Pozer: ‘UK Jersey drill is mine’
After becoming the first UK rapper to score a Top 40 finish with both of his first two singles, the Croydon-born artist is re-writing his story through developing an intriguing sound dubbed UK Jersey drill
“They gonna act like I’m not the reason they all make Jersey in the UK,” spits Pozer on ‘Shanghigh Noon’, jumping between heavy kicks and tight, twanging, Chinese-style string sequences. It’s a bold statement, dispatched with the crisp, confident delivery of someone who can back it up. Since dropping his debut single ‘Kitchen Stove’ last spring, the Croydon rapper has been developing a unique, futuristic blend of UK drill and Jersey Club, structured around punchy kick patterns, cinematic synths and staccato bars.
“I’ve never heard anyone else do my sound. Jersey drill is already its own thing, but UK Jersey drill is mine,” Pozer tells me as he dissects the jumpy, percussion-heavy musical formula he’s been pushing over the past year. “Drill is one of the foundations of my category, but I’m too outside of the box — you couldn’t call my music just one sound.”
Meshing together the moody atmosphere of UK drill and the upbeat, bouncily syncopated kick formulations of Jersey Club (which emerged from Newark, New Jersey, in the early 2000s) has allowed Pozer to appeal to a wide audience. Before the release of ‘Kitchen Stove’, he built huge anticipation by posting snippets of the track on social media, and when he shared his second single ‘Malicious Intentions’ a few weeks later, he became the first UK rapper in history to have their first two singles chart in the Top 40.
The 22-year-old tends to keep a low profile, but this kind of success doesn’t go unnoticed. In February, he beat big-name nominees like Central Cee, Headie One and K-Trap to win Best Drill Act at the MOBO Awards, and his position at the forefront of Rolling Stone UK’s Future of Music list for 2025 represents another landmark achievement. Elsewhere, on collaborations with artists including AJ Tracey, Nemzzz and JS x YD, he’s stuck to his distinctive sound while reaping the lyrical rewards of hours spent chilling with friends as a teenager, competing over who had the best eight-bar.
Satiating fans’ calls for new music, Pozer has just dropped his debut project Against All Odds, a four-track mixtape focused on the significant changes he’s been going through lately. It’s purposeful and forward-thinking, laced with hopeful bars like “Trials, tribulations, strife and struggle / I come from the dirt, mud, rubble… take risks and I make stacks double” and “I used to bruck down packs in tens / And now I get paid for spitting out gems.” At a poky cafe/bar in Hoxton — a slightly confused cross between a cocktail-centric tiki bar and a gentrified east London cafe — Pozer explains the project’s key objectives.
“The whole tape is there for inspiration value,” he says. “It’s for every yout from the ends that’s tryna do more than what is stereotypically shown. Against All Odds is on the lighter side of what we know as drill… most guys don’t wake up in the morning listening to drill, so I wanna shine a light on the other side of the people who come from these places but don’t 100 per cent resonate with everything drill as a subculture has to offer. I’m shining a light on me and everyone else living normal lives, talking about your habits, and [about] breaking bad ones.”
That theme is central to tape opener ‘Habits’, which sees Pozer rap: “Badness, from a yout I’ve been on badness / I’ve shed blood, sweat, tears / And still I ain’t shed these bando habits”, storming through confessional bars on top of a chunky, industrial, Mumdance-esque beat. The Croydon-raised rhymer recently followed through on this desire to break habits by moving to north-west London, in search of a fresh chapter in his life.
“Not being happy with the individual that I was beforehand is what got me here,” he says. “People always say, ‘What made you start rapping?’, and the answer is life — I didn’t like my life, and I wanted to change it. Music had never been anything for me other than an outlet. If I didn’t listen to music, I was mad… It would soothe, man. I was just living life, and through living life, you go through things, you talk to people, you make lyrics because you wanna verbally put things out there. Now it’s about learning to like my new life, and not miss the old one too much.”
While Pozer didn’t view music as a serious career option until last year, he’s been creating it for as long as he can remember. “My earliest step was drums, I used to bang on everything, so my mum bought me a drum set for my birthday. That was my first introduction to music; then I hit seven, eight or nine, and I started seeing my uncle using [production software] Fruity Loops and listening to music on his iPad. I grew up on the essence: poor recording quality, hearing guys spitting bars, and being like ‘Yeah, I know him from down the road, fam,’ you know when it hits home who these people are and where they’re coming from.”
A love affair with grime ensued. Pozer started hoovering up old DVDs of rooftop clashes, high-energy live sets and behind-the-scenes footage showing MCs like Crazy Titch chilling on the block or walking their dog. Since he was young, he’s loved the raw energy and dynamism of artists like JME, Skepta, Wiley and Kano, and in his clean, urgent delivery you can spot solid traces of this heritage. Sonically, there are also parallels with the kinds of dark, ominous flavours that define grime beats by producers like Rude Kid or Sir Spyro, lurking in the murky synth chords of tracks like ‘Malicious Intentions’ and ‘Puppies’. The man responsible for crafting most of Pozer’s instrumentals is RA.
“You have to shout out RA the God, he’s pivotal!” Pozer enthuses. “I met him through my manager sometime after the ‘Kitchen’ snippet was doing well. He’s a magician. For the sound I was trying to make, he understood everything, and he understood what I wanted to portray on the beat. For me, you have to talk to me outside of music to understand what I’m trying to do with the music, and he’s a man I can have those conversations with.”
Pozer’s close relationship with RA has helped spawn a futuristic sound that’s often guided by long, drawn-out synths that ooze and fizz, and tightly compressed, generously scattered kicks that build tension. The focus on creating suspense is replicated in recent visuals; the blockbuster music video for ‘Shanghigh Noon’ (directed by Red Moons and Arseni Novo) takes the track’s East Asian-inspired central melody and constructs a dramatic, fast-moving shootout sequence that speaks to the high production quality of UK rap videos today. For Pozer, it’s all about making the videos “a strong depiction of the lyrics”, building a world that extends beyond the four tracks of his debut tape.
There are certain parallels to be made between Against All Odds and other recent UK rap projects with an experimental sci-fi-esque tint, like CASISDEAD’s Famous Last Words or Jawnino’s 40. It’s not outlandish to say that what links these sounds is a desire to reach beyond a difficult or underwhelming reality, and grasp something otherworldly.
“I watched a psychologist say that if as a yout you liked cartoons and shit that was out of this world, it was ’cos you didn’t like your own reality,” says Pozer. “I can believe that. But honestly, I’ve just always liked those sounds, I find them intriguing.” I ask him about the potential of this style of UK Jersey drill to become a cultural phenomenon. “Right now, it’s for the taking in terms of who comes in and holds the belt of ‘This is the genre for us now.’ I don’t feel like the UK has a steady genre where it’s like ‘This is what we listen to, this is what we take in.’ I’m tryna get my style there, believe. That’s the main goal.”
It’s a lofty ambition, but given what Pozer has achieved in just a year, it would be silly to write him off. Especially given the fact that until recently, the Croydon rapper had no expectations of his music cutting through in any major way. “Man’s not used to actually doing well, so now that I’ve done well for a year, I can’t believe it,” he says. “The MOBOs put everything into perspective — until that, I didn’t like looking at the things I’d done and taking them for any achievement value. I didn’t care about the success of ‘Kitchen Stove’. But I care now.”
So, what does success look like in 2025? “I’m adjusting on the go, brushing shoulders with people who are setting the tone for my behaviour, and trying to soak up as much information as I can wherever I go and apply it elsewhere afterwards,” he says. “I just wanna do more musically, and I wanna have bare fun with everyone that’s got man to the position I’m in now.”
Taken from the April/May issue of Rolling Stone UK, which is out on Thursday, March 20. Pre-order your copy here.
Photography: Ryan Saradjola
Photography Assistant: Henry Hewitt
Styling: Daryon Impey
Fashion Assistant: Aaron Pandher
Grooming: Ephraim Onyebule at Carol Hayes Management using Tatcha and Philip Kingsley