CAUSING A SCENE - CHAPTER FIVE: THE FRONTRUNNER

South East London’s ENNY has held the mainstream in the palm of her hand since she grabbed its attention with one of lockdown’s most iconic anthems. Now, she sits pretty, patiently waiting, dismissive of industry rigamarole, with one core aim: bettering herself.

I interview ENNY on what feels like the first day of Spring; an opus of new beginnings. She joins our zoom without her camera on, a nonchalant timidness to her tone—measured but blithe. She’s been away for large periods of 2024 and hasn’t been writing all too much. That’s fine with her though, she’ll be back to it soon enough. “I think this year I've just been kind of relaxing. Just chilling a bit and taking things slower, no pun intended. But it is starting to feel like, ‘Get your ass back to work’,” she laughs.

Raised in Thamesmead on the edges of London’s southeast, ENNY has witnessed the transfiguration of her home constituency and reflects on the vacillating evolution of the wider Metropolitan landscape. “The area has changed because a lot of it has been knocked down,” she says on the area’s decrease in culturisms and increase in infrastructure and gentrification. “A lot of the things that were staple in the little inner city have changed now. The community aspects are going as well. But I think that's just the way London is right now, everyone's more for themselves. I think it's just getting a bit weird where it's like, [on] any piece of land, someone's trying to prop up some apartments.”

Growing up on a delectable diet of genres reaching from gospel to grime and garage, in her youth ENNY was often rapping and performing. Initially, however, ENNY used a contrasting medium as a creative outlet, opting to study film at university. “I was always obsessed with filming stuff and creating content,” she remembers. “I just really liked capturing stuff. Film was the most interesting thing I could do short of performing arts. If I'd listened to people's music, I'd imagine the music video.”

The correlation between music and moving image has always been one that ENNY has appreciated and understood, epitomised by her recent solo directorial debut for the music video of the “Charge It” remix. “I feel like it all just fits under one umbrella,” she offers on the synergy between the two disciplines. “You can create music around the world that you're generating in your head, and when it's time to manifest that into a physical product, it all comes together quite easily.”

Leaving university with hopes of getting her foot in the door of the film industry, she searched for freelance work, but “didn't know how to get into the industry and [she] wasn't a good networker.” She went to work with her uncle as a payments officer in a bank, a job she only took so she could buy a camera, but stayed for a while “because it was a steady paycheck.” It wasn’t until a friend started pursuing a career in music that she too felt motivated to chase her dreams.

“I think it's the moment that my brother introduced me to J Dilla,” she explains on finding her sonic identity; one that is soulful, expressive and oozes panache, a leader of the post-Simz-revolution of women rappers getting the respect that they deserve within the scene’s community. “I was hearing this really good stuff that I could write about. Also, a lot of the music I grew up on; pop, hip-hop, back in the day was pop but it was still kind of soulful, it was sampling Stevie Wonder and all these soul records, so I think the essence was already there and I just vibed to it.”

As she began to write and record music in hopes of releasing, ENNY, like many other alt-rap and soul-leaning artists in London, found herself adopted by label and community collective, Root 73. Meeting its two pillars – Ash Kosher and Eerf Evil – through her manager, she was invited to make use of their studio space in East London, proceeding to feature on the debut studio album of The Silhouettes Project, Root’s release moniker, delivering a slick verse alongside Nix Northwest on 2020’s “For South”.

“It is strength in numbers,” she pinpoints on Root 73’s ethos. “When there's a foundation or hub that people can make reference to you, it can allow you to have more of an impact. What they represent is counter to the industry and it's so wholesome. We have to protect it—we want to show the world that stuff like this can work, that everything doesn't have to be take, take, take, and that we can offer something different that doesn't make everything so capitalistic. It's important to be believed in and hopefully, you're a good person and you can exchange that energy back. It's not compromised and I don't think there's many places in entertainment that aren't.”

Unlike many of the other artists featured in Causing A Scene, ENNY did not spend the tender years of her career lurking beneath the surface of London’s music scene. She built a loyal and wide-spanning fan base almost instantly from the core foundations of her early releases. Her rise has been unique to her alone; empathically bursting onto the scene, bypassing the less prevalent corners of UK rap. After all, in late 2020 on only ENNY’s sophomore release, one of England’s biggest stars, Walsall’s soul sensation Jorja Smith, had seen enough to be convinced to jump on a remix of the thoughtful and thoroughly entertaining “Peng Black Girls” and its ensuing COLORS show.

“It established me as an artist,” ENNY remembers on the single, a sign of her ceiling-less potential. “As an artist that's what you want, to be on people's radar; it gives you a foundation. It was a sick moment and one that everyone wants when you're making music. I think the message of the song resonated and that translated, especially during the pandemic. Everything worked out kind of perfectly.”

