Kam-Bu raps with a wisdom and clarity beyond his years

When Kam-Bu speaks, he speaks with intention. It’s no surprise – the 24-year-old rapper’s measured energy spills into his precise, diaristic strain of hip-hop. “With my music, all I can give is myself,” he tells me over Zoom from his dad’s flat in Mortlake, London. “It’s like a message to myself, to be myself. I feel like I’m always showing this side of humility; I’m being honest and I’m giving you the world as I have experienced it, and how I feel about it.”

The world, as Kam sees it, is beautiful but fractured. At the core of Black on Black, his debut project, sits a heavy introspection fortified by his ferocious lyricism and flow. “When I wake it’s a rise and grind ting/ There’s no prize on the run when you’re living life like this,” he spits on Plane Ahead, laying out his all-or-nothing commitment to his art. He later declares, “I’m divisive/ Still with my guys it’s pigs in blanket/ They fail to disguise it.” Are You On?, meticulously constructed by experimental producer Leon Vynehall, is the project’s foreboding first single and doubles as a potential soundtrack for a sneak around Area 51, in which Kam questions whether he’s ready to take the next steps in life. Meanwhile, the lush, orchestral title track, co-produced by Vynehall and Kam’s childhood friend, Pullen, celebrates the richness of Black culture, from the innovation brought over by the Windrush Generation – of which his grandfather is a part – to the present day. To a backdrop of wonky electronics and skittering grime beats, Kam seeks personal growth, calls out social injustices and challenges racial stereotypes.

Few artists arrive sounding like the finished product, but Kam radiates a disarming confidence. He spits with a wisdom and clarity beyond his years; something he chalks up to a childhood in which he absorbed a myriad of sounds. “It comes from a blend of Super Cat, Damian Marley, Peter Tosh, Kano and Dizzee. How they flowed between beats…” he pauses, as if daydreaming. “Stuff like indie helped me figure out [musical] patterns later on. I was always aware of all these different cadences, and all of those flavours and rhythms helped me find my feet.”

Curiosity has been a guiding light in Kam’s life for as long as he can remember. Born in Nottingham, his immediate family made the move to Brixton, south London, when he was just a baby, before his dad – a percussionist and proud Rastafarian – relocated the family ten miles west to the affluent neighbourhood of Richmond. Despite such upward mobility, Kam’s was one of few Black families in the area and he was “always getting stopped and searched by the police”. The trauma of being racially profiled slowly manifested into a dark period for him. “It got to a point where I would just keep walking when they tried anything,” he recalls. “It led to one big period of depression when I was a teenager. Every day was just a blur. But that feeling would later turn into this attitude where I can’t be told I can’t do something. Despite the hardships, I always knew I would do bits.”

Around the same time, Kam’s dad kept a constant rotation of reggae, R&B and hip-hop playing in the house, urging him to write his first bars as a pre-teen. “I would just close my eyes and work with the colours I would see when I heard a beat,” he says. “These days I just try to find emotion – if I’m gonna dive into something I have to really open it up on a different level.” Soon, Kam was spitting over rap and grime beats at a local youth club, meeting Pullen and bonding over a mutual love of underground hip-hop legends Madlib and MF DOOM. Then, thanks to SoundCloud, he broke bread with like-minded London rappers such as Lord Apex, Louis Culture and p-rallel, building a creative ecosystem outside of what mainstream UK rap was offering.

He’s far from settled, though, and those years of constant movement when he was younger keep him on his toes – in a good way. “I think [moving] has been good for my soul,” he says. “I don’t think I have to be from anywhere; wherever I go, I take that energy. I wanna see the world, I wanna go travelling and take in new experiences. Asia’s at the top of the list.” He also has plans to help conserve the planet. An advocate for sustainability, he hopes his “agriculture-focused” work alongside an as-of-yet named brand succeeds in ensuring a world that is a “zero waste community, where everything is getting reused instead of recycled”.

Kam-Bu is all about the long term, planning well ahead to craft the fullest version of his endeavours. “I want my music to be remembered,” he smiles as our conversation winds down. “I feel like I’ve definitely achieved something with Black on Black. When years go by and people go back to it, hopefully they’ll say, ‘Yeah, Kam was on different smoke.’”