The hype is in overdrive, so much so that people are declaring he’s lost his soul and calling him an industry plant. He’s at the forefront of the British scene—alongside upstarts like Fimiguerrero, Jim Legxacy, YT, and Len—but also quickly surpassing it, primed for global crossover. How did we get here, and is this 20-year-old Drake and Dean Blunt diehard worth the fanfare?

In the early days, before he was fakemink, he was 9090gate. He smoked weed and recorded music from a bedroom crammed with knickknacks and guarded by blackout curtains. He filmed Instagram Lives, including one where he got hit by a car. Over the last couple of years, he has slowly developed a style he calls “dirty luxury”: think food stains on a $10,000 t-shirt. It’s not a super original concept—opulent grime has been the ethos of countless MCs from Rocky to Lone. He wants to give it a fresh spin with his own production and beats from some of the most exciting oddballs in the underground, like deer park, cranes, Yurkiez, mag, and reklus1ve. “Bambi,” produced by prblm, conjures up a drunken walk home at 3 a.m. with rain drizzling lightly over your head. Others like “Bite My Lip” and “Crush” have a deliciously decayed shimmer that makes them feel like 2000s prom hits from an alternate dimension. fakemink’s one of a few in this corner of the underground who writes out lyrics ahead of time instead of punching in fragmented bursts. As a result, his vocals have a kind of stately yet starry-eyed quality, giving structure to these deformed, cosmic beats from the internet abyss. It reminds me of the way Takeoff’s unvarnished tone anchored his Migos partners’ Auto-Tuned warbles.