ENNY swiftly built on the acclaim she developed through the success of “Peng Black Girls”, sharing her debut EP, “Under Twenty Five”, the following summer in July 2021. The seven-pronged body of work featured her aforementioned breakout hit, as well as popular follow-up singles “I Want” and “Same Old”. Despite it merely being her debut, ENNY brings confidence, conviction and charisma as both a lyricist and performer, with the EP playing out as a kaleidoscopic, jazz-tinged and luxurious body of work. Altering her status from viral hitmaker to industry mainstay, she swiftly and assuredly became one of the most prominent and promising rappers in the country.

The ensuing period saw ENNY grace the live circuit, avidly touring her incepting project, before finding the time to return to the studio and work on a sophomore EP. “We Go Again” was released in April 2023, nearly two years after her debut; the separative period allowed the 29-year-old to refine her craft, develop her sound and emit a message that exudes maturity and retrospection. The EP boasts a singular feature in Loyle Carner, another integral foothold in UK conscious rap, on the earnest closer “Take It Slow” (those questioning ENNY’s “no pun intended” remark above, here’s your answer), flaunting the impressive reach that ENNY had achieved so early on in her artist tenure.  

“Yeah I am actually,” she replies lightly when I ask if she is content when looking back at her two bodies of work released so far. “I didn't really have a moment to reflect, but then I went away in January and I took that time because I feel like I didn't take in everything as it happened.” Coming up for air from the breathless pace of life as an artist, ENNY is enlightened and ready to find purpose beyond the urgency of searching for success. “I had a moment where everything just hit me and I was just like, ‘What the heck?!’ So much has happened in the past four years and I feel like I’ve just blinked. Whatever the next chapter of my life entails, I want to really enjoy everything and to properly take it in.”

ENNY’s sound walks an illustrious fine line; being both commercially viable and artistically resonant. She’s alt-leaning sonically and technically explorative but brings with her a widely relatable and easy-listening aesthetic. How she’s constructed her career leaves her poised for longevity; she’s never rushed to release or overreached in her ambition, calculated but casual in her attitude to it all.

“I think I learned at a young age [that] all I can offer is music,” she says. “That's my selling point, I can’t compromise that. I have to remind myself because it's so easy to be influenced by stuff that's around you and what other people are doing, and thinking maybe I should be doing that too. I think you should always try to grow and put yourself out there, but you have to grow in your own lane.”

“Charge It”, a groove-inducing sleeper hit from ENNY’s sophomore EP, has had a life of its own following the project’s unveiling, and currently sits as the rapper’s second most streamed song on Spotify after “Peng Black Girls”. Incentivised to celebrate the soaring popularity of the cut, ENNY decided to augment the track with a follow-up remix featuring an A-list collaborator, accompanied by a visual directed by ENNY herself. In steps Smino: a highly talented Missourian rapper who has worked with some of America’s biggest names, from Noname to J. Cole. Stylistically, the two aren’t all too disparate, with this collaboration bridging an Atlantic-sized aperture between the two biggest hip-hop scenes globally. The pair evokes effortless chemistry on the cut, with Smino delivering a flawless turn on the track’s back end.

“I think it looks like that and that’s cool, but saying it sounds egotistical,” ENNY answers when I ask if the track was a statement of intent somewhat, sonic proof of her ability to collaborate with the upper tiers of the rap genre. “I think it shows that the sound is travelling into new territories past the UK. There’s some music that sounds very British and sometimes Americans don’t like that. But then there’s some British music that can fit in the bracket. They are starting to get with the program though. I do think that the UK is producing some of the best music, standard-wise. I think there’s so much quality, it just needs a push. Even with things like Root 73 and The Silhouettes Project, you can hear feeling in the music, whether that’s production-wise or what someone is saying. I really enjoy music that makes me feel.”

With a mouth-watering feature list steadily growing ever tastier, two critically lauded projects to her name, and her reputation as a champion of mainstream-friendly conscious hip-hop growing with every passing release, ENNY could well be one of the UK’s most significant artists of the 2020s. As the orchids blossom, the birds sing and Winter welcomes in Spring, ENNY sprouts with it, refreshed, resolute and ready to continue to find herself as an artist and as a human being. “Knowing your worth is hard,” she tells me conclusively. “For me, the journey isn't over, I still have a lot to prove. So it might look to other people like, ‘Oh, you have that big song and now you're rich’ or whatever, but there's so much you have to do to really staple yourself. It just depends on what your goals are. Me? I just want to be the biggest version of what I’m destined to be.”

Photography by @vickygrout

Styling by @kieraliberati

Interview and words by @tibbitsben

Hair by Honey Olowolagba

Make-up by Nance Katende

Photography assistant @domfleming_

Fashion assistant Nnenna Egele

Editorial Director @charlottejmorton

Editor-in-Chief @ellaxwest

Creative Director @jeffreythomson

Art Director @harry_conor

Assistant Art Director @beth1owri

Production Director @bencrankbencrank

Production Assistant Lola Randall

Special thanks to Nicki