Comin’ atcha straight outta Brompton (see what he did there?) is MC Hammersmith, a ‘posh British rapper’ with an extraordinary gift for improvisation and wordplay.
The leading freestyle rapper to emerge from middle class West London – real name Will Naameh, the son of an English mother and a Syrian father – is on his first ever UK tour.
It comes after he put on one of the best-reviewed shows at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe.
Speaking to the Cambridge Independent before the tour started, from Edinburgh, where he has lived for 14 years (he went there to study and now has a master’s degree in linguistics, specialising in phonology, from the University of Edinburgh), Will says: “I always loved rapping when I was a kid.
“I used to listen to Akala and Eminem and that sort of thing, and then loved hip hop when I was at uni – and then saw videos of freestylers like MC Supernatural and MC Juice and realised all they were doing was improvising.”
Will, who has supported top stand-ups such as Jason Manford and John Bishop on tour, also studied musical improv and his knowledge of linguistics has certainly helped him on his way to freestyle rap stardom, as he combines his love of hip hop with his academic studies into the mechanics of rhyming.
Being a freestyle rapper means he raps spontaneously, unscripted, with absolutely no preparation and at lightning speed – and that is what he will be doing when he brings his fully-improvised show Straight Outta Brompton to Cambridge later this week.
“Back then, there were no YouTube tutorials telling you how to rap so I had to figure it out myself,” notes Will.
Rapping in a well-spoken received pronunciation accent has inevitably led to comparisons with those two titans of ‘chap hop’ (a satirical musical genre that combines hip hop and traditional British customs, which counts Michael Gove among its fans), Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer and Professor Elemental.
“I think what they would do is chap hop, that’s how they would describe themselves, whereas I don’t particularly draw any inspiration from chap hop,” explains Will, who reveals that Mr B had recently started following him on X (formerly Twitter) and retweeting him.
“I think I’m just a middle class man who raps and people naturally conflate the two. I think mine’s a lot filthier… I’m just trying to write the funniest rap lines I can.
“And often it will be about how I am posh and middle class definitely, but a lot of the time there will just be sordid wordplay and stuff that makes me laugh – you won’t catch me on a penny farthing rapping about Earl Grey anytime soon, I don’t think.
“I think stylistically, I just try and rap in my own voice and about my own experiences, and realistically that is going to be quite safe, middle class territory, given that’s the way I am.
“And I would think that the reason why a lot of the stuff I tend to rap about is so vulgar is partly because a lot of hip hop and gangsta rap, which I love, is quite vulgar and crass – and also I’m a private school boy at heart so I find rapping about d***s very funny.”
Will, who was born in Hammersmith and attended St Paul’s School in West London, also writes and performs scripted hip hop comedy.
His video ‘Posh British Boy Raps in Car’ was a viral hit amassing more than 10 million views. Since then, he has released several more scripted hip hop comedy videos that have also gone viral.
I particularly enjoyed ‘If Eminem Was English’ and the single GI Joe, the video for which was shot in Starbank Park in Leith, Edinburgh.
On what the Cambridge audience can look forward to when Straight Outta Brompton hits the Junction, Will says: “It’s an entirely improvised evening.
“People give me suggestions, they tell me stories, they give me challenges, random words, random objects, I bring people on stage… and then it is 100 per cent improvised hip hop tracks based on audience suggestions.
“It’s completely different every time and I never know what’s going to happen, which is the fun of it.”
Will notes that he gets a lot of negative comments on TikTok from people who think he’s serious in chasing “actual hip hop clout”, when in fact all he’s trying to do is to “make people laugh and have fun”.
“They possibly have a chronic irony deficiency,” he jokes, “which is also fine because if they comment hate, I don’t lose the algorithm – it works for me.
“It’s when actual rappers get it and enjoy it, that’s when I feel most validated – those are the comments I like the most.
“I also enjoy the comments from children telling me I’m terrible, but they’re never going to get it either.”
See what Will (aka MC Hammersmith) comes up with live on stage with when he brings his Straight Outta Brompton tour to the Cambridge Junction (J2) on Friday, 26 April. Tickets, priced £18, are available from junction.co.uk.
For more on MC Hammersmith, go to mchammersmith.com.
