No One Is Like J Hus

Hus has received a phone call. On the end of the line: someone from his promotions team. “Jheez!” Hus says, visibly gassed to the teeth. “Did You See”, the lead single from his new album Common Sense, has entered the top 20 and Radio 1’s A-list. Pride ripples across his cheekbones, revealing the kind of pure joy that’s part and parcel of hard work having paid off. Two weeks after we meet the album will be released, on Friday 12 May. His excitement is strikingly palpable.

“We’re up against some fucking bastards, you know,” says producer and longtime collaborator Jae5 once Hus is off the phone, citing both Gorillaz and Harry Styles as their competition in the album chart. It’s a little past noon and we’re sat in the pair’s studio space in the nether regions of west London. Hus stayed here last night, sleeping on an undernourished and undressed single mattress on the floor. A box of KP chocolate dip and two different flavours of Ribena sit next to the mixing desk. The spot has a warm and secluded feel, as mood lighting threads its way across the room. “When I was working on the album I was literally sleeping here everyday,” remembers Hus.

Though it may seem a stretch for the 21-year-old rapper to wrestle chart positions away from some of music’s biggest hitters, you can see that the potential is there. In the last year, the steady evolution of British urban music has finally been mirrored across the country’s top 10 album chart. Stormzy’s Gang Signs and Prayer went number 1. Albums from Giggs and Skepta each hitnumber 2. Wiley and Kano caught the highest chart positions of their career so far. On the basis of “Lean and Bop”, “Friendly” and “Dem Boy Paigon” – three tracks that define the multicultural sound of young London, and arguably the United Kingdom – J Hus is destined for similar, widespread success.

But there’s more to Hus than potential record-breaking statistics. As much as it’s exciting to see artists get the recognition they deserve for their work, to talk about Hus in terms of chart positions is, frankly, a little boring. If we are to see music as an art and form of cultural discourse, J Hus is navigating his way toward being a modern day icon. A pioneer of a new sound, a totem of contemporary Britain, a vessel of sharp charisma – all signs point to him being the next in a lineage of artists who seep into the foundation of music, stamping their tone across its fabric, irreversibly pushing it toward the future. Before we get to that though, there’s his story.

Born Momodou Jallow, Hus grew up in Stratford, east London. As a child he didn’t care too much for school, though he was good at English language and Drama. When he wasn’t glued to music television he would watch Trouble, a now-defunct channel that featured programmes like Fresh Prince of Bel Air and My Wife and Kids. “I wanted to be an actor,” he says, “but then around Year 10 or Year 11, it was whatever really.” Though Hus was allowed back to take his exams, he was kicked out of school. Like most kids his age in his area, he “started getting into a bit of trouble”. There were good times, there were tough times. Or as Hus puts it: “I came across a lot of money, then I was broke again. I was stressed out.” One day an old friend came to Hus with a solution: if Hus quit the road and took music seriously, then he would become his manager.

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