Sound of 2026: Rap polymath Jim Legxacy is the runner-up

In a very short time, Jim Legxacy has risen “from poverty to pop star”.

That’s his own description, delivered on last year’s shapeshifting, monumentally ambitious mixtape Black British Music (2025).

Critics called it “unmissable”, “a brilliant snapshot of black British culture” and “a landmark moment for UK music”.

And it’s earned the 25-year-old second place on BBC Radio 1’s Sound of 2026 list, which highlights the most exciting musical talent for the new year.

“A lot of artists can have a narrow viewpoint of love and relationships – but with Jim, there’s this very wide viewfinder,” says Radio 1’s Jack Saunders.

“You hear him talking about things you wouldn’t ordinarily consider, or even see, when you’re walking down the street – but he puts a pinpoint accuracy on it that’s impossible to ignore.”

Legxacy is a mercurial figure – a musical polymath, defiantly original, who has largely stopped speaking in public, partly due to the tragic backstory behind his latest mixtape.

While making the project, his mother suffered two strokes, his brother was treated for psychosis, and his younger sister died of sickle cell anaemia.

In one of the handful of interviews he gave about the album, he said he didn’t feel “developed enough as a person to be able to talk” to journalists about the situation.

Instead, he let the music do the talking. More accurately, the music galvanised his recovery.

“I think sometimes your emotions will speak to you in a different language,” he told Rolling Stone. “But I feel like when I start making beats, or I start creating, I feel like Google Translate. I can write something that connects to myself.”

The songs on Black British Music are vivid and evocative, finding light in the darkness but never quite shaking off an undercurrent of sadness.

“Shed tears when my sister died,” he confesses on the gentle, guitar-led 3x. “Nearly made [me] lose [my] grind.”

He’s comforted in the next verse by Dave, who tells him: “Jim, you already did your sister proud.“

“My little sister really wanted to be an artist… before she passed,” Legxacy told YouTube channel Kids Take Over. “And there’s a part of me so badly that just wants to see it through.

“I guess that that gives me purpose, and it gives me fuel, and I feel inspired.”

Legxacy (the x is silent) was born James Olaloye in Lewisham. The child of Nigerian immigrants, he paints a bleak picture of the south London borough. He once rapped about growing up “afraid of the block”, where he was surrounded by “deportations, prison sentencing [and] stabbings”.

Money and opportunities were scarce but there was a “a good sense of brotherhood” in his friend group, and he has fond memories of riding bikes and playing basketball.

His mum “tried hard to shelter me” and filled the house with feel-good music – gospel songs, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson.

But as a child, “I was never interested in it,” he has said. “Maybe because of how intense it made me feel.”

It wasn’t until he was 17 that he let his guard down.

Friends at school introduced him to rap, specifically Kanye West’s head-spinning The Life of Pablo, and his world opened up.

“That’s the first rap album I sat through top to bottom,” he told Brick The Mag.

“For that to be my first one is insane because a lot [of albums] have structure and organisation… But the first one that I found was the most chaotic Kanye album ever.

“It had no cohesion, and no real sense of identity outside of the fact that it’s chaotic, and I think that has shaped so much of what I do.”

Inspired, he started making his own beats, stitching together samples and genres to create a sonic collage reflecting his tumultuous London existence.

It’s an approach that was inspired by his university course in graphic design.

“My teacher would always make me make something and then she’ll be like, ‘All right, cool, now that you’ve made this, cut this up then try and make it into something completely new’,” Legxacy told the New York Times.

Even so, the initial results weren’t great.

“I started off really bad,” he admitted, “but I’d send a voice note of me rapping to my boys every week and they’d critique my technique, delivery, beat selection, etc.

“After a few months I was rapping like it was second nature.”

He uploaded his first song, Plethora, to TiKTok in 2019 and was “gassed” when it received 1,000 plays in a day.

But as his music took off, he found it difficult to keep up. For a period, Legxacy was homeless – the byproduct of a legal situation his father found himself in – sleeping on friends’ floors and (in one case) in their office.

He addressed the situation on his debut mixtape in 2022. “No silver spoons in my hood, just empty pockets,” he mused.

Yet the majority of the songs were concerned with a broken relationship, hopelessly dissecting what went wrong.

Led by the subject matter, he started singing more, his dewy-eyed timbre adding emotional depth to the fragmented, impressionistic soundscapes.

“What music in London has been missing for a long time is vulnerability, because I think a lot of us are trying so hard to come across a certain way,” he told Kids Take Over.

“Everyone falls into that cycle, especially when you grow up where you grow up. But I just always try to emphasise in the music that there is a sensitive side. I’m trying to integrate as much honesty into things.”

As his reputation grew, Legxacy was invited to collaborate with Dave and Central Cee, producing their chart-dominating hit Sprinter in summer 2023. But family tragedy delayed his own music.

“Sorry the mixtape is takin soo long,” he wrote on X in November 2024. “My momma had a stroke so I’ve spent the past couple weeks lookin after her.”

When he returned, it was with the standalone single Aggressive. Despite its title, the track’s central message was about combating negativity.

“I feel like everyone’s kind of going through difficult times right now… so I wanted to make something that doesn’t ignore that,” he told Radio 1.

“But I think trying to be optimistic with the things that we’re making is important.”

Like many of Legxacy’s songs, Aggressive sampled a classic UK rap track – in this case Chipmunk’s Oopsy Daisy. He frequently interpolates lyrics from other rappers, quoting artists like J Hus and Skepta. But his magpie tendencies go even further, cherry-picking from artists ranging from Paramore and Miley Cyrus to Daniel Bedingfield and Bon Iver.

He uses the references as a nostalgic trigger, a sonic shorthand, building something futuristic out of the past – but his larger motivation is to celebrate the rich history of black music in the UK.

“We’ve been making arses shake since the Windrush,” he exclaims on the outro to Black British Music’s standout track, Father.

In interviews, he’s expressed how important it is for other black musicians to own that story.

“I think rap is getting gentrified,” he told New Wave magazine. “I’m cautious of how the industry is geared towards making music for the white male gaze. I don’t necessarily think it represents black people higher up the apparatus.”

Black British Music is his riposte. A declaration of intent. The arrival of a unique British voice.

Just don’t expect him to repeat himself.

“One of the main things for me is development,” he has said.

“I want to look back at my discography in five years time and dislike some of it – but be glad for what it grew into.”