SL

There’s more to the mask than meets the eye where SL is concerned. The still-just-21-year-old has eclipsed over 500 million streams. The Peckham-born, Croydon-raised rapper represents a new class borne out of the cross-pollination of genres: rugged street narratives met with intricate, at times serene instrumentals. As you might guess from his breakthrough viral hit, ‘Tropical’, for now SL describes his sound as ‘tropical drill’: it’s melodic, conversational and tongue-in-cheek, but twisted via an upbringing influenced by golden-age rap like Wu-Tang Clan, DMX, and Jay Z.