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Atlanta based artist future has had a huge impact on my life from proving its possible to make it from the very bottom all the way to the moon, he's dominated the trap scene for years with hits like "codeine crazy", "march madness" and "stick talk" just to name a few of the hundreds of songs he's released. The reason he's my first pick is because without future the Atlanta trap music wouldn't be as big as it is today without him, another reason is his energy and work ethic he puts into his craft.

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Coming from London Skepta ran the underground grime scene in 2011 and still is the biggest name till this day with hits such as "shutdown", "thats not me", "It aint safe" and many more. He's also a producer, DJ, engineer, MC, Fashion designer and owns his own label as well. The reason i picked Skepta as a influence for myself is because he's a man of many talents and has accomplished a lot in his life, he's the perfect role model for people who come from poverty such as myself who want to go further in life.

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A new wave coming out of Atlanta in the mid-1990's fuelled by sex, money and drugs, trap music for most was more than just music, it was a way of living and even its own language. Atlanta is "the home of trap houses, which are houses where crack and other drugs are produced and sold" as said by CCCB LAB in (2020) their own story. Coming from that environment future had to "fight statistics" (HOT 97, 2015, 4:00) He used this genre as a escape to get out of where he was he said "think outside the box because thats the only way you gon get out, when you trapped in the trap you really mentally trapped in the trap, man i want to make sure my people just know that thats just not the end of your life" (HOT 97, 2015, 3:50). Though some people might see this genre as crude, its really escape for them to life a better life by painting clear pictures with words like future when he said "I was selling crack when Snoop dropped Juice and Gin" (might aswell, 2017, 1:10) and "Sold over a million dimes, hangin' in the cut" (trap n***as, 2015, 1:14)

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Future calls him self Hendrix plenty of time through-out his career referring to the late and great Jimi Hendrix's. Of course a lot of real Jimi fans probably would agree to say that future is nothing like him at all in the sense of the same music they create. Future goes to say in a GQ interview in (2015) "I go outside my comfort zone many times for the sake of just being creative musically. I'm not just a hip-hop artist; I feel like I'm a rock star like Jimi Hendrix" (Schnipper & Pari Dukovic, 2015), meaning jimi's insporation on future is so strong it reflects on his lifestyle and the music he creates. Future also named one of his albums"HNDRXX" (2019).

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Through out future's discography he has written multiple times about using all kinds of pills, weed, cocaine and lean/codeine so its no secret that drugs have had a huge influence on him and his career, because of this most average listers would assume future is just another drugged up rapper who wont last long, in fact this is completely un-true as he has said in a interview with Clique TV he says "I’m not like super drugged out or a drug addict my music may portray a certain kind of image"(Clique TV, 2016, 36:35). Also saying in the same interview he describes why he writes about these certain things saying "its a number 1 seller, they was doing it before me, they gonna do it after me, ain't nothing gonna change"(Clique TV, 2016, 26:10) summing it up to mean it could just be for entertainment purposes and for people that live that lifestyle and find it relatable.

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Electronic music was the one of the main ingredients in grime using drum and bass, jungle, house and dubstep melodies and or drums as the body for the beat which MC's would spit over. "I started to write grime lyrics in my spare time, not thinking anything serious would come from it but, somewhere inside me, I was happy to have this new form of expression after my DJ days had been cut short" (Skepta, 2018). So his love for electronic music from the start ended up clashing with with his talent for writing lyrics and producing which would start his grime career off perfectly, proving that he is more then just a MC but also a creative mind who is a jack of all trades.

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JME is the younger bother of Skepta and was actually the first MC in the family. JME's name was slowly growing and got recognised by another grime artist Wiley, who was a hot topic at the time and invited JME to the studio to record. Skepta being the older brother didn't ant his little brother riding there alone and went with him to the studio, after some time Wiley phoned skepta asking "why dont you spit some grime lyrics" (Red, 2015, 59:05) as he said in a redbull music interview but he didn't want to because he didn't like the stigma around grime artists. Skepta at the time was working a trap house and got a 8Ball and needed to brake it down, as he said in the same Redbull music interview "I was looking around for things in the kitchen and saw a machete and it was gleaming and something happened to me bro and i was like go on then do it for the chete"(Red, 2015, 1:00:06), which ended up being his first bar for his grime song named (Autopsy) - wasteman. In conclusion if JME wasn't MC'ing skepta would've never of gotten the opportunity to record his song let alone think of becoming a artist himself.

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In a apple music documentary called "greatness only" Skepta talks about one of his most arguably popular songs (That not me, 2016) and how it was made. He heard about Virgil Abloh loving grime music and he wanted to see him perform one of his DJ sets at Paris fashion week. So he flew himself there to watch how people reacted to his choice of tracks to keep the crowd pumped so he could apply it to himself. Skepta went back to his home studio and created a "l egendary flutey sound" (Skepta Greatness Only, 2016) which his used as the main melody in "thats not me" boosting the popularity of grime and Skepta himself. An article by NME saying "That’s Not Me’ redefined things" and "helped catapult a proud but peripheral UK scene onto TV screens, car radios and smartphones across the country" (Garratt-Stanley, 2024).

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Future - DRUGS

Clique TV. (2016). Clique x Future [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrRqfc6zN9U

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Future - JIMI HENDRIX

Schnipper, M., & Pari Dukovic. (2015, January 21). Future Has Cosmic Ambitions. GQ; GQ. https://www.gq.com/story/future-ambitions

Future. (2017). HNDRXX. Freebandz, Epic Records‌

Future - TRAP MUSIC

HOT 97. (2015). Future Talks Living in the Hood & Leaving The Trap [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBmMpV5JXmA

Extremely Short History of Trap Music | CCCB LAB. (2020, February 11). CCCB LAB; CCCB Lab. https://lab.cccb.org/en/extremely-short-history-of-trap-music/

Future. (2015). Trap Niggas. On DS2. Freebandz, Epic Records

Future. (2017). Might Aswell. On FUTURE. Freebandz, Epic Records‌‌‌

Skepta - GRIME

Skepta. (2018, March 15). Skepta. AnotherMan; AnotherMan Magazine. https://www.anothermanmag.com/library/10240/skepta

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Skepta - JME

Red. (2015). Skepta talks Grime, his rise to fame and Collabs | Red Bull Music Academy [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpzcbeubli0&t=3582s

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Skepta - VIRGIL ABLOH (CLICK HERE FOR SNIPPET)

Skepta Greatness Only. (2016, December 16). Apple Music - Web Player. https://music.apple.com/gb/music-movie/skepta-greatness-only/1238981974

Skepta. (2014). That's Not Me [single]. ‌‌‌Boy Better Know, 3 Beat Productions

Garratt-Stanley, F. (2024, June 4). How Skepta’s “That’s Not Me” marked the start of a new era for grime. NME. https://www.nme.com/features/music-features/skepta-thats-not-me-grime-jme-3762030

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