Knucks

Afamefuna Ashley Nwachukwu has always been a storyteller. From spitting grime 16s in the school playground to the teenage tales imbued in his debut mixtape under his adopted alias Knucks, “Killimatic”, which he made and released before he turned 18. And from his Metropolitian-cloaked MOBO-winning 2022 debut album Alpha Place to its new Afro-indebted follow-up, A Fine African Man, there’s one consistent, ubiquitous thread: his indubitable craft as a chronicler. “I think that just comes naturally,” he smiles. “Rap is the art of storytelling.”

Stories have to be experienced to be told, and the 30-year-old has lived through plenty. Growing up in Kilburn in West London, crime and poverty were never much more than an arms length away; two topics that the rapper and producer has broached throughout his catalogue. Whether in the visceral, visual depiction of knife crime in 2019 breakout single “Home”, and more recently on this latest LP, rapping on “Cut Knuckles”, the album closer: “No washing machine, man wasn't a teen, but was washin' my clothes by hand.” It’s a bar that cuts deep in its reflection, and also, through being penned, instigated the wider thematic direction of the album. “I'm sitting in my house – the new house that I've got from what that album did – and I'm looking at my washing machine, and I remember there was a time where I was washing these clothes by hand,” he ponders. “And I remember how washing the clothes by hand used to cut my fingers. It's talking about the struggle and relating the struggle back to where I am now.”

Where he is now is a career apogee. This sophomore full-length effort, released via the label he founded himself, NoDaysOff – an epithet which has become a mantra synonymous with his artistry – has hardened belief that Knucks is among modern UK rap’s most significant players. He’s someone whose progression directly impacts the wider scene.

UK rap hit unfounded heights in the early 2020s. There was a real sense that, with drill, alternative hip hop and road rap expanding into new audiences and navigating the changing social media-led listening habits, UK rap could become a substantial chunk of the mainstream. Knucks’ own debut album, Alpha Place was emblematic of the success, invading the top three of the official UK charts and winning album of the year at the MOBO Awards. But in the past few years – time that Knucks has spent largely absent from the conversation, working on this sophomore – the scene has plateaued, struggling to reignite its spreading appeal, largely tepid in its innovation, more focused on image than art. 

“I don't know if there’s some fatigue of it reaching that level,” Knucks questions. “Because at that time, there were so many things going on that added to it. Top Boy was doing its thing so there was a lot of global interest in the UK and our slang and all of that so to have a project like mine come out when it did, as well as a lot of the other music that come out around that time, it makes sense why it did well and why the whole world was interested in us as a culture. But now, there's not too many guys that feel the need to push the needle. There's a lot of, ‘Okay, cool, this is the new sound.’ Like for example, when Kairo Keyz came out with a big jazz [influenced] song, off the back of that, there were like 15 other guys doing the same thing. And then someone else will come with something new, like Pozer with the jersey ting, and then now there's a bunch of other guys doing that. There's definitely people that are trying new things, but it's just not enough.”

He does, though, point to the UK underground scene as a pivotal breeding ground for creativity, praising the likes of Fakemink, EsDeeKid, as well as Fimiguerrero, who features on the new album. These new wave artists obtain the same forward-thinking essence that Knucks himself has spearheaded throughout the past decade. No one sounded like Knucks, and still, no one sounds like Knucks. He’s an anomaly—swimming against a current that’s plagued by pastiche. 

Rather than match or emulate trends, Knucks aims to take what works in a present-day market and reinterpret and augment it within his unique artistic uniform. After Alpha Place, his stock was never higher, embarking on tours of Australia, Europe and North America. “While doing all of that, I was still working,” he recalls. “I was actually working on a joint project with Kenny Beats in LA. Then maybe like 10, 12 songs deep into it, I had a meeting with my managers, and they basically said to me, ‘Music is heading in the direction of the diaspora, of Nigeria, of Africa.’ At the time, like two years ago, the biggest songs in the charts were African artists like Burna Boy, Rema, all of these guys. So they said it would make sense to work on something that would allow us to be in that space. So that's when I came up with the concept of the album.”

The trial and error process of melding his own musical background and this new sonic MO didn’t happen overnight—hence the extended wait of over three years between albums. “A lot of the time was finding what this [album] would be, because with my sound, it's always a combination of what is current, what I listen to and what my musical DNA is – soul and jazz and all of this stuff. Last time [the current genre] was drill. This time I wanted it to be African music but it was very difficult to find the sound – figuring out how much percentage of each genre is going to be in it.” 

