Blanco

At least twice in his career, Blanco has been on the frontline of a massive cultural shit in UK music. First, with the rest of his Harlem Spartans cohorts in the earliest days of drill’s formative years, and then when he went solo and surprised everyone with a project—City Of God—that swapped sliding 808s for Baile funk. “I don’t even like getting props,” he says of his inluence on drill and UK rap more generally, “because the one thing pioneers have in common is that they don’t get as much money as the people they put on. So I hate when people say ‘pioneer’. I want the money, man.” He laughs it of, but his laid-back ideals are quite refreshing.