Ones to Watch 2019 #4 - Flohio

As we begin to enter the season of tip lists for the new year (Breaking More Waves always goes early with this – it makes it more fun for me afterwards to compare with all the others that are published in December and January) you can take an educated guess, based on past history, that many of the UK based lists, especially the industry ones, will be fairly London-centric. This is because much of the media and record industry is based there, so artists tend to gravitate to London, but also simply because of the sheer volumes of population of the country living in London; statistically it’s inevitably going to have more artists represented. 

This year is looking particularly good for South East London with Octavian highly likely to be featuring on those industry lists – he seems to tick all the right boxes, even if he doesn't tick mine, (if I’m wrong please pretend you never read this) and another possibility is Bermondsey's Flohio, a young MC who has featured on Breaking More Waves a number of times this year.

However, irrespective of if Flohio finds herself on industry lists or not (nothing is guaranteed, this is just guesswork on my part and this year there seems to be no really obvious choices) she’s 100% here on the Breaking More Waves Ones to Watch 2019. It should come as no surprise to regular readers. I pretty much told you she was going to be on this list back in July (see the bottom line of this post – click here)

Over the last few years Flohio (real name Funmi Ohiosumah) has collaborated with beat making duo God Colony, has been a finalist in the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition, endorsed by Naomi Cambell for Vogue as one of 10 Women Changing Our Future and played the likes of Great Escape, Lovebox and Latitude. 

What makes Flohio one of London’s most thrilling and fresh MCs is her incredibly quickfire, aggressively relentless yet cool delivery, combined with a mixture of industrial, trap, techno and hip-hop sounds that punch so hard they are almost overpowering. A great run of singles (Bands, Watchout, 10 More Rounds and Wild Yout) have paved the way to my rising excitement for Flohio, which has culminated in the recent Wild Youth EP. In late November and early December she heads out on her first small headline tour of the UK. 

She’s told us to watch out. Maybe we she be watching out for her.

Flohio - Wild Yout (Video)