BackRoad Gee | Reporting Live (From the Back of the Roads)

The British-Congolese rapper’s ambitious new mixtape proves there’s fertile ground to be found in the interplay between grime, UK drill, and velvety Afropop.

BackRoad Gee recently joked about creating his own dictionary. His explosive raps are peppered with so many repurposed words that they’ve taken on new meaning. Often onomatopoeic, they function as more than sound effects or ad libs—they’re critical components of the verses. Take “brukutu.” Add a “u” between the first two consonants, and it’s a popular West African sorghum-based beer. In BRG’s hands, though, it could emulate the deadly spray of a weapon, as in his career-defining verse on Pa Salieu’s “My Family.” Or, as he makes clear at the start of his latest mixtape Reporting Live (From the Back of the Roads), it can be self-referential.

The British-Congolese artist’s unabashed will to twist, bend, and break language however he sees fit has made him one of the most exciting voices out of the UK. Though only a few years into his career, his bellowing tone and trademark phrases—which include forceful uses of “woof,” “vroom,” “skrrt,” and the wonderfully inexplicable “urrdum” and “mukta” (there’s a Sanskrit explanation for this, but to BRG, it’s a “personal interpretation”)—allow him to fluidly inhabit the various shades of Black British music. His latest mixtape—and best work yet—reads more like an album in both its versatility and cohesion. It’s an ambitious effort that feels more revelatory than exhaustive, proving there’s fertile ground to be found in the interplay between the raucous energy of grime, the sinister textures of UK drill, and the velvety melodies of Afropop.

BRG’s first two projects—2019’s Mukta Wit Reason and 2020’s Mukta vs Mukta—had brief moments of magic, like the latter’s breakout hit “Party Popper,” but for the most part, they fell prey to bloated tracklists and uninspired production. On Reporting Live, a markedly more refined BRG commands every beat. The first half is a well-paced journey through the annals of street music, with nods to UK drill, grime, and the liminal space between the two. Lyrically, he pays dues to the ends and the shadowy back roads that earned him his name, switching between aggression, sincerity, and moralism. “Look at the things that we done/Enough is enough,” he declares unflinchingly at the top of the mixtape. From the nihilistic terror of “Fxct It” to the tragic realizations of “Dark Place,” BRG’s struggle to change his life is endearing in its flawed humanity, making his gains all the more encouraging. By the time he reaches “Fear Nuttin,” a solemn bridge between the mixtape’s two parts, he’s traded physical protection for a spiritual kind: “Don’t fear nuttin, only Allah/Previously, we had guns in the car.”