The career of one of London’s finest rising rappers culminates in this excellent, eclectic and feature-stacked new mixtape. For 163Margs, it’s more than rhyme.

UK drill is, at this point, long past its prime. Gone are the glory days when London’s array of masked anti-heroes dominated the charts and popular culture. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t bags of talented artists making career-defining work – just look at 163Margs’ new mixtape “More Than Rhyme”. 

Enlisting an array of the UK’s hottest – from Clavish to Bandokay and Booter Bee – the tape presents Margs as one of the most dexterous and daring talents emerging from  London rap’s sonic melting pot. Having emerged a few years back with his huge Digga featuring “Hide And Seek”, the rapper has gone from strength to strength, and hits the finest form of his career so far on the comprehensive new body of work.

Listen to the latest single…

Read the interview…

More Than Rhyme” is actually a line from your first single “Hide And Seek” featuring Digga D. Was it a deliberate full-circle moment to pull the mixtape title from your own earliest bars, and what does that phrase mean to you now versus when you first wrote it? 

Yes it was a deliberate full circle moment , as I’ve felt from the beginning that rapping for me is more than just rhyming it comes from within. More Than Rhyme still has the same meaning to me now but I feel like it’s more important now as I’ve grown as an artist.

You started out being described as “the masked enigma” of UK drill. Fifteen tracks and multiple genres later on this mixtape, how much of that original persona is still intact, and how much has genuinely changed? 

The persona is still the same. The only change is that I’m trying to show more personality and trying to connect more with my fans to build a strong healthy fanbase.

The forthcoming mixtape promises three international collaborations across France, Italy and Germany. How did those specific connections come about, and what did working outside the UK rap ecosystem teach you that you couldn’t have learned while staying within it? 

I listen to a lot of international artists and have really good relationships with a few of them, so I thought I should try to put some songs together. I learnt that simplicity is key as a lot of artists in the UK like to compete and overcomplicate international features, whilst international people work as a team, keep it simple and go off vibes.

“YÉ” with Clavish marks a noticeably different sonic direction from your earlier drill-rooted material. What pushed you to make that shift and what made this specific soundtrack the right one for Clavish?

 ⁠I met Clavish at a Sony Publishing camp in France, initially he wanted to jump on the song I made that day but it never happened because he was feeling unwell and jetlagged, we just kept speaking about locking in and eventually when we did, we just ran some through beats and the first one we heard we decided to lay something.

You’ve worked with a huge range of artists over the years, including Digga D, Blanco, Bandokay and SJ, Sainté, Cristale, Bou, Booter Bee. Is there a collaborator who pushed you furthest outside your comfort zone, and what did that session actually look like? 

The Sainté session alongside the session with Bou were the most interesting, both artists wanted to take me out of my comfort zone and wanted to see if I could deliver on a whole different genre, I just went with the flow in the sessions and ended up delivering really good tracks with the both of them.

The tape boasts fifteen tracks. Was there a moment in putting it together where you had to cut something you loved because it didn’t serve the wider story you were telling? 

I had to cut a couple of songs I wanted to put on there a few times because they didn’t fit the plan nor the vision I was trying to achieve. I had to work harder to structure the tape in a way I would be happy to put it out. This tape missed out some really good features, but the main thing is to learn from this one and stay working off the back of the reaction this tape gets.

You’ve had freestyles on both Daily Duppy and Mixtape Madness’s ‘Next Up’. How did you approach each one differently, and do you think either freestyle genuinely changed how people saw you? 

I approached the Daily Duppy slightly with more to prove, I attacked it with more punchlines and wanted people to take me in for my rapping ability. My Next Up was more to show people this is an introduction, I wanted to show versatility and to prove to everyone I plan on being consistent.

More Than Rhyme is described as exploring the “cross-cultural influences” that shaped your worldview. Beyond the featured artists themselves, what non-musical influences (places, people, experiences) do you think listeners will actually be able to hear in this mixtape? 

I visited a few countries while I was writing and finalising the tape. Going to Italy, Germany, France and Thailand etc all shaped new ideas and different situations. I met loads of different people and experienced a lot in that time whilst I was travelling. I reflected that in some of the music on this tape.

“Talk Of The Town” has now passed 16M streams. When a song takes on that scale of life outside of you, does it change your relationship with it at all?

I have a strong connection to that song, funnily enough, it was the second song I ever recorded in the studio after “Hide and Seek”, it was just a quick freestyle my manager said I should put down, so seeing the numbers it’s racked up is humbling. It was really inspiring that something so small can become something quite big.

Two years into your career now, do you still feel a responsibility to drill specifically, or has your sense of who you’re making music for evolved along with your sound? 

I brought back the nostalgic feeling in drill at a time when everybody said the genre was dying. I achieved a Top 40 and dropped some good records after that. I just feel like now is the time to evolve and develop my sound and reach new levels. I don’t feel pressure or any sort of responsibility because I feel like drill is slowly changing, so people will adapt with the times.