FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Introducing Shanny, the 9-Year-Old UK Rapper with More Fire and Flow Than a Volcano

This is what music sounds like before you develop ego and way too much self-awareness.

Last month, while stumbling around the deep space of SoundCloud, we came across this absolute flames track called "Bubblegum Train" by an artist called Shanny. The beat was bouncy and minimal, melodic in all the right places, and her delivery had all the London swagger of a young Lady Sovereign. Oh, did we mention that Shanny is nine years old? Because Shanny is nine years old.

Hailing from Tottenham with a sound engineer for a dad, Shanny may be young, but she was in the studio before she could talk and dancing before she could walk. What were you doing? Watching William's Wish Wellingtons, eating marmite on toast, and tottering around the world in a cloud of blissful ignorance, pestering your mum for crisps at all hours of the day, probably. Shanny is stunting on us all.

We're premiering "Cause I Want To" from her forthcoming EP Pink Crayon below. Riffing off Billie's 1998 hit single of the same name, "Cause I Want To" is the disobedient, stay-up-late sister to Sophia Grace's "Best Friends." With lyrics like