The lone swan that glides across this cramped Stratford waterway is, technically speaking, property of the Queen of England, although centuries have passed since the royals claimed these fiercely territorial birds for their own eating. Momodou Jallow, the British musician known as J Hus, pulls up the hoodie of his black tracksuit against wind coming off the industrial creek. These days, Stratford houses a swath of new development, but for Hus, this corner of East London remains jam-packed with memories. “All kinds of emotions, the whole range,” he says. As a teen he used to visit the creek to “have a smoke and think about life.” Weed’s lift and water’s flow counteracted London’s pressure.

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Hus moved out to the suburbs last year. He grew up between a few places in Stratford, a multiethnic immigrant area that happens to be among the city’s poorest, and where the 2012 Olympic Stadium and one of Europe’s largest malls were recently built. The development brought new train lines, new amenities, and new attitudes toward policing. “They needed to clean things up for the Olympics,” he says. “And about 20 of us, we didn’t fit their definition of clean.” Now 21 years old, Hus is shy, and cautious. His face is a closed book until he gets comfortable, then he opens up with flashes of brilliant charisma. A hood strategist par excellence, he fills both his raps and his conversation with pithy insights.

In late 2014, Hus emerged on SoundCloud, but when he realized that the response to what he shared there was limited to kids in his area, he moved on to freestyle videos. The same day he posted his first clip, YouTube channels celebrating U.K. rap and grime, like Black Box and Link Up TV, came asking for more. That early music, and Hus’s celebrated 2015 debut mixtape The 15th Day, were dominated by stories of roadman life, albeit laced with aphoristic wit: “You might see me in the village/ You might see me in Dubai/ I shoulda went to probation/ But I got too high.”

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Ugliness pops up again and again in J Hus’s lyrics. “Talk about Hus, you better hashtag ‘ugly.’” He’s “Mr. Ugly, live in the flesh,” the “ugly man making sexy money.” Ugly means being visible for the wrong reasons. It’s Hus on the streets of today’s Stratford, a dark-skinned target. It veers into the personal as well. “My friends used to call me ugly,” he says. “Even my mum would say it. When I started with the music, I said I’ll call myself ugly before they start saying it! Being ugly didn’t offend me. It’s like: Yeah, I’m ugly. What? Make me ugly-sexy. Embrace it.”