Rebel

When you seemingly become a celebrity overnight, your name ends up in some wild headlines. Especially when no one knows what you look like. Here’s one: “Viral Rapper EsDeeKid’s NYC Ticket Prices Are Reselling for $1000.” OK, here’s another one (and I wish I were joking): “Is This Mysterious UK Rapper Actually Timothée Chalamet?” No, seriously—since the summertime release of his debut full-length, Rebel, Liverpool-bred misfit EsDeeKid has made everyone paying attention lose their minds. And not just TMZ, but prestige outlets too.

Picture a hazel-eyed Brit pouring up liquor with coke nestled on the edge of his nostril. His knees guide the steering wheel as he speeds down the highway with the sun in absentia. The windows are down; it takes four gongs of the nearby church bell to remind him that daylight breaks soon. “Prague,” a standout from Rebel, paints this portrait in broad strokes. Anecdotes like this are the closest we get to insight on EsDee’s character: a daredevil incarnate, headstrong and unconcerned with dressing up his vices in euphemism.

As much as people want it to be, this is not Timmy Chalamet doing a bit. Rebel is a 21-minute knucklehead’s account of streetlit debauchery: stomach-turning double cups, overstuffed Backwoods, empty pill bottles. EsDeeKid conceals his identity with black balaclavas (hence the conspiracies), but the way he slathers bass-thumping numbers with his Merseyside snarl is enough of an introduction. In his own words, he’s a “fuckin’ ticking time bomb,” a “bastard” in the fatherless sense, but reading these quotes on a web browser won’t do them any justice.

You can try to tie EsDee’s mainstream boom to the Fakemink Industrial Complex, but that doesn’t tell half of the story. Just a few months ago, London rapper and producer fakemink was the year’s biggest export in British rap—a trend-hunting A-lister’s first pick to latch onto and act tapped in. Despite his stellar 2023 debut tape London’s Saviour, mink is primarily known as a singles artist, the type of rapper whose fans exchange loosies like trading cards. His biggest song to date happens to be a feature on this very album: “LV Sandals,” also featuring Rico Ace.

Since dropping in February, this shadowy, snot-nosed track has elevated all three artists to the podium. But for all mink’s cultural capital, EsDeeKid is passing industry thresholds the Londoner hasn’t hit yet. It’s been about six months since Rebel first dropped, and it’s spent the past 12 weeks climbing the UK charts, so far peaking at No. 9; last week, it debuted at No. 13 on Billboard’s Rap Albums chart in the U.S. But I hate playing the numbers game. I say all that to say this: EsDeeKid is now the world’s hottest rapper to the east of the Atlantic. And it’s not because of who he’s cool with, or who TikTok conspiracy theorists think he is behind the mask, but because of how he wields that fucking accent.

Now, I need answers. Has a Scouser ever been this pissed off? Surely not since Gerrard slipped at Anfield that one time? EsDeeKid rips through verses like a maelstrom. “Got long, black hair like I’m emo/Drugs all white, albino,” he spits on “Mist.” The way he slants his rhymes in tandem with his pronunciation is what makes him so interesting. He doesn’t care about appeasing anyone who didn’t grow up where he did. On “Tartan,” featuring UK underground champ Fimiguerrero, he flexes, “Got a bad bitch and she came from Lebanon/Pop these pills, gone blue like Everton,” and you think, Damn, I never thought you could say “Lebanon” like that. The novelty of EsDee’s inflections put a fun spin on his hard-nosed style; I imagine all those consonant digraphs that bust “Panic” wide open covered his pop filter in saliva.

That novelty starts to fade with repeat listens, though. EsDeeKid knocks you over the head with his brazen delivery, and his flow is as strident as any of his counterparts’. You hear that on “Panic” especially, but also on “Rottweiler,” “Dirty,” and “4 Raws,” where he sounds like he’s foaming at the mouth. He’s a gifted enough performer that his presence alone can entertain, but the approach is so one-note that the showmanship begins to feel hollow. Part of the issue is his cut-and-dry lyricism, which ends up feeling accessible and shallow at the same time. Punchlines are simple, designer labels abundant (“I’m Prada’d up like the devil”).

Where Rebel really stumbles is with its run-of-the-mill meld of trap and jerk production. There are no bad beats, but they’re too tame to match EsDee’s acerbity. Nothing is more underwhelming to me than “LV Sandals,” a sluggish, paint-by-numbers jerk cut with a murky synth tremor that feels like a placeholder. (Y’all chose the wrong song to be the consensus fakemink hit when “Crush” and “Music and Me” are right there.) Aside from a pause and a pitch shift here and there, most beats, like “Mist” and “Phantom,” indulge in one formula: anonymous two-bar melodies, skittering snares, and thumping bass. Nearly all the melodies feel pedestrian on their own, like the trite arpeggio of “Prague” and early Sad Boys-type progression of “4 Raws.” And the percussion doesn’t knock as hard as it does on SINN6R’s or TeeboFG’s records, for example, though “Rottweiler”’s cavernous low end makes it an exciting outlier.

Would these songs make sense bumping in the background of a house party? From the speakers of a passing car? Yeah, I can see that. The bulk of Rebel is good enough to elicit some head nods when you end up on the aux. Regardless, we should all get accustomed to the next rap superstar to come out of the UK: a faceless, nameless dude from Liverpool with undeniable ability. From producer Wraith9’s indelible “OK” tag to EsDee’s bulletproof Scouse growl and the opaque mystique of it all, Rebel’s ongoing takeover makes a lot of sense. People love a good mystery—especially when they get to add to the script themselves.