“I’m from the ’hood but I don’t let it define me,” raps Pozer. That’s kind of a fib. The young south Londoner hasn’t become UK rap’s king-in-waiting by rhyming about pony club and private school. His bars are for those intimately familiar with the postcodes where ATMs dispense fivers – and those who get their thrills from tours of the poor doors. What makes him special is his producer RA’s expert take on Jersey drill and Pozer’s authoritative low-frequency flow, both perfectly calibrated with the deliriously relentless, knuckle-skin-stretching tension of his rhymes.
His specialist subject? The daily drudgery of exchanging drugs for money – Pozer usually on the sunnier side of the swap – with a scalpel-sharp eye for detail and endless euphemisms for knives. If you’re keen to know the discombobulating mix of vulnerability and invincibility derived from concealing drugs and “Ramz” (Rambo knives) about your person in public, Pozer’s your man.
He’s hardly introspective, but filling a blank page always reveals more than you intend, and subconscious concerns about the drug game dot his work. He’s not the first to find the angst in “gangsta”, but it’s fascinating to hear him sidebarring his suppressed emotions. Try street heaters Kitchen Stove, Malicious Intentions, Shanghigh Noon, I’m Tryna (performed on Later with orchestration) or, er, Heaterz.
• Pozer’s debut EP, Against All Odds, is out now on Robots & Humans. He tours the UK from 14-23 April and plays Reading and Leeds festival in August
