Mura Masa

For Mura Masa, an insular upbringing was the springboard for a wildly inclusive style of pop. Born Alex Crossan in 1996, Mura Masa grew up on the small island of Guernsey, later posting bedroom recordings online. Early DIY releases of lush, bass-heavy beat music led to production credits with grime titan Stormzy and then the collaborative free-for-all of 2017’s Mura Masa, where Charli XCX, Damon Albarn and A$AP Rocky all lent their voices to the artist’s effortlessly effervescent tracks. Mura Masa’s hybrid sensibility—which he put to great use producing PinkPantheress and Ice Spice’s “Boy's a liar, Pt. 2”—combines house, pop and rap with global sounds like steelpan and kalimba, but it never sounds eclectic; all his albums, like the more guitar-driven R.Y.C and the clubby demon time, boast a strong thematic unity. “The phrase I would use is ‘world-building,’” Crossan told Apple Music. “I wanted to just make this thing that people can step into and enjoy fully.”