Kwengface is crafting a new lane outside the confines of UK drill

It’s Sunday night at Glastonbury 2025 and Kwengface is in his element. The Peckham rapper has joined dance duo Overmono for their West Holts headline set and an emphatic performance of the two acts’ collaboration with Joy Orbison, ‘Freedom 2’. Clutching the mic tight and crouching low as he bounds across the stage, he blurts the crowd-pleasing line “I love my freedom / But I’ll risk it any time I see them,” before demanding “energy!” from thousands of bouncing fans.

It’s an appearance that’s coloured with a confidence that suggests he’s got bags of recent experience performing live to the masses. The reality is that this is a triumphant return to the stage for a rapper who has spent the last two summers incarcerated instead of lighting up shows, missing out on some of the most pivotal years of his career and planned performances at Glastonbury, Wireless, and more.

Having risen to prominence with the Peckham drill crew Zone 2 in the late 2010s, Kwengface (aka Ninian Martin Agyemang Fosu) ultimately went solo in response to several members of his group going to prison. He dropped his debut mixtape ‘YPB: Tha Come Up’ in 2021 and followed it up with an impressive run of tapes, singles, and freestyles on platforms like Daily Duppy and Mad About Bars.

A memorable COLORS performance in March 2023 saw Kwengface reveal his true identity for the first time (previously, he’d worn a balaclava publicly), igniting a new era for the south London lyricist. But that momentum was halted soon after when the rapper was sentenced to a 25-month prison sentence for a conspiracy charge for which he accepted a plea deal. Fosu was released earlier this year after spending 21 months behind bars.

“Going to Glastonbury and being onstage was all I was dreaming about when I was inside,” he says, joining NME over a video call a few days before the show. “It upset me that I didn’t get to perform my headline show before I went in, but we’re here now and I’m buzzing. I’ve been practising playing live, doing rehearsals, and getting more comfortable. I wanna polish up on engaging with the crowd and things like that, but that comes with experience.”

The 27-year-old’s recent stint in prison marked a serious turning point in his life. After spending 100 days in solitary confinement, he began to think more deeply about the future. He absorbed new literature and music and reflected on his place in the world and interactions with others after becoming a father for the first time while in jail. Eventually, he channelled these thoughts in the recording studio at HMP Fosse Way. Those motivations helped lead to Kwengface’s most socially conscious and revealing new project to date, ‘Victim Of Circumstance’.

“When I was in the segregation unit inside, I said it to myself, ‘I’m just a victim of circumstance’, cause I was in there for something that I didn’t do. They said that I’d orchestrated it when that wasn’t the case. When you’re in there, all you can really do is think. And it’ll go either way for you: it will end up having a negative impact or a positive impact. For me, it had a positive impact.”

While inside, Kwengface started carving out a fresh path for the future, taking inspiration from the knowledge he picked up from Gucci Mane and 50 Cent’s autobiographies and Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter’s Rich Dad Poor Dad. He recalls being galvanised by the stories of artists like Mane and others who “came out of prison and made something of themselves, and turned their talent into a business”. Since regaining his freedom, the focus has been on cleaning up his act and being a positive role model for his son, while also allowing himself room to get “a bit deeper” lyrically.

“I need to stay positive because I’m in a better situation than I thought I would be, and this isn’t gonna happen forever”

That work started behind bars, when he put together ‘Victim Of Circumstance’, enlisting producers like Trinz and strmz to help take his sound beyond the boundaries of classic UK drill. Together, they brought pumping, industrial dance-centric kicks and sub stabs to ‘V.O.C’, and nodded to south London road rap legends like Blade Brown and Giggs on tracks like ‘2 Summers’ and ‘Parallel Theory’. “What if Hollow never made ‘Walk in the Park’? / I’d say ‘fuck rap, I’m wrapping up dark’ / Made me wanna do music and perfect my craft,” he spits on the latter, reflecting on how Peckham legend Giggs inspired him to pick up the mic.

“Being in the studio in prison was kinda the same as being in the studio on the outside, which made me feel normal again,” he explains. “When I was in HMP Isis, which is a high-security prison for gang members under the age of 28, it was proper strict and I didn’t have freedom, but after I was moved to HMP Fosse Way [in Leicester], I was more free because it’s a more relaxed facility.”

On ‘Victim Of Circumstance’, he was keen to use his platform to give a voice to those who had a positive impact on his time inside. The only named feature on the project is Jungle (on ‘Monstrosity’), a fellow Peckham rapper who Kwengface describes as “one of the older lads we used to look up to” growing up in his corner of southeast London.

“Jungle was incarcerated for 30 years for a crime he didn’t commit,” he says. “He gave me some words of advice, he told me that I’ve gotta cherish my freedom and cherish what I have. I did a performance at HMP Fosse Way with PenGame, and he was onstage with me and said ‘This is probably the closest I’m gonna get to being onstage with someone doing a live performance’, so I feel like I gave him a good experience, and he taught me a lot about how to adapt in prison. We learned a lot from each other.”

‘Victim Of Circumstance’ is peppered with powerful reflections on Kwengface’s time in prison. With an honest, scathing voice, he ruminates on how moments of chance could’ve altered the course of his life on ‘Parallel Theory’ (“Weren’t raised how I was / Would I still be this weary?“) and dissects the infantilising nature of the UK carceral system on ‘2 Summers’, rapping: “I’m too old to have my iPhone and my TV taken“. He explores the strange contradictions of his life with humour and clarity, showing how musical success and incarceration collide in bars like, “See I went for a nicking / Governor said she a fan of the song with Chase & Status“.

The result is a more nuanced voice, firmly switched on to the inequities that plague modern British society. Since blowing up with Zone 2, Kwengface has been delivering cutting commentaries about the society he lives in, but ‘Victim Of Circumstance’ underlines how recent trials and tribulations have shifted his perception of that world. While things are changing, he’s still dealing with the repercussions of that time away, with his recently scheduled comeback show at the Lower Third blocked by probation officers, and a tag keeping him curfewed in the evenings until just a few weeks ago.

“It’s been frustrating, but I always tell myself that I came out much earlier than I was supposed to – it was meant to be October,” he says. “I need to stay positive because I’m in a better situation than I thought I would be, and this isn’t gonna happen forever. A lot of people don’t like change, but you’ve just gotta get on with it.”

Kwengface’s ‘Victim Of Circumstance’ is out now via Zoned Out Records

The post Kwengface is crafting a new lane outside the confines of UK drill appeared first on NME.