Project Stripes

This versatile project from up and coming Lewisham born and raised artist Jim Legxacy is an incredibly emotional, fun and overall consistent addition to the modern “UK underground’s” canon.

The tape Kicks off with “context” in which Jim speaks about the mental place he was in before and while working on the project, over a cloud of synths and his harmonising voice. This track then feeds into the second single for the album “stick”. The chorus of this song further expands on the intro with Jim saying his “boat cant take on more water” and he’s almost at his limit of ‘sinking’. Later on in the track Jim samples Skepta’s, a major figure in the UK and global rap scene, “going through it” which perfectly fits the song while showing love to his predecessor. This is one of a few times that Jim shows homage to the UK grime scene as later on in the track list on the song “3x” (which also features Dave, another UK music legend) Jim uses a classic grime syntyh, similar to the sound featured on Skepta’s previous song “That’s not me” feature frequent collaborator and brother, JME.

The track list moves onto “new david bowie” which is a harpsichord led beat with hard hitting lyrics showcasing Jims versatility and comedy in his writing.

“She dont like no rapper so i told her im a singer”

The track closes of with him softening his voice, which shows him going from rapping to a more melodic flow – proving the aforementioned lyric.

Track 4 features Fimiguerrero, a London rapper who helps to create the extremely precise summer atmosphere of “sun”, a track incorporating various African influences. Jim also interpolates J hus’s “Did you see what I done” on this song, further showing his love for UK Hip hop culture.

The tape progresses into “’06 wayne rooney”, a pop punk cut and a stark switch up in genre which only expands on Jims already wide musical range. The next two songs on the project share a similar subject matter (to do with Jims relationship with his father) yet are executed very differently. The first of the two, “issues of trust”, is an emotional tune in which you can even hear Jims voice crack up giving the impression he is crying, when I fist heard this I was instantly reminded of “u” by Kendrick Lamar off of “To Pimp a Butterfly” in which Kendrick incorporates sounds of bottles smashing on the floor to show that the character he is portraying has been drinking. I only bring this up because “To Pimp a Butterfly” is one of the most critically acclaimed rap albums of all time. It is extremely personal moments on the Mixtape like this that set it make it such a captivating body of work. The next track, “father” however takes a wildly different approach as Jim raps over a sample based beat (co produced by fellow rapper/producer YT). This was the lead single for the tape. This song is much more of a ‘fun’ listen to than its predecessor however both ae excellent at what they try and accomplish. The music video for “father” is also done by the company Lauzza, which do a lot of visuals for the UK scene.

By this point in the mixtape already the title makes complete sense, “black” in the sense we have seen numerous African influences and “british” in the sense that he is surrounded by British collaborators. Jim is so clearly proud of his heritage and it shines through everything from the songs to the artwork and visual direction of the project.

A stand out on the tape, “I just banged a snus in canada water”, starts off with various tags, some of which have already been heard throughout the project so far. These lines are said by lengurz, a creative force in the clothing brand peaktelevision who collaborated with Jim legacy in the rollout for this album and have collaborated with other big names in the British music scene such as singer Pink Pantheress and her 2025 mixtape “fancy that”. Towards the end of this song, While Jim continues rapping, the beat reconstructs itself, going from a hard hitting piano rhythm to a bass driven sample beat. It is subtle yet intricate production like this that make listening so easy and it is constantly hooking the audiences attention.

The project finishes with “brief” where Jim wraps up the project referencing previous subject matter over a slower instrumental leaving the listener almost feeling as if they’ve gone full circle. This mixtape is just one example of the mounds of talent coming out of the UK right now and is just the start of what I imagine will be a long and prosperous career of Jim Legaxcy.