A few Guinnesses into an interview at his local Irish pub, 26-year-old Harrow rapper Kibo is on a roll. We’re talking football. As a kid, he preferred playing Fifa Street—where players backflip off walls to score ridiculous bicycle kicks—over the more realistic Fifa. “If I’m going to play a video game, I want to do stuff I can’t do in real life,” he says. He’s drawn to similarly extraordinary footballers: Balotelli, Drogba in his Chelsea days, Ronaldinho, and his dad’s favorite, Eric Cantona: “Oh God, with his collar popped, looking like Kanye West?” Kibo then recites Cantona’s 2019 UEFA President’s Award speech—a mix of King Lear and deep thoughts on war and science—almost perfectly.
Magic sits at the core of Kwelengletarianism, “the idea of being in a place that’s very grey, and trying to find a rainbow-like shine in it,” which underpins Kibo’s brilliant album Kwengletaria: Ragamyff. (Cantona? “He’s a Kwengletarian to the highest degree.”) During his long climb through London’s rap scene, boosted by co-signs from Skepta, JME, and Dave, Kibo has become a rare MC from Harrow, the town that gave us Kate Nash and Jai Paul but no notable rappers. “It’s awesome,” he says of its lack of rap history, “a completely blank slate” to be as creative as he wants. Kwengletaria finds the magic in the ordinary: on the track Bakerloo Dragon, a normal tube ride turns into a smooth, broken-beat journey on a fire-breathing Bakerloo line train. I tell him my train to Harrow was one of those flame-covered dragons. “But did you get any sparks?” he asks excitedly. “You get sparks after Stonebridge Park!”
We meet midweek, and Kibo tells me he’s heading to a wrestling match in Dublin that weekend. I ask who he’s watching. “No, I’m wrestling,” he fires back: he’s up against Irish rapper Lil Skag, “to see who really is ready to take on the responsibility of being Ireland’s champion.” Kibo is 6ft 4in, with Irish roots, a goatee, hair straight out of a fantasy movie, and a bunch of brutally sharp insults: “I’ll take your mum to Butlin’s / And I ain’t fucking bluffing / You’re not a bad boy, you’re an Egg McMuffin.” You’d back him to win a match just on presence alone.
Add in references to anime, Pokémon, chicken shops, and X-wing fighters, mix it with 16 producers making beats across garage, R&B, donk, grime, and jungle, and you get a sense of Kwengletaria: Ragamyff‘s scope. “I’m a pretty maximalist guy, and a lot of the artists I’m drawn to—Ghostface Killah, MF Doom, Yung Lean—it’s all about asking, how much can you pack into one thing?” he says.
That all-you-can-eat approach comes from growing up online—”I was a kid with a million tabs open, trying to speak with a certain level of polish”—and the Kwelengletarianism idea started when Kibo’s schoolmates began trading pirated Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. “They’d slap even more glitter and shine on them, to make them look like the most valuable thing ever,” he says. “Like, I know this is fake, but this looks awesome. It’s the first thing I remember in my life where I looked at something and knew it was valuable.”
Kibo nods to his grime predecessors on the album, sampling from Dizzee Rascal’s Boy in da Corner on the closing track Our War Game. “My take on grime was very retroactive,” he says. “Going back into Dizzee, Flirta D, Skepta, and D Double E… even though it was very local, it felt like discovering Three 6 Mafia, or old Memphis rap: like, this is awesome, but it’s not here.” Where those older acts felt distant to Kibo, Novelist, the Lewisham MC behind grime’s modern revival and the only guest on Kwengletaria, was “the first time I was able to…”Tuning into grime sets live made me feel like I was actually there in the moment, Kibo says. It always seemed like he was bringing grime back and pushing it forward.
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‘Charm from ma, swag from dad’ … Kibo. Photograph: Swurla
What stands out is how clear, satisfying, and relentlessly funny Kibo’s route through the chaos is. He shouts out Fiona Templeton, an academic at Brunel University (where he earned a first in film, drama and media), for giving him a word for what he was doing: hyperdiction. It was like someone showed me a brain scan, he says. These collisions—of genres, references, and words—create a new meta-language of mashed-together non sequiturs in his work, like “Courvoir-Sierra Leone” or “Dimitar Burberrytov.” They also work as energy-boosting power-ups. On Chancer, the album’s mellow grime flexer at the midpoint, Kibo’s criss-cross patterns unfold over three beat switches and five relentless verses.
On Bakerloo Dragon, Kibo says he gets the “charm from ma, and the swag from dad.” Eileen of Limerick quickly fell for John, a drummer from Harrow, when he was over in Ireland on holiday. They managed a two-year long-distance relationship before she moved to England. There was one phone box in her whole village, so it would be like, ‘You must be here at 7 o’clock.’ My dad used to work at the BT phone line, so he could pull a few strings.
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This made Kibo a true believer in romance. It’s Kwengletarianism! he says. You’ve got to believe in something, you’ve got to believe there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Kibo is a third-generation member of Harrow’s Irish community, and there’s a distinctly Irish feel to a project about belief, myths, good craic, and finding the magic in everyday objects.
Kwengletaria: Ragamyff is about celebrating where you’re from, but it’s also about feeling stuck in a place that, once the shiny glow fades, is still grey and dull. Off the back of the album, and a mix of viral live clips, Kibo has his sights set beyond Harrow. I feel like I finally got a grip on London. [The track] Red Starz is like, I’ve completed London, right? It’s almost like the post-credit scene is Ryanair: oh shit, there’s 200 other countries? Damn. There’s a crunch point there, between leaving home and returning. But if you find the magic and the pride in your base, you can always come back to that and recharge. Home is like your charging point. Kibo plays Bristol (28 October), London (30 Oct) and Manchester (1 November).
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about Kibos track and mindset written in a natural curious tone
General Background
Q Wait what does Cantonas a Kwengletarian even mean Is it about Eric Cantona
A Yes it references the legendary footballer Eric Cantona Kibo uses him as a symbol of effortless cool rebellion and being a maverick A Kwengletarian is a madeup word that basically means living by the rules of Kibos worldwhere confidence is king and you do things your own way without asking for permission
Q Who is Kibo
A Kibo is a rising rapper from London with Irish heritage Hes known for his maximalist soundthink loud colorful and busy beatsmixed with a playful magical way of looking at everyday street life
Q What genre is this track
A Its a mix of UK rap drillinfluenced flows and experimental pop But honestly Kibo bends genres so much that it feels like its own categoryits very theatrical
Q Is this a single or part of an album
A It appears as a standout track on his project The MAGiCAL MIRACLE COLLECTION Its a key example of the world he builds on that project
The Kwengletarian Mindset Meaning
Q Okay so what is a Kwengletarian in simple terms
A Its someone who operates on Kweng energya slang term for toptier highquality or just really good stuff A Kwengletarian is someone who refuses to be average They live life loudly dress colorfully and turn their mundane struggles into something magical or luxurious
Q How is this different from just being rich or flashy
A Its not about money Its about mindset You can be broke but still be a Kwengletarian by having a rich imagination Its about taking a boring street corner and seeing it as a castle or turning a bad situation into a funny surreal story
Q Why does Kibo call his mindset magical
