The underground is where the culture breathes its hardest. Away from the glare of mainstream playlists and PR machines, these artists are bending genres, repping their hometowns, and building their own ecosystems. Here’s a selection of underground and emerging voices worth locking into — from Croydon to Cairo, Cape Town to Chitungwiza, and beyond.
🎧 Feng (UK)
Croydon’s 19-year-old rap prodigy Feng has already carved out a lane with his mixtape What the Feng. His approach is stripped-back and anti-industry: lo-fi beats that lean into cloud rap textures, coupled with diaristic, introspective lyrics. Even his visuals carry a throwback DIY aesthetic, favoring nostalgia over polish. Feng isn’t chasing the algorithm — he’s chasing honesty, community, and a vibe that makes his fans feel like insiders.
🎧 Maruja (UK)
Manchester’s Maruja is a band, not a solo act — and that’s part of what makes them stand out. Their debut Pain to Power is a pressure cooker of sounds: free jazz, punk, hip hop, and alt-rock, often flipping from ambient passages into explosive crescendos. It’s music as theatre, intensity as identity. They’re carving out a scene for listeners who want hip hop energy wrapped in avant-garde chaos.
🎧 tg.blk (Kenya)
Straight out of Mombasa, tg.blk embodies what underground hustle looks like today. Her breakout “Love Being Used” was entirely self-recorded, mixed, and mastered from home, and it went viral. After a short hiatus, she’s back with a stronger presence, streaming momentum, and grassroots credibility. She’s pushing Kenyan hip hop forward while staying firmly in her lane — independent, authentic, and uncompromising.
🎧 Hala (Egypt)
In Cairo’s hyper-male rap scene, Hala is kicking down doors. Her bold delivery and politically charged stance cut through the noise, with projects like her EP Tlef Wetdoor showing she’s not afraid to be confrontational and raw. She’s part of a new wave of North African rappers asserting identity, female perspective, and lyrical edge in spaces where women have often been sidelined.
🎧 Shoday (Nigeria)
Nigeria’s Shoday is threading the needle between street buzz and mainstream heat. With tracks like “Casablanca” (nearing 9M streams) and “Queen N More,” he balances sing-along accessibility with a grit that separates him from Afrobeats’ poppier surface. Shoday’s not afraid to blur the line between hip hop cadence and Afropop melody — and that blend is quickly becoming his signature.
🎧 K.Keed (South Africa)
Cape Town’s K.Keed is a rising star in South Africa’s ever-fertile hip hop ecosystem. Her music rides trap beats but stays deeply rooted in township slang, cadence, and local swagger. She’s already on the radar of streaming platforms and local press, representing the next generation of SA rap queens. K.Keed’s versatility — able to spit venom one minute and flip into melodic flows the next — makes her a true one-to-watch.
🎧 Saintfloew (Zimbabwe)
Hailing from Chitungwiza, Saintfloew came up on rap battles before breaking through with his 2022 single “Silas Mavende.” His music blends introspection with Afro-pop textures, giving him appeal across borders while keeping one foot in the underground. Even as his profile grows, his core audience sees him as their artist — still speaking to the struggle, still grounded.
🌍 Bonus Global Spotlights
- Annie O (Philippines) – Quezon City’s Annie O is carving her space with hard-edged Tagalog verses over trap-drill beats, giving Southeast Asian rap a fresh, bilingual bite.
- Don’t Call Me Jennyfer (France) – A Parisian MC mixing conscious rap with a fashion-driven DIY aesthetic, she’s become a voice for the immigrant diaspora in France.
- Aklo (Japan) – Tokyo-based rapper blending Japanese and Spanish, Aklo bridges cultures while dropping some of Japan’s most technically sharp underground verses.
- Turtle White (Chile) – An experimental rapper from Santiago merging boom-bap roots with psychedelic textures — think MF Doom meets Latin folklore.
- Yugen Blakrok (South Africa) – Though already known internationally (featured on the Black Panther soundtrack), she still operates in the underground lane, weaving Afro-futurist imagery with razor-sharp lyricism.
✨ The Takeaway
The underground is more international than ever. Artists are rapping in their own languages, pulling from local cultures, and rejecting formulas built for playlists. From Croydon to Cairo, Manila to Montevideo, what unites them is the DIY spirit — and the sense that hip hop’s future always starts outside the mainstream.
