ledbyher

Rachel Aisyah Diack, aka Ledbyher, and I are just beginning to break free from the shackles of first-meet small talk when her flat buzzer goes. "Sorry, someone's at the door," she grins coyly, eyes darting towards the next room in the hope a roommate might swoop in and save the day, before clocking what's happening. "Oh my God. Somebody's here for a viewing of my flat," she laughs. Outside the ultra-controlled sterility of a press junket or a publicist's office, an interviewee's surroundings can tell a journalist just as much as their answers can – sometimes quite literally. In Rachel's case, I'm catching a glimpse of what life looks like right now: she's in a state of transition.

"I've been taking some time off, to be honest," the 22-year-old Indonesia-born, Norfolk-raised and now London-based artist was saying before our unexpected visitors arrived. "But tomorrow I've got my first rehearsals for an upcoming show, so I'm finally coming back. I've been living like a hermit, trying to move house. I'm moving out by myself for the first time ever in two weeks. So it's just like, 'Fuck.'" 

It's a well-earned pause following the release of her most ambitious musical project to date – the critically-lauded mixtape “The Elephant”, released in February. A record that not only cemented her place at the forefront of the UK's underground rap scene, but established her as one of the most compelling female voices pushing against a landscape that still feels, in many ways, like a boys' club. Alongside brain-rot soundtrackers, internet wunderkinds and genre-bending new guard – the likes of fakemink, EsDeeKid and Feng – Rachel is helping reshape what that scene can sound and look like.

Rich in texture and imbued with the dreamlike sensibility that has become a hallmark of her work, “The Elephant” is as trippy as it is intoxicating. Named after her favourite animal (yes, really) the mixtape took its title following a string of uncanny coincidences during its creation, from moving to Elephant and Castle to discovering the story of the Forty Elephants, the all-female Victorian crime syndicate once said to have operated in the area. The result is a body of work that feels wholly her own: adventurous, immersive, collaborative and reassuringly uncompromising in its commitment to Rachel's artistic voice.

“I like [the mixtape] more now than I did when it dropped,” Rachel says. “To be honest, I think because the further the distance is from me and the music, the more I feel like I've grown. Naturally, we evolve as people. But when I look back at the videos and stuff like that, I feel like so much changes from the point that I put something out, that when I look at it in hindsight, it's like, ‘wow’. I like looking at the evolution of my brain. I like it more now.” 

When we speak, Rachel has been spending time looking back at the project with fresh eyes. "I've been trying to think about my next project," she offers before I even have the chance to ask, already anticipating where the conversation is headed. "And I'm now rehashing everything that I did for ‘The Elephant’." Partly, it's the time of year. The mixtape first began to take shape in July 2025, and the anniversary has prompted an unexpected period of introspection.

"I'm trying to get myself back into that mode of, like... I want to deliver a really solid project to people. So I'm thinking, 'How did “The Elephant” come about? What did it feel like from that very first idea?'" she says. "I'm just trying to reanalyse how my brain made it happen, because I want to build another great world around my music again. I wanted to understand [the mixtape] more, which is what I'm trying to do now."

The specifics of Ledbyher's next chapter remain tightly locked away in Rachel's mind, but she offers a clue about where the music might be headed. "It's not going to be a complete left turn, like going somewhere else," she says. "It's actually in the same world as ‘The Elephant’, but I do want it to be a bit more... foresty. I'll say that."

How does one make underground rap foresty, you ask? "I'm from the countryside, so I want to do live sessions and acoustic stuff," she explains. "But I want it to be under a house in the forest type thing." The ease with which she describes such an oddly specific creative vision – as though building a recording studio beneath a woodland cabin were the most natural progression imaginable – speaks to the way Rachel has always approached music. Long before she was Ledbyher, she was teaching herself to produce on GarageBand, piecing together beats for her sister Anjeli’s vocals. At the time, her sister was something of a YouTube phenomenon, she tells me, and Rachel found herself quietly orbiting that creative energy – a later collaborative EP bringing those childhood memories full circle. 

"[Growing up] I had an iPad, and my sister used to sing all the time. She was the first one to create a musical environment for me. She sang everywhere, all around the house. She wouldn't stop. I didn't even sing in the shower," she laughs. "[But] once I downloaded proper software, I just caved in. I was just like this" – she frantically mimes typing on an invisible keyboard – "on my laptop all day. I think it made me kind of insane, but in a good way. I'd watch like five YouTube videos back to back, then have the software open next to me trying to apply everything. It just wouldn't work. I think my first song took like nine months to get to a point where I loved it. And even now I look back on it and I'm like, 'That's terrible.'"

A door crackles open and, just like that, we're pulled back into South London. "He's going to view my room. Hold on," she says, disappearing from Zoom as I wait patiently on the other side. "Wardrobe space, the desk and... is that staying with the room? I'll give you a breakdown of the furniture at the end of the viewing," comes a voice that sounds suspiciously like an estate agent. "I'm sorry this is so chaotic," Rachel says as she returns. We both laugh before trying to find our rhythm again.

The pull of nature, and of something just beyond the tangible, is an idea Rachel returns to repeatedly throughout our conversation. It's woven into both her creative sensibility and the landscapes that shaped her, a stark contrast to the concrete horizon that now frames her life in London. "I'm very spiritual," she says. "I'll never forget what my spirit guide once told me. She said, 'You need to always live near water.' Ever since I was a kid in Indonesia, I've always lived by it. There was this massive waterfall river in the middle of nowhere. Then I moved to Norfolk, where there were beaches and rivers everywhere. And when I moved to London, I weirdly tried to always stay near the Thames if I could, even if it meant living further out. The minute I'm not near water, I just go through terrible periods. My senses feel completely off. I get so angry or frustrated."

Fittingly, the next time we'll cross paths, it'll be among one of London's greenest expanses, as Ledbyher is poised to join the stacked line-up at this year's All Points East for one of two days headlined by Tyler, The Creator, bringing her world to Victoria Park. "All Points East is probably my favourite festival in London, to be honest," she says. Preach it to the choir, Rachel. "My saxophonist is going to be there, which is amazing because we haven't performed together in a long time,” she teases, speaking about the set. “We've got quite an early slot, which I actually like because it means I get to catch everyone else afterwards. But we'll probably be one of the first acts people see when they come in, so we want to make sure we're giving them a proper welcome and setting the energy from the start."

Arguably, nailing a festival set isn't half as difficult as commanding an intimate crowd. There's the booze, the sun (weather permitting), and the overstimulation of spending a day with your favourite people. Festivals invite a different kind of performance, not just from the audience, but from the artists themselves, who get to loosen up, lean into the moment and, above all else, have some fun. So what does Rachel look for when she scans the crowd? 

"Couples. I love seeing couples," she's quick to reply, fresh off telling me about finding love herself among the crowds of that very East London festival. "When I spot them dancing together, I'm just like, 'Wow.' I love seeing big groups too, girls' trips, lads' trips, whatever, but there's something about couples. They're there, they're listening, they're in love. It's like watching a memory [being made]."