Jim Legxacy is a young artist with an old soul—that of a Tumblr-pilled millennial. Until recently, the British rapper, singer, and producer was a meticulous craftsman of audio moodboards, stitching together spidery emo guitar lines, Afrobeat drums, recognizable samples, and of-the-moment rhythms like Jersey club. But as skilled as he is as a producer, it was his songcraft that made his tracks feel more vital than mere nostalgia bait. As a vocalist, Legxacy used his impressive range—he can sing with a gentle flutter, rap ferociously, and do just about everything in between—to sketch out deeply personal stories about homelessness, loss, and displacement. Within the constraints of self-produced, two-minute bedroom pop songs, Legxacy had figured out how to make surprisingly rich, evocative music. On his XL debut, black british music (2025), he attempts to break out of the box he’s made for himself by bringing in outside producers and aiming for a more polished, seamless sound.

Thankfully, he’s still letting the seams show. black british music features some of Legxacy’s best production and songwriting yet; he’s beginning to sound like the second coming of cut-and-paste icon Jai Paul. Here, Legxacy is at his best when commanding tracks that are propulsive and chaotic: Samples collide headfirst, drums snap with the force of fingers on pads, drops overpower everything in the mix. “Father” is a radiant, modern take on chipmunk soul, wherein Legxacy sees the lack of a male role model as a path to companionship. He writes with a dazzling economy of words: “On the block, I was listening to Mitski.” “New David Bowie” shapeshifts from Bollywood banger to harpsichord rap to glittering pop, all in the space of just over two minutes (few tracks here exceed that length). “D.B.A.B” sounds claustrophobic but the lyrics reveal Legxacy’s sense of humor: He positions himself as a pushover (“Don’t be a bitch/If you wanna be a bitch, then that’s okay”) before briefly interpolating Snow’s “Informer.” “Sun” reads like a summery Afropop number until you realize he’s invoking the rising of the sun as a means of navigating grief, one day at a time. “3x,” which strips things down to an acoustic sound that recalls Young Thug’s Punk, is more direct. “Girl don’t hit my phone/I’d rather be alone again,” Legxacy moans on the chorus, before Dave steps in to comfort him with a showstopping verse. “Told Jim, you already did your sister proud,” he huffs, acknowledging the passing of Legxacy’s sister in 2023.

black british music doesn’t draw directly from an emo lineage (Legxacy is an avowed Paramore stan), though we do get a few experiments that fall squarely in the rock category. “’06 Wayne Rooney” blows up the teen-drama pop-punk template to Kelly Clarkson proportions—you can actually picture it being played in a football stadium. “Issues of Trust” is a straight-up guitar ballad: The backbone of the song is just Legxacy crooning gently over fingerpicked steel strings, quietly unburdening himself. Most interesting is “Dexters Phone Call,” a collaboration with R&B songwriter dexter in the newsagent. Recalling Legxacy’s magpie-like early sound, the song builds like a snowball picking up detritus as it rolls downhill: Layers of guitar and piano share space with bits of studio chatter and the sound of a barking dog. As a collaboration between two rising artists, it feels accomplished, casual and intimate.

It’s hard to point to any weak points on black british music, but a few songs feel less distinct: the breezy Afropop of “S.O.S.” sounds a bit anonymous next to the rest of these songs (admittedly, it also sounds like a potential hit), while the submerged sound of “Tiger Driver ’91” veers uncomfortably close to Drake territory. And then there’s the overall production aesthetic of the record: a dreamy, impressionistic sound that goes heavy on the reverb and smeared synths as Legxacy skillfully flips through genres. The obvious reference point is the auteur-pop of Blonde, whose presentation has become a sort of shorthand for music that’s both personal and cinematic. Certainly, this production works for most of the songs on black british music. That said, it does rob the music of some of the buzzy originality that has made Legxacy’s rise so thrilling to watch.

Thematically, there’s a whiff of unrealized ambition here. Legxacy’s previous releases were grounded by a strong sense of place: From the streets of Lewisham, he offered a Nigerian British story of struggle through a nostalgic lens, iROKING.com drops and all. His perspective on black british music is not always so crisp, and he repeatedly describes feeling dulled by the numbness of grief. The album’s title and the drop that echoes throughout these songs (“We’ve been making asses shake since the Windrush”) hint at an unsung lineage, as well as the U.K.’s broken promises to members of the Windrush Generation. But Legxacy never explains quite what “Black British music” represents for him. Is the album supposed to highlight Black immigrants’ outsized contributions to British culture? Is it a peek at the future of beat music in the U.K.? Or is it just meant as an assertion of Legxacy’s identity, as a person and an artist? When Legxacy wonders, “How’d I go from poverty to pop star?” towards the album’s close, you get the sense that for a guy who possesses such a strong sense of where he came from, he’s having a hard time wrapping his head around where he might be headed.