Jim Legxacy Delivers a Brilliant Snapshot of Black British Culture

On “3x,” a standout track from London-based musician Jim Legxacy’s new mixtape Black British Music, the 2016 UK rap classic “Wanna Know,” by Dave — who is also featured on the song — serves as a thematic core. Legxacy’s vocals, sparkling and ethereal, suffused with emotion but never saccharine, give Dave’s iconic hook a new depth. It’s one of multiple references to the track on the tape — on “d.b.a.b.” Jim coos: “I don’t wanna know like the old Dave,” an easter egg of sorts pointing to a specific cultural lineage. 

Legxacy told Rolling Stone earlier this year that the mixtape was an effort to make space for a Black British cultural identity. “A lot of us are technically the first British people in our entire lineage, and that has a huge cultural impact,” he says. “Our identity is still at a point where it’s malleable. We’re figuring out what that is.” Ironically, it was Drake, fresh from his feud with Meek Mill, who initially brought “Wanna Know” across the pond via his remix. Back then, just as it is now, the UK rap scene was gaining popularity in the United States. In flipping the song’s hook, Jim Legxacy presents a kind of reclamation, returning cultural artifacts to their rightful home.

Throughout Black British Music, samples are deployed with kaleidoscopic precision. On “Stick,” he references Skepta’s “Going Through It,” on “sun” an interpolation of J Hus’ “Did You See,” and elsewhere on “d.b.a.b.,” we hear Legxacy singing Kojo Funds’ 2018 single “Warning” (which itself is an interpolation of Snow’s “Informer”). Even when pulling references from American artists — “New David Bowie” flips “Wash” by Jon Bellion, and Outkast’s “Hey Ya” gets interpolated on “06 Wayne Rooney” — we’re still in decidedly British terrain. Like on his breakout mixtape Homeless N***a Pop Music, Legxacy connects these sonic tendrils in service of a larger vision. As much as the cultural specificity of the Black British experience informs this record, it’s his own life as a Black British youth navigating trauma and loss, as he explains on the album opener “Context,” that lends it weight.

As a writer, Legxacy’s talents lie in his nimble sense of songcraft. Take “Father,” BBM’s first single, and a solid contender for the song of the summer. In roughly ninety seconds, we’re given a robust narrative arc—the multi-pronged trauma of an absent father and its ripple effects on romance — unspooling over a vibrant jerk-inspired beat. On the cheekily titled “I just banged a snus in canada water,” he’s effectively pumping himself up in the mirror, growling the hook, “I can’t let them do me like they did me as a kid,” which itself manages to carry within it a world of meaning. The track rolls along a sticky piano melody and marauding trap drums that drive the message home. 

“SOS,” the mixtape’s most obvious hit, is where Jim Legxacy’s sound coalesces. Opening with a sample flip of Case’s R&B classic “Missing You,” Jim deploys sonic signatures with an instinctive flair, like a DJ guided solely by their mood. On “tiger driver ‘91” he’s in vintage Jim Legxacy terrain. The song is reminiscent of “Andromeda,” from his 2021 mixtape Citadel, replete with the punchy acrobatic flow of British battle rap. Except, in the four years since Citadel, Legxacy’s life has clearly transformed. There’s a heavier sensibility to the song, a feeling that lingers beneath the surface of Black British Music. On “Context,” he lays out the past few years of his life, during which he lost his younger sister and watched as his mother and brother went through their own health battles. Where many artists have recently taken to expressing challenges with mental health in their music, BBM achieves something more sensory. “I wanted to show what it felt like when it caught up to me,” he says on “Context.” “But I also wanted to show the bullshit of me distractin’ myself too.” 

Black British Music succeeds in expressing something deeply personal. The sound of hospital vital monitors on album closer “brief,” like the flurry of samples throughout the record, strike a singular emotional frequency. Like Nas’s Illmatic, Black British Music paints a portrait of a young artist as informed by their heart as their surroundings. While Legxacy feels like “there’s always gonna be mud,” as he says on “Context,” his latest mixtape is remarkably hopeful.