AJ Tracey

Combining the diversity of Britain’s rich Black musical tradition into an eclectic hip-hop fusion, AJ Tracey charted a back-to-the-futurist trajectory to help recast the UK rap soundscape in the 2010s. Born Ché Wolton Grant in Brixton in 1994, his father was an Afro-Trinidanian former rapper and his mother was a Welsh pirate DJ. Tracey dropped out of a degree in criminology to pursue music full-time in 2014. His 2016 collaboration with Dave, “Thiago Silva”—a rejuvenation of Ruff Sqwad’s legendary grime riddim “Pied Piper”—played a pivotal role in grime’s mid-2010s renaissance. Tracey turned to his Caribbean roots for his solo breakout “Butterflies” in 2018 and evinced an eclectic savvy with his self-titled debut album in 2019, tastefully coalescing soca, grime, UK garage and country into a versatile synthesis typified by the 2-step wonder “Ladbroke Grove”. The nostalgic throwback highlighted UK garage’s enduring esteem while demonstrating Tracey’s flair for modernising club traditions, an aptitude he testified to with “Dinner Guest”, a revisiting of DJ MK’s remix of Nightcrawlers’ “Push the Feeling On”, and the 2-step smash “West Ten” in 2020. Summoning the sounds of London, past and present, into vibrant, forward-looking hits, AJ Tracey is a standard-bearer for contemporary Black British music.