Today, the most-viewed clips on YouTube are not cats leaping at the sight of cucumbers or babies biting lemons, but music videos. And on YouTube, videos beget videos. Just as people used to film their reactions to the latest viral clip, more recently a whole cottage industry has grown around the concept of the music reaction video. Filed alongside unboxing clips and inane but sharply-cut vlogs, these reaction videos are extremely straightforward in format: You watch someone watch a music video, listening as they comment on particular lyrics, expressions, shots, locations, outfits, and other details. What makes some more watchable than others ultimately comes down to how entertaining or insightful the reaction is, more so than the music video itself.

One surprisingly compelling subgenre of these clips comes from American YouTube personalities who are hearing, seemingly for the first time, rap tracks from the United Kingdom. There’s something oddly wholesome about the cultural cross-pollination that goes on in this space: A trawl through the comments won’t unearth the slew of racist jibes and misogyny that otherwise litter YouTube; instead you get intercontinental slang translations and suggestions of more songs and artists to check out next. The people making the videos—like No Life Shaq, ZIAS!, and Lost In Vegas, to name just a few—are typically enthusiastic, seemingly unrehearsed, and occasionally flabbergasted by what they’re seeing and hearing. At best, they can rack up views by the million. And reaction clips are the only way to watch certain UK drill videos, after British police began ordering YouTube takedowns supposedly related to knife violence.

Clearly the internet has made the world feel like a much smaller place, but for UK music scenes like grime, drill, and road rap that grew up in largely distinct corners of London, YouTube has presented a new universe of possibility. The site is now a vital hub for these subgenres, and artists have been absorbed into YouTube culture, for better or worse. Could this be their ticket to international stardom? While grime favorites like Stormzy and Skepta have been able to cultivate a stateside fanbase, no UK rapper has managed to emulate their homegrown successes across the pond. But in today’s world, if you want something badly enough, sometimes you just have to work out who you need to pay to get it.

Louisville, Kentucky’s Tremayne Yocum, 25, spends his time outside of work filming reactions to UK rap videos under the moniker Mansa Mayne. Yocum originally launched his channel in April 2018 to document the growth of his dreadlocks. Within a few months, one of his UK-based subscribers, Dan Gill, sent him a message suggesting he respond to British rap. Per Gill’s recommendation, the YouTuber started surfing key UK rap channels like GRM Daily and Link Up TV, looking for tracks to include in reaction videos. As he embraced the format, his subscriber numbers grew from hundreds to thousands—and the most dedicated among them had plenty to say. “I’ll be honest with you,” Yocum says with a chuckle, “I had no type of knowledge of UK music. It was so bad because I was pronouncing people’s names wrong, and I would hear about it in the comments section.”

While Yocum maintains that his channel is mostly about entertaining people, he also acknowledges that his videos provide a platform for UK artists to reach a broader audience. “Somebody like me, I’d never heard of these artists before,” he says, referring to rappers like Fredo, Dave, and Stormzy, “but now I know other Americans who’ve heard of them because of me.”