Drake’s fascination with UK grime is no secret among music fans, but grime artists like Giggs and Skepta have always reciprocated. Now, Stormzy is the latest to pay homage to the boy from The 6, with his “4PM In Calabasas“-inspired freestyle video, “4PM In London.”
Ironically, it was a similar, bare-bones freestyle that brought Stormzy his Stateside attention with “Shut Up.” However, the video for “4PM In London” gets even more stripped down, leaving behind the road and his crew for a black-on-black studio-shot clip that finds him dishing some of his best bars since his appearance on Charlie Sloth’s Fire In The Booth show, promising a follow-up to his debut Gang Signs & Prayer is “coming soon.”
It’s fitting that Stormzy brought lyrical heat to a Drake-influenced freestyle, as Drake has typically reserved his own best efforts for his “AM-PM” series of one-off tracks, of which “Calabasas” is the most recent. Intriguingly, the pair has never worked together before, but this isn’t the first time Stormzy went in over a Drake instrumental. In 2015, Stormz put his own twist on Drake’s “0-100/The Catch Up” entitled “10 Minutes,” and sang a cover of “Just Hold On, We’re Going Home” on BBC 1Xtra’s Live Lounge.
