Bawo is the classic extroverted introvert. We take a seat on a pleasant August evening at a local pub down the road from the Wonderland office. The West London-native arrives a mere few minutes after the allotted meeting time, yet apologises profusely for his tardiness, ordering himself an orange juice to counteract my half drank pint of Peroni. He picks up on my Birmingham accent, a nuance that few people notice due to its subtleness (I joke that I’m one of the lucky ones), a sign of his observational nature that becomes more and more apparent as our conversation ensues.

“Overall I’d say good, because I’m lucky enough to be able to try and act in the way that I want to act and make decisions about what I want to change,” he expresses when I enquire on the state of mind in which I find him, before going on to admit, “I would say I’m coming off a high of being creative and am now a little bit creatively dry, which I don’t like to say out loud. I feel a little bit overwhelmed by life, but also not at the same time.”

Remaining innovative, especially when your livelihood depends on its productivity, is a towering task that those in the creative fields must clamber over repeatedly. For Bawo, the antidote seems to be to not overthink it. He references Harry Styles’ comment on the matter in an interview with Zayn Lowe, which saw Styles compare creative output to surfing. “Sometimes you’ve got your board ready, your technique ready, but then the waves don’t come”, recounts the rapper. “And sometimes your board isn’t ready and then the wave comes. You just can’t really control it.”

It’s discernible that Bawo needs a breather, and to live life a little. It’s been a busy, progressive period of his career, unveiling his most ambitious release to date in January in the form of “Legitimate Cause”. Boasting terrific chemistry with his co-stars (the likes of Reek0 and Oscar #Worldpeace), the tape sees Bawo sharpening his flows and flaunting his explorative penmanship. Conceptually refined, Bawo and his team were heavily inspired by stock imagery in the project’s visual identity, a deft statement of irony which sees him addressing one of the overarching complexions of any aspiring creative. “The idea came from constantly being asked throughout my 20s – ‘Are you still doing music? When are you going to take it seriously?’”, he reveals. “My parents, obviously, support me in terms of being the best I can be, but they were always a bit iffy about music. They say I should think about getting another job. So I was kind of taking the piss and being like, ‘this is how serious I am.’”

The release of the EP was followed by a headline tour in the Spring. A barnstorming success, but it wasn’t without its turmoil. “I definitely had anxieties going into it,” he reveals, further detailing the challenges that come from performing as a self-defined shy individual. “There were times where I would get to, like, Tooting, which is an hour away from me, get to the door of a pub and then be too scared [to go in and perform] and go to McDonald’s instead and not tell anyone,” he remembers in nervy nostalgia, before highlighting the paradoxical nature of his character: “Sometimes it’s like… the thing I want to do most is slyly my biggest fear.”

With the help of “Legitimate Cause” and its triumphant tour, Bawo has risen to be one of the most prominent names in the UK alternative rap scene. But Bawo questions what that even means. “In the UK specifically, we like the whole pain story, the hood story. Anything outside of that is considered alternative. For me, alternative would be rapping off beat or something.” The media are guilty of type-boxing as means of description, and that’s sometimes a necessary evil, but in the case of Bawo, there is very little ‘alternative’ about his sound.

His flows hit on the beat, his instrumental choices are largely ear worm and crowd friendly, and his lyrical topics rarely stray beyond reflective musings, playful peacocking and witty wordplay, steering clear of the absurdism and idiosyncrasy that many UK rappers that would classically be considered alternative (High Focus, Cult of the Damned, etc) would assume. Regardless of style or genre, Bawo is simply being authentic: “I used to exaggerate a lot when I first started writing, and say things I wasn’t doing. Then I realised that everyone has a story, it doesn’t have to be some mad, cruddy story. It needs to be real. It doesn’t have to be so stark.”

As well as several excellent feature turns, from “Massive Chain” with Mac Wetha to the newly released “No Idea” with Frankie Stew and Harvey Gunn, Bawo offered up a solo track earlier this summer in the shape of “Terra Incognita”. “I wrote and recorded that four years ago,” he tells me as our second drink arrives. “Every summer that came by, I wanted to drop it, but it felt like it deserved more. I’m really happy for the song that it gets to be shared in this way. It’s nice to see people react to it.”

The track comes accompanied by a visual that is undoubtedly the rapper’s most ambitious to date, with its swirling story arc, cinematic decadence and pure entertainment factor. “I don’t plan on dropping another project soon,” he explains when discussing the effort that he went through to exemplify the release. “I want people to have the sense that I’m very much not planning on stopping. I’m just too involved in it.”

A prolonged period without a significant release is seen as somewhat of a risk in the current musical climate, a fact that Bawo questions. “There’s the whole idea of falling off. If you’re a painter, you can’t fall off. You might paint a bad piece, but you’re still Picasso. But in rap, if you drop back-to-back bad projects, you’re considered bad now. Also, you could have had a string of hits and then you pause and people say you fell off. That’s not promoting art, that’s capitalism.” The necessity of consistent relevance for independent artists can often diminish passion and vision, something which Bawo knows only too well: “I have to sacrifice my relationship with music a little bit. I can’t hear a song the same way as I did before… I hate the idea of being an ad,” he states rousingly, clearly cherishing the chance to condemn the hypocrisy of the industry, before mulliing further, “I don’t want to be that guy…. but then I want some success, so I have to reach a wider audience.”

Nevertheless, Bawo has managed to keep his head above the nefarious current of the choppy market. He is one of the most exciting names in UK rap, ‘alternative’ or otherwise, and from our conversation it is apparent that he refuses, and will continue to refuse, to rest on his laurels or fit within an archetype. He makes the music that he wants to make, he works with the people that he wants to work with, and he does what he thinks is right. Not many artists adhere to such creative morality.

As we bid our farewells and stroll off into the late summer dusk, Bawo lends me one more parting note of wholesome wisdom: “I feel like I’ve already done what I wanted to do, to be honest. Getting messages every day, like, ‘your song did this for me’… It makes me feel rich. That’s success.” It’s hard to argue with that.

Listen to Bawo here.