Cookie Crew were "Susie Q" Banfield and Debbie "MC Remedee" Pryce, a London duo who rhymed in a rowdy, tag-team style and rocked an Anglo-Afro look – all door-knocker earrings and print kaftans. Sadly, their debut album, Born This Way!, is yet to join the Spotify catalogue, but Rok Da House, their breakout 1987 single, deserves a listen. One of the earliest examples of hip-house – a genre that spliced jacking house beats with hip-hop verses – Rok Da House went on to hit the top five in the UK and saw the duo sign with FFRR, a subsidiary of US label London Records, which introduced the pair to an American audience. Embraced in America, Cookie Crew were collaborating with the likes of DJ Premiere by the time they got to work on their second album. Despite grumbling from certain quarters of the UK scene, the duo’s success in the US and the UK proved that homegrown talent could go far.



By the 1990s, the fledgling UK scene had begun to establish itself. But with no obvious blueprint to follow and a steady flow of imported hip-hop to draw on, British would-be MCs took cues from their American peers. Monie Love, now a successful US radio host, made a career for herself by cliquing up with the Native Tongues crew, while Derek B made mainstream inroads rhyming in a faux accent on TOTP. But London Posse’s Rodney P and Bionic – backed by DJ Bizznizz and, for a shot while beatboxer Sipho – rejected fakery, responding with a proud, bombastic blend of cockney and patois. They’d come up on sound-system culture thanks to their West Indian roots – Bionic had learned to toast on the London reggae circuit – and they drew on this to create a ragga-steeped hip-hop. A UK tour supporting Big Audio Dynamite eventually led them to New York, where they hung out up with Boogie Down Productions, a crew who were also pioneering rap riddims. Back in Blighty, galvanised by the growing Britcore scene, they signed to Island subsidiary Mango Records, but released just one LP – 1990’s Gangster Chronicle – and a handful of singles, including 1993’s How’s Life in London, before Bionic moved on to the drum'n'bass scene and Rodney P began what would become a successful solo career. Almost three decades on, their debut sound wonderfully dated – a trove of 80s and 90s British pop culture references, old-school yardie slang and Big Smoke attitude. It’s an album that legitimised hip-hop culture in Britain and created a legacy for today’s grime young ’uns.

Rodney Smith debuted as Roots Manuva on Blak Twang's 1995 single Queen's Head, but he established himself in 2001 with the crossover hit Witness (1 Hope), the lead single from his 2001 album Run Come Save Me. Like London Posse, Roots Manuva had been influenced by sound-system culture and the measured, dub poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson. As the 90s rolled into the noughties, he create a new breed of hip-hop for the digital age. Witness was built on a gargantuan, throbbing dub-bass line and Dr Who-inspired synths, with Roots Manuva’s inimitably deep vocals rhyming idiosyncratic verses about duppies, cheese on toast and pints of bitter over the mix. The accompanying video for Witness, an endearing Sports Day “revenge fantasy” filmed at his former primary school, only added to the charm. An imaginative, original rhymer, Manuva’s become a spiritual godfather for UK hip-hop's more imaginative, left-field emcees, including Big Dada label-mate DELS and spoken-word artist Ghostpoet.



Before her big, starry relocation to the US to pursue R&B, Estelle was a promising hip-hop artist in the UK. Raised by a single mother in a London council flat crammed with siblings and extended family, she grew up on a steady diet of reggae, soul, gospel, African spirituals and, later, hip-hop. Around-the-way charm, down-to-earth rhymes and a voice rich and versatile enough to turn out both sweet, mellifluous hooks and agile verses made her a formidable rapper/singer, inspired by the likes of Lauryn Hill and Missy Elliott. She’s best known now for her mega hit American Boy, produced by Will.I.Am produced and featuring Kanye West, but the early joint Domestic Science – a Skitz track conceived as a noughties update of Monie Love and Queen Latifah’s Ladies First, featuring Wildflower and Tempa – was a timely reminder to the male-dominated scene that females can run tings too, while 1980, with its gentle boom-bap beat and big strings, ushered in the beginning of a girl-done-good success story.

While Estelle mined her soulful, uplifting brand of Brit-hop, Klashnekoff –born Darren Kandler – gifted the world something darker. His album The Sagas of … was a dark, unfuckwithable opus that few have been able to match, an album brimming with dark, paranoid poetry, ganja smoke and verbal gunshots. The Sagas established Klash and his crew, Terra Firm, as heavyweights. Rasta roots culture permeates the album, particularly so on the excellent Son of Niah, with its dubby, flute-laced synthesis of militancy and mysticism (“I cut my dubs from the stomach of the mountains/ Buildin' the riddim from the natural surroundings”). But the single It’s Murda has become Klash’s signature track and an anthem in the UK. It's a menacing, knife-sharp Harry Love production, rife with violence both primitive (“Banana boat mango munchin' monkey/ Kick off ya door like jumanji”) and psychic (“subliminal crime snipe you in the back of ya mind”).

A vintage year for UK hip-hop came in 2004. While The Sagas of … delved into the brutal machinations of London’s underbelly, Skinnyman’s debut LP rallied against the system that had created that underbelly, with heated, socially conscious narratives that earned props from the streets and the mainstream press. A stint in prison and label woes with Talkin’ Loud, which folded shortly after signing Skinnyman, meant his debut was a long time coming. When it arrived, Council Estate of Mind articulated the plight of UK street life with a big-picture voice, frustrated and hopeful by turns, sampling extensively from the 1983 TV play Made in Britain,the story of a doomed, authority-baiting skinhead, played by Tim Roth. A decade on from the album’s release, very little has changed in the settings he portrayed.

Kent-born, London-via-Huddlesfield MC Jehst (AKA Will Shields) dropped out of college in the 90s to pursue rapping, and has gone on to become one of the finest British rappers. He's a consistently brilliant lyricist and serviceable beatsmith with a respected discography. By the early noughties, UK hip-hop was a thriving cottage industry, and promising indie labels began to establish themselves, with Low Life Records signing Jehst and the rest of Britain’s best. But when Low Life folded, the momentum the scene had been generating fizzled, and a wave of talent sunk back into the underground, disillusioned, as grime took over the radio waves. One of the few British MCs to earn major label interest, Jehst has remained committedly independent over the years, acting as scene figurehead over at YNR, the label he founded in 1999 to release his debut, the EP Premonitions. It’s easy to understand why Plan B would namecheck Jehst as an inspiration. 2005’s Nuke Proof Suit lacks the dark gravitas that makes cuts like City of Industry so thrilling, but it’s a prime example of Jehst’s skill for balancing rambunctious wit with swagger and eloquence. The video, if you can stomach it, is an obscene pleasure.



Lowkey (Kareem Dennis) announced a musical hiatus in 2012, but in the years leading up to this, he’d earned a reputation as one of British hip-hop’s most respected voices, a working-class intellectual and activist of British-Iraqi descent with a firm, measured flow. He began his career in the early noughties, releasing a series of mixtapes and making his in the hip-hop collective Poisonous Poets. Lowkey became Increasingly politicised as his career progressed, and his gaze shifted from London streets to world politics: warfare, genocide, US foreign policy, the Middle East and British Imperialism. One of the few rappers to hold court from the UK battle rap scene and the British Library, Lowkey has lent his voice to a number of activist organisations, including Stop the War Coalition and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. His influence extends past Britain’s shores, having toured with US rappers Canibus and Dead Prez, and collaborated with the likes of Immortal Technique. But that’s not to say he’s forgotten the battles being fought on British soil; in the BNP diss track We Don’t Want Them (produced by Last Skeptik), Lowkey gave the UK a much-needed anti-fascist anthem, one that seems particularly pertinent now given the rise of UKIP, while Hand on Your Gun, from 2011’s Soundtrack to the Struggle album, is dedicated to “the suit-wearing arms dealers” across the west, including the UK’s BAE Systems.



Akala, born Kingslee Dale (and younger brother to Ms Dynamite), came up on the London grime wave. A politicised, well-read and well-travelled MC, Akala favours an empowering, politically conscious brand of hip-hop with roots in radical literature and canonical poetry, breaking down complex, loaded subjects such as language, colonialism and capitalism into accessible, stereotype-shattering verses, set to a bricolage of rap, rock, electro and punk beats. Shakespeare, lifted from his 2006 debut LP It's Not a Rumour earned him a Mobo award and heralded the Hip Hop Shakespeare Company, a music theatre project for young people. Four years on, on Yours and My Children, from the 2010 album Doublethink, he’s disillusioned with the industry (“keep your awards”), evolving politically and stylistically into a bona fide hip-hop artist. Yours and My Children, written after a three-month stay in in Brazil, seems especially pertinent given the human rights issues raised by Brazil's hosting of the World Cup.

Like Akala, Kate Tempest takes inspiration from canonical literature and the swaggering, lowbrow street poetry of Wu Tang, melting these influences into distinct, story-driven hip-hop. Tempest came up on London’s squat-party scene, perfecting her flow at activist demos, battle rap competitions and open mic nights at the much missed record shop and hip-hop hub Deal Real. After a stint in the band Sound of Rum, Tempest is now forging a promising solo career as a polymath – rapper, author, poet and playwright. Marshall Law is the first cut from her acclaimed solo debut, Everybody Down, a concept work of urban storytelling in the vein of the Streets' A Grand Don’t Come for Free.

