The pride of UK hip hop and grime, Lioness can bounce over the trickiest beats like a Super Ball and spins a broad spectrum of lyrical moods – from alluring to terrifying to wacky. She’s got a reputation as a force built on a couple of astonishing mixtapes and some high profile verses, but she remains at large and unsigned. She’s no cub though, she’s been in the game since the age of fourteen.

Her prowess stems, in part, from the experience she’s been earning since that age. Lioness grew up with grime and made her debut with the trio M.Y.T. (Mastermind Youth Team) before graduating to join Mastermind Trooperz alongside her brother and cousins. Since then, it seems like she’s been spitting on every grime radio show worth listening to and had a verse in every video worth watching. She can often be spotted sharing tracks with other fearsome ladies of grime like Lady Leshurr and Amplify Dot. Her mixtapes display scads of depth, versatility, and sheer cussedness, in particular her roundly hailed Roarness tape.

Her deep voice and ironic tone were made for grime. Listen to her springy verbal ride over a burbling dubstep track on “Don’t Tell Me” and you’ll understand. As she herself so accurately puts it: “I spray rounds and still make sense when I slow the flow down.” And points for the pointed lyrics about other people and their opinions: “If you like what I do then whoop-de-do/If you don’t then you know what you can do.” As a disclaimer: chances are good, you’ll like what she does.