He’d spend “five, if not six days a week,” locked inside Tileyard Studios near Kings Cross, exploring the soundscapes independently – he’s an avid, sonically articulate producer himself, after all – and with a cohort of close collaborators, such as Wizkid associate TSB, Grammy-winner Beat Butcha, and London mainstay Swindle. 

He was also listening to a lot of Nigerian music—not exclusively though, keen to maintain his skeletal hip-hop prowess. “The Funkees and The Cavemen. were both big inspirations,” he pinpoints. “But then I was also listening to a lot of US rap because I knew that I had to make a conscious effort to not make another Alpha Place. I knew that I had to rap more 90-to-95 BPM rather than the 140 drill style, because I feel like if I overdo it too much, I’ll just get put in the box of, ‘Okay, this is the drill guy.’ So I was listening to Tyler, the Creator, Clipse, Westside Gunn, those kinds of artists, to ensure that my pen was sharp. Then I would listen to the underground artists. That's why I've got Fimi[guerrero] on [‘NIKTA’].”

It’s a record designed to stitch together the tapestry of Knucks and Afamefuna Ashley Nwachukwu – biographically exploring his past, his relationships, and his cultural identity. The latter, throughout his life, has been a point of conflict. Born-and-raised in London, his parents sent him to Nigeria for over a year at the age of 12, because he was getting in trouble in school. It wasn’t the easiest of experiences, reflective of an internal discourse he has had of being defined as British Nigerian. “I've come to a realisation that it's its own separate identity,” he says of his dual heritage. “And I think there needs to be an acknowledgement of that. When I was in Nigeria as a boy they didn't see me as Nigerian. I was Nigerian, but I was [mimics Nigerian accent] ‘London boy, British boy.’ So I'm seen as that. And then over here, with all of these people getting sent back to the country where they're from, it's clear that to the British people – even though I was born here, raised here – I'm not British either. So I think it is its own separate thing, and this project has really highlighted that for me. It's just about trying to find a way to connect with both sides.”

Whilst making the album, Knucks returned to Nigeria in 2023, visiting his family and the school that he went to as a child. “I hadn't been back in almost 10 years,” he reveals. “So I went back and did a lot of things to just reconnect with that experience from so long ago. Because during that period, even though it was only a year, I remember so much, and so much of my life is affected by it. There's a story on the album about a cook that worked in the boarding school, who was a family friend. I went back and saw her…I hadn't seen her since I was 12 years old. She was still working in the school. I saw my auntie and my cousins that I was living with before I went to the school. I just reconnected with a lot of people.” 

After reuniting with people he cared for from his childhood, he got to work—and play. “I went back again a month later, but this time I went for a month. And I was in Lagos, not Enugu where I'm from. This was seeing Nigeria in a different light; my experience with Nigeria had always been a family thing, going to see my relatives. When I came back for the second time in Lagos, I was being hosted at parties, going and doing the rounds. And for me, that was mad, experiencing it from the lens of being a somebody now, I'm being hosted at these clubs and I've got money now and things like that. There's a certain bias to people who seem like they come from a different class, it's very classist, and yeah experiencing it from that kind of perspective was very different.” 

The process of discovery and growth brought Knucks closer to his Nigerian-ness. You can feel the pride and purpose oozing through the album; whether that be in the choice of features being majority Nigerian, the likes of Tiwa Savage, Blaqbones and KCee, or his commentary on the continued economic hardship and political turmoil on a track like “NWANNE”, or in the choice of the album title itself. A Fire African Man, is an acronym for Knucks’ African name, Afam, which he stopped using once he had moved back to England as a teen, instead being called by his middle name, Ashley. And so this album proves a reclaiming of the name he spent the first half of his life being known by—a full circle moment portrayed with remarkable poignance on album standout, “MY NAME IS MY NAME”. 

Alpha Place is a rich homage to Knucks’ experiences as a young man in London, navigating adulthood, friendships, and romantic entanglements, but A Fine African Man is worth more in its topical currency. It sprawls wider than its predecessor in thematic resonance, whilst focusing in on the man behind the tight flows and savvy wordplay. It’s a coming-of-age record, a reflection of the life he knew and the life he knows now, told through the lens of a lineage that he now understands better than ever thanks to making the album. “I feel like making this project was a way for me to reconnect in that way and have them in Nigeria see me as almost a representative over here,” he says. “Someone that they can champion and be like, ‘Okay cool, he understands us and he's showing the world what we're about.’ So I only think that's possible for me to do if I understand them completely and I really connect and I know my roots. So that's what I'm trying to do.”

Knucks is one of life’s narrators. He’s a 30-year-old trying to navigate the next stage of adulthood. He’s one of UK rap’s most paramount players. But what is he, before anything else? Just listen to the first line of the opening song of his new album, and he’ll tell you.