Yxng Bane isn't the Heartbreak Kid – he's Heartbroken

The 22-year-old artist is becoming one of the UK's most exciting new faces. He speaks exclusively with Roisin O'Connor about his new mixtape HBK, selling out 2,000 capacity venues, and the fallouts that come with early fame

22-year old rapper/singer Yxng Bane: 'I have to be honest. That's what I wanna be known for'

“Nah, nah, nah, that’s not me.”

Yxng Bane, one of the most exciting new artists in the UK right now, is laughing bashfully. I’ve just told him it seems as though he’s barely dropped out of the UK singles chart this year.

“I ain’t dominated the charts,” he says, still chuckling. “I do need to live there though. I need to get a Radio 1 residency.”

The 22-year-old, who went viral with his remix of Ed Sheeran’s monster hit “Shape of You”, is a product of the streaming generation: a rapper and singer who flits seamlessly between genres in a way that perfectly suits modern pop, drawing on every corner of the UK’s musical zeitgeist, from afro-trap, dancehall, hip hop reggaeton, grime, and even some Spanish guitar rock.

This canny melding of the most popular motifs in music has earned him a rabid fanbase, which has now grown so big that Bane – who released his first EP three years ago and has yet to release a debut album – has sold out the 2,000-capacity Kentish Town Forum in London. He’s also expected to make the Top 40 album chart this week with his new mixtape, HBK.

The beats are infectious, his nonchalant, charming demeanour even more so. His manager joked earlier this year that he’s something of a heartbreaker on stage. But Bane reveals the title of his new mixtape – which many have assumed means “Heartbreak Kid” – isn’t all that it seems.

“It’s not so much me walking round breaking hearts, because that wouldn’t be nice of me, would it?” he says. “It’s more like, the Heartbroken Kid. It’s… you know in life sometimes, you just take slaps on the face. It happens sometimes, and you have to accept that you’re a nice guy, and stay a nice guy. And you’ll be fine.”

He practically blushes at the mention of his manager’s comment: “I’m just interacting on stage, I’m not flirting. I would say I’m quite shy.” He acts surprised when I tell him he comes across as supremely confident onstage. “I’d say it’s fans giving me confidence on stage,” he suggests. “It’s a connection.”

Born Larry Kiala, to a Congolese mother and Angolan father, Bane followed up the Ed Sheeran remix with a feature on the Yungen single “Bestie”, which reached No 10 on the UK Singles Chart last year, and then with 2018’s top 5 hit “Answerphone” by Banx & Ranx and Ella Eyre.

When we meet he’s lounging in the rehearsal studio of his east London studio. He’s sporting new Doc Martens – he’s something of a fashion maven with a penchant for labels (Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga) – and has a sensuous, intense kind of beauty that prompted Tinie Tempah to put him front and centre of his What We Wear show at London Fashion Week this year.

His team are scattered around the room – a makeshift barber shop has been set up and one young man is having his head shaved. Two guys are messing around on the decks; another checks his phone and glances up intermittently to watch Bane talk.

There’s a hot and cold dynamic to the songs on HBK: opener “Squeezeface” has Bane rapping with an icy, sharp flow over wintry beats, while “Needed Time” makes the most of his warm, husky singing voice. It also features the track “Christopher Nolan” – a reference to the director’s villain in The Dark Knight Rises – from which Bane takes his name. Somewhat outrageously, he still hasn’t watched the film: “Not on purpose,” he says. “I know some of the quotes though.”

Bane had to whittle the new release down from more than 100 tracks he’d recorded to just 14. For a mixtape, it’s impressively well-curated – he says this was down to him thinking carefully about what messages he wanted to send to fans. “I want them to know me, to see me as a friend and see what I’m going through,” he says. “I wanted to create real, timeless music.”

Since his early success, he’s learnt to express himself in a more mature way and open up to his fans, he says. One big theme on the mixtape is trust, and how having trust in old friends has let him down as he becomes more widely known on the UK music scene. “That’s the quickest lesson, and the hardest lesson, trust me,” he says, kissing his teeth. “And it’s because, society expects you to change.”

‘Society expects you to change with success’

He touches on this on the track “Better”, rapping: “It’s been a minute since you called / I’m tryna hear, I’m proud of you / You’re tryna test me, if I change, I bet you think I’m not the same / So then I don’t answer your call / and now you’re thinking that I’m changed, without realising you were waiting for that anyways.”

When he feels ready to release his debut album, he wants to tell people “about my whole life” – “I have to be honest,” he says. “That’s what I wanna be known for.”

How does he think his fans see him, right now? “I dunno what they see me as,” he says. “They see me as I am... Yxng Bane.”

HBK, the new mixtape by Yxng Bane, is out now. He plays Kentish Town Forum in London on Friday 15 November