it's ever been.”

In an era where so many artists smooth out their identities in pursuit of wider appeal, Kasst 8 leans harder into his. The backslang has become a focal point of his delivery; the accent continues to stay, and nothing feels watered down for acceptance. Liverpool has needed a new poster boy to fly the flag, and maybe it’s Kasst’s time to fill that void.