Umir on Jim Legxacy's ‘Black British Music (2025)'

This sparked something in me. I want to talk about it.

Man.

As someone who has trawled a million creative paths inspired by hundreds of people, through a million different personal challenges, I sat and listened to this project thinking, yep, I get it.

Trying to express the intersection of your lived experiences and numerous inspirations in a singular bit of work, you can very easily end with a jarring mess.

This doesn’t happen with Black British Music.

This album is so dense at its core yet feels light on the ear. Every song is so deliberately textured and it gives rise to these soundscapes of a depth that others haven’t often taken the risk of attempting, especially in whatever genre Spotify will file this under.

Whatever that classification is, would be a disservice to the fusion of numerous sounds and genres this project boasts.

‘sun’ feels effervescent, bright, and alive. ‘issues of trust’ feels haunting, introspective and eery, you could almost imagine it as part of The Royal Tenenbaum’s OST. Both songs still retain an overarching sonic cohesion.

The punchy, gritty drums remain a constant. The airy vocals remain a constant. And Jim Legxacy floats over the noise of a fraught UK. There’s this addicting push and pull feeling to the Legxacy sound in this project.

Black British Music is special.

It captures a time and place, uniquely and authentically, but not in any objective way. It’s not trying too hard to make a wider commentary on society as an outsider. It’s personal, subjective instead and that’s more valuable.

Legxacy doesn’t have all the answers to his own questions, but he doesn’t have to have them. Taking what is honest and true to him now, and expertly creating a real life vignette of his perception of those things in sound form.

This has a clear stamp of ‘this is me’ on it, even if it sounds like he is reflecting on what that ‘me’ really is.

Unironically, its the sort of thing that makes Britain great.

The current UK–US rap beef, or the pandering to US audiences for international appeal, feel forced. In the same way the great British filmmakers and musicians in the past have taken a hold of their space globally, they were unapologetically themselves, weird, unique, spiky, non-conformist. Legxacy is in that class, for the new generation, across all creative domains.

This project feels like it was done for the cathartic, personal sake of doing it and it’s inspired me to want to do and be more without compromising the essence of myself, whilst exploring and refining what it means to be me.

More power to Jim Legxacy. A prayer for his sister and mother.

UMIR.