The future of music arrives without warning. It reveals itself through labels big and small, on tiny underground stages, in 15-second TikTok clips, or in a single line of an independently produced track. The UK hip hop and R&B/soul scene seems to be brimming with potential even now in 2025. As always, UK artists are continuously absorbing and redefining genres. They don’t just give shape to music—they’ve developed a unique flavor of hip hop and R&B that’s distinctly British.
I’d love to talk about every one of the incredible artists from the past to present, but that would easily fill an entire book. Instead, let’s focus on six carefully selected voices that epitomize the very future of UK hip hop and R&B/soul. If you’re only just hearing about them now, remember that there’s no better time to dive in than today. After all, the future always takes its first steps in the humblest of ways.
Pozer
Hailing from Croydon, South London, Pozer is one of the most electrifying figures in the UK drill rap scene. When his music first spread online, a lot of people noticed right away that it felt different. He’s been rewriting the rules of rhythm through what’s been dubbed UK Jersey drill—where the heavy bass and dark soundscapes of UK drill and the bouncy, upbeat rhythms of American Jersey club meet. Though Jersey drill was already a familiar genre, as Pozer himself notes, UK Jersey drill is entirely a creation of his own. This groundbreaking innovation earned him the trophy for Best Drill Act at the 2025 MOBO Awards, the UK awards show celebrating Black music.
What sets Pozer apart is how he refuses to portray drill as a one-dimensional genre existing only within some subculture. He acknowledges that many people struggle to connect with what drill has to offer, which is why his songs aren’t just about life on the streets but everyday life and an effort to live honestly. It’s exactly this duality that makes Pozer’s music resonate both in the streets and in the mainstream. Driven by a desire to change a life he wasn’t satisfied with, Pozer says he turned to rap for an emotional outlet. What started as the voice of a young man from the streets of Croydon now plays out of speakers across the UK. Recommended songs: “Kitchen Stove,” “Malicious Intentions,” “Shanghigh Noon.”
JayaHadADream
JayaHadADream is shaking up the UK hip hop scene as she moves between her hometown of Cambridge and the city that’s most nourished her musically, Nottingham. Formerly a teacher with a sociology degree, she taught criminology to high school students by day and channeled her life into music by night. In 2023, she packed up her full-time teaching career to become a musical artist exclusively, exploding onto the public stage when she won the Glastonbury Festival Emerging Talent Competition. Poetic and full of symbolism right from her stage name, JayaHadADream draws from her sociology background to explore profound themes with remarkable depth, calmly reflecting on her life as a woman, a person of color, and a worker, and the line between a teacher and an artist. There’s no self-pity, excessive bravado, or anything like that—instead, she writes lines that compel listeners to face themselves.
When she raps, she’s passionate but composed, cynical yet warm. She moves through genres like grime, garage, drill, and Jersey club with ease, masterfully striking a delicate balance between experimentation and familiarity. Understanding her connection to the community is key to understanding her musical world as well. From collaborating with local artists to emphasizing the importance of creativity to Black youth, she’s expanding the artistic ecosystem within her community. All along the way, JayaHadADream teaches us how to dream within the confines of the realities we face. Recommended tracks: “Stubborn,” “Nothing’s Changed,” “Twiggy.”
Jim Legxacy
Hailing from Lewisham, London, Jim Legxacy is a rapper, singer, and producer. Of all the artists featured here, he’s been in the game the longest and crafts the most intricate, ever-evolving music of them all. He’s open to both the lineage of UK grime and American hip hop, blending hip hop and R&B with drill, Afrobeat, alternative pop, lo-fi, emo, garage, grime, and even Bollywood-inspired sounds. But Jim Legxacy’s about more than just mixing genres—he continuously reconstructs his artistic identity within the chaos. He started making music at 19 after listening to the Kanye West album “The Life Of Pablo,” so the unpredictable nature of his sound makes perfect sense.
New listeners of Legxacy might find his music disorienting. For instance, you might hear guitars shredding over emo/trap beats, only for Jersey club drums to suddenly kick in. And then there’s his vocals, which don’t exactly sound like rap, but not R&B or rock, either. But naturally, he’s using all this chaos deliberately as a device. For Legxacy, music isn’t confined to a singular genre—it’s more like a means of proving that he exists. “black british music,” the new mixtape he put out earlier this year, is the pinnacle of his sonic experimentation (and also his first release under a label). In it, he shatters the entire concept of what “Black British music” is, working emotion into every shard. Legxacy’s work demonstrates not only just how daring and emotional modern UK hip hop can be, but is a very symbol of its evolution at the same time. Recommended tracks: “new david bowie,” “stick,” “block hug.”
Jordan Adetunji
Based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Jordan Adetunji is imbued with truly unique musical DNA. His sound is an unpredictable mix of alternative hip hop, R&B, grime, drill, hyperpop, glitch, funk, and Jersey club, occasionally making it feel like you’re listening to someone speaking another language. He started out strictly as a rapper (which he still is), but his vocals are primarily now somewhere between rapping and singing. Plenty of singer-songwriters blur the lines between hip hop and R&B today, but Adetunji’s music stands out even among them.
He’s already garnered significant recognition, earning Grammy, BRIT, and MOBO nominations and being named one of the future voices of British pop music by multiple outlets. But he’s doing far more than just making hit songs—Adetunji is a full-blown musician with an all-encompassing vision for his musical world. His second mixtape, “A Jaguar’s Dream,” released this January, exemplifies this, with its futuristic, melodic blend of R&B and hyperpop feeling almost like the soundtrack to an animated film. Interestingly enough, he’s directly cited anime like “Fullmetal Alchemist,” “Naruto,” and “Demon Slayer” as major influences on his music and creative vision—a sensibility that makes his music into a feast for the ears and the eyes. Though often hailed as the quintessential Gen Z TikTok artist, it feels like there’s something about Adetunji that runs deeper and spreads wider. Recommended tracks: “KEHLANI,” “305,” “Bitter.”
Brooke Combe
A singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Dalkeith, Scotland, Brooke Combe’s musical roots are surprisingly traditional. She developed an early fascination for old-school soul, growing up on the classic Motown albums in her grandparents’ collection and the ’90s neo soul and R&B her parents loved. Soul, once massively popular in the UK but later pushed to the fringes of the mainstream, now finds in Combe an artist who many believe can bring the genre back into the spotlight. Particularly for Combe, who grew up in a predominantly white area, soul is more than just music—it symbolizes her heritage and identity, which she opened up about in an interview last year with “Rolling Stone UK.”
Combe pays meticulous attention to detail in every song she creates in hopes of reintroducing the music of her childhood to her listeners. You can see that in, for instance, her decision to record her 2023 mixtape “Black Is The New Gold” with a backing band and on analog tape. Her debut studio album from earlier this year, “Dancing At The Edge Of The World,” features an intro track and 10 soulful songs crafted to sound like an old-school soul record akin to the works of Michael Kiwanuka and Leon Bridges. At the heart of it all are Combe’s wonderfully poetic vocals. With solid musical roots, a fearless approach to innovation, and an authentic voice, Combe is a rarity in today’s UK R&B/soul scene. Recommended tracks: “This Town,” “L.M.T.F.A,” “Praise.”
Elmiene
Born in Frankfurt, Germany and raised in Oxford, England, Elmiene’s musical journey began by complete chance in 2021 when he captivated listeners with a cover of D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” D’Angelo was one of his favorite artists, and people were mesmerized by Elmiene’s rich, delicate vocals. Just a few months later, something even more pivotal happened: His debut single, “Golden,” backed Virgil Abloh’s final Louis Vuitton show—and the track hadn’t even been released yet. All it took was that one exposure to his song, and suddenly the name Elmiene was on the minds of people all around the world.
Perhaps most notably of all, Elmiene seems indifferent to his fame. Instead, his focus appears to be on creating music that stirs up emotions and evokes profound feelings. Perhaps that’s why his music always seems to exist somewhere between the personal and the societal, moving and belonging, sorrow and hope, yesterday and today. In these in-betweens, he revisits the memories of the diaspora, weaving themes of loss and healing into sensual melodies and vocals that float on a whisper. And nothing beats his live shows. All he needs is an acoustic guitar, and he can conjure up complex emotions to fill the entire space around the stage. The fact that he was nominated for the 2025 BRIT Award for Rising Star is proof of the emotional and artistic potential the music world sees in him and what he can bring to the future of UK R&B. Recommended tracks: “Someday,” “Light Work,” “Crystal Tears.”
*Honorable mentions: Reuben Aziz, Saiming, Rigga, Jalen Ngonda, Mnelia, Nia Smith