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Kwengface is the energetic MC bringing the real to UK drill. The 23-year-old has been rapping virtually all of his life but has blossomed of late as the architect of some of the genre’s finest offerings, including ‘No Censor,’ ‘Auntie’ and ‘Zoom,’ bringing him to the forefront of the UK drill scene. And it all comes natural to the budding rapper. “What I'm talking about is authentic and how I talk about it is authentic,” he says. “You get that Peckham flavour mixed with the African flavour that nobody can replicate. It’s just me, innit.”
Growing up in Peckham, South London, nothing was the same for Kwengface when he discovered music, particularly the seminal road rap emanating from his neighbourhood at the tail end of the 2000s by the legendary Giggs and his SN1 crew. By then, he’d not yet reached his teens but by bearing witness to this rise, his destiny had been decided for him. By age 14 he was recording music, while also active in the street life that his influences vividly laid out, but his focus never waned. “I was just always on [music], because I always really liked it,” he explains. “My peers around me were always onto me about it, saying, ‘don’t be one of those people that was doing music, you got somewhere and [you didn’t take it seriously]. You’re good, you should stay on it.’ I’m the type of the person where, whatever I do, I stick to it. Otherwise, there’s no point doing it.” As luck would have it, Kwengface would find greater musical purpose as part of seminal drill crew Zone 2, who made a splash in the drill scene with their Known Zoo mixtape in 2017, dropping classic tracks such as ‘No Hook,’ ‘DMF’ and ‘Who’s Badder Than We.’ But, with several members encountering legal issues, the South Londoner changed tact, focusing his efforts as a solo artist.
With a debonair demeanour that he can crank up at any given moment, Kwengface takes his self-professed ‘authentic drill’ to new levels, offering front-row seat reporting from the trenches of his South London abode with the frenetic energy of a runaway train, while levelling his fiery content with ice cold flows. “I’ve taken in a lot of what the drill scene has to say,” he states, explaining his rapping style, “but not just that, I’d probably say the whole UK and US scenes, as well as myself and my background. As a Ghanaian, we’ve got rhythm and we’re smooth.” Being himself has gotten Kwengface far in a short time, with over 40 million streams on Spotify, 20 million YouTube views and show stealing freestyle performances on Charlie Sloth’s ‘Fire In The Booth,’ Link Up TV’s ‘Behind Barz’ and producer Fumez The Engineer’s ‘Plugged In.’ He brings that same energy to his upcoming debut solo mixtape, wherein Kwengface has taken the time to expand his lyrical and sonic repertoire while retaining his artistic essence. “I want my fans to know there’s more to me than just the badness,” he says. “If you listened to me two years ago and compare it to now, I’m talking about different things. I want them to recognise the elevation. This tape has the right balance. It’s a bit more approachable and grown than your average drill music.”
With his first project pending, Kwengface is striving for greatness, to transcend the drill scene from which he came and become an all-encompassing star. He is driven by a mission to educate and pass down the lessons he’s learned. “I want to be able to guide the younger generation and help steer them in the right direction,” he says. “I didn’t have a lot of people to teach me about music, social media, money, and in five years’ time I need to be that person for others.” Kwengface is maturing in real time, both artistically and personally, a shift that is set to put UK music on notice.
