On an icy January night, I arrive at a warehouse unit sheltered off in an industrial suburb of West London. I head inside before knocking onto one of the rooms in the studio. It’s drenched in a codeine-purple colour and affiliates of the London-based 10V Elysium collective as designers, videographers and producers occupy the room. Someone’s attempting to backstrap a zoot and the studio manager – although attentive to any inquiries – is watching Chelsea footy highlights off his phone.

In this cramped studio room is Fimiguerrero, the Nigerian-born, London-raised rapper, recording ad-libs and placeholders. He repeats the process countless times with headphones in, ignoring what’s around him. It’s a bit like seeing the late Lil Keed record his ad-libs, a less-exciting visual of his meticulous alchemy where the outcome is pure hedonistic, transcontinental and floor-shaking rage rap.

I stepped outside for a smoke, later joined by “Bams”’, Fimiguerrero’s manager, designer of clothing brand Angeles and creative maverick. Dread-headed and bearish, dressed in all-black and an iced out upside-down cross necklace. Within the first hour of knowing Bams, I find him to be a breathing Twitter draft of low-key fire culture takes; he ascertains UK drill producers are one of UK’s greatest musical exports and Playboi Carti is this generation’s Future Hendrixx, whose Whole Lotta Red DNA can be extracted from every post-Opium rapper the same way “Codeine Crazy” made slurring about vices over melodic trap beats into an everlasting internet-grown subgenre.

10V Elysium is an creative incubator to the normal eye, the collective organise manage Fimiguerrero, organise live music shows and fashion drops for their clothing brands: Angeles and Years of Tears. Bams envisions 10V as a “his reflection of London” compounded with the Greek myth of Elysium Fields, a promising afterlife contrasted against Hades’ underworld. Entirely self-funded with their music releases distributed by Believe, 10V is an independent nascent powerhouse with the seeds planted to benefit from the industry connections they fostered.

“10V is just the family, the name we go by when we do things together. The whole system works.” Bams comments while flicking his cigarette out. Our smoke coalesces with the winter air. We walk back inside where we’re shown looking at photoshoots and bts footage from the 10V crew, nodding with the approval that some creatives really fucked with the vision and built something. Later, Fimiguerrero steps out of the studio room and follows us into the kitchen, wearing a deep forest green CP jacket, grey pair of Angeles jeans and a pair of Balenciaga boots. He daps us up, ready to do the interview.

Born in Nigeria as Fimihan Uthman Akinola, Fimiguerrero migrated to London when he was a child with his mother and brother, living in Greenwich, Thamesmead, Newham and briefly, Kent. It was during this relocation to Kent, his brother moved elsewhere, splitting the family up. Fimiguerrero doesn’t reveal too much about this chapter of his life, alluding to a kinda-tumultuous relationship with his mother, these days however, she “snapchats videos of his music playing in her whip.”

A tale of two countries, an immigrant family making ends meet in a colder motherland; Fimiguerrero erased borders internally, indulging in world music and street fashion. Fimi listened to his mother’s collection of fuji music (a traditional Yorbura improvisational genre), Whitney Houston, Celine Dion before tuning into the SB.TV freestyles playing off his mates’ Blackberry speakers and freestyling in local parks. “I realised I wanted to do this, for real.” Fimiguerrero states. I used some headphones from my school, went home, made these songs and played them to my friends. They would lie to me like ‘this was good’ but that’s what kept me going.”

Studying Fashion Marketing and repeating the first year (“the best years”) twice, Fimi’s hustler mentality wasn’t precisely pointed towards academia. After realising University “was a scam”, he flipped his student loans to cop SUPREME garms, go on expensive dates and record music. In 2019, he released his first trap-heavy single “RUBBERBANDS”, an absorption of the trends of he learned from trap artists and his start in ushering the next British underground boom.

After dropping out of University to pursue music, he slept and wrote in recording studios and couches from Manchester to Copenhagen. “I would wake up, back all hurting, the mic next to me. Fuck it though, I was hungry, I would do it all over again,” Fimiguerrero says. While dropping an onslaught of tapes, Fimiguerrero was introduced to one of the pioneers of UK rage rap, Lancey Foux, and clicked, recording songs shortly after. Relating over their shared experiences of growing up with Nigerian heritage in London, their brotherhood is channelled through their affection for Givenchy and Brazilian baddies, racing across on the adrenaline-pumping T99 and Lucid740-produced “Dark Knight. In equal measure, Fimiguerrero is shoulder to shoulder but when Lancey passes the mic to Fimi mid-way in the song, it sounds like a passing of the baton.

Fimiguerrero’s 2023 projects, BLACK and IMMIGRANT, released within months of each other, are future-forward manifestos that plots world domination with more than enough music in the vault to suffice the boast. His voice, an instrument, his beat selection, a metal detector for gold kernels in the mud. Whether the former is writerly provocative: (“Illegal immigrant once again tryna to take something that ain’t his / First it was jobs, then school dinners, now it’s somebody’s bitch”) on the lead-up single “School Dinner” or how the latter can flip a 1998 Brandy and Monica’s classic into the bouncy “rain”. Fimiguerrero synthesises his diverse musical palette and sure, categorically, it’s rage rap, but it transverses between Atlanta trap, plugg, club rap, Afro-bashment, and cloud rap seamlessly.

The live shows are the invitation to his genre-blending parties. Last year, Fimiguerrero toured the UK on his debut BLACK TOUR and ended the year with his headlining London show, announcing surprise support from Len and Lancey Foux. With the strength of the 10V Elysium, Fimiguerrero can maintain his musical autonomy and blur the boundaries of the mainstream and underground; his rebel without a cause as chaotic as his mosh-pits.

A sorcerer who wields his anarchistic rage like a sword, a rapper who owns his masters, Fimiguerrero is charging towards his New World Order; tagging graffiti on buildings, playing new music on TikTok, touring the world, and flying out to Amsterdam and Paris for the afters. “Man, me and Bams, we changed this shit, we dropped the projects, we did that headline show, first one of that size and I was 20.” Fimi exalts, his black gold grills revealing a steely grin.

We’re back in the studio room and he plays us some of his unreleased music for his new project. For Fimiguerrero, this 2024, the plans for take-over shine brighter than ever: “The whole 10V is popping, [Silk]Syd’s been going to Africa and China for Years of Tears, Bams has his fashion brand [Angeles] and I’m patterning the music. Look outside and you’ll get the streets of London overseas wherever you go, you’re gonna see us.”