The prince of French drill, Gazo exploded into the French rap stratosphere in 2020 with his puissant Parisian take on UK drill. Born Ibrahima Diakité in 1994 and raised between Paris and the outlying Seine-Denis suburbs, Gazo looked to London’s thriving drill scene for inspiration for his own 140bpm online freestyle series “DRILL FR” in late 2019. Combining with underground rap kingpin Freeze Corleone for its fourth edition, “DRILL FR 4”, in 2020, Gazo’s guttural quotables and infectious ad-libs lifted drill from the underground to the mainstream with an instant Paris street classic. After being recruited by French rap celebutantes Jul and Gims to bring his brand of French drill to their high-profile 2020 LPs, Gazo’s own major label debut, DRILL FR, arrived in 2021. That boisterous, drill-exclusive fusion of rattling hi-hats, fulsome sub bass and rasping reflections on Parisian street life ascended the French album charts and produced the infectious singles “KASSAV” and the ungovernable “HAINE&SEX”.