Every year Radio 1 Xtra announce the 10 1Xtra Hot for 2021 artists. One of the names listed was Central Cee a 22 year old Rapper and Singer from Ladbroke Grove in West London. No one can deny his talent, as this year he has had two singles that have received an enormous amount of attention. His single ‘Day in the life’ which was posted on GRM Daily on the 14th June 2020, has received over 7.5 millions views. But how did this young boy from West London who would release freestyles on instagram get to where he is now?
Central Cee was born in Chelsea and Westminster hospital in 1998. His roots originate from China and South America. He describes how when he was a young boy his fathers love for Hip Hop music inspired him. His father would pick him and his two younger brothers up from school and would take them out and always inspire them to create rhymes up in the car. This stimulated his love for word play which can clearly be seen in his music, especially his Daily Duppy freestyle released on the Mixtape Madness Youtube channel where Kenny Allstar described him as “destined for greatness”. In this freestyle Central Cee describes how his come up took ages and required a lot of grafting. If you have followed Central Cee from his early days in the London music scene you will know that he has put in a lot of work to get to where he is now.
When Central Cee was only 17 years old he put up his first street freestyle video on Link Up TV. Later on he started to post music on his own channel and even had a track with Young Fume called ‘Wake Up’. I would argue that his sound has developed over the years since his early releases such as “running man”, where he would use melodic rap patterns to create fire hooks. My personal favourite song by Central Cee when he had more of a melodic sound was “Back2Back” with Kairo Kayz.
Central Cee began to get more recognition and blow up when he started releasing on Link Up TV. He adopted a drill beat sound which some argue is the hottest sound coming out of London at the moment and may be part of the reason this sound got him more recognition. In 2020 Central Cee started releasing rap freestyles on his instagram, showing his ability to create rap hooks. He would talk about his personal struggles growing up in London around gang affiliated communities and his hopes for the future and getting out of the hood.
Eventually Central Cee began releasing hit singles through platforms such as GRM daily and Link Up TV. His first drill release was ‘Day In The Life’ in June 2020, which was followed by ‘Molly’ which dropped in July 2020 and has received 4 million views on Youtube. In this single you can hear him speak about his hustle and experience in the music industry with record labels. More recently he dropped a track called ‘loading’ which has reached the Top 40 charts and has received 8.3 Million views in just one month.
Central Cee is one of the fastest growing rappers on the UK music scene and has even received recognition from viral star Digga D on his instagram live. Digga D explained that he went to school with Central Cee, does this mean that we could potentially see a collaboration between the two London drill artists? We shall wait and see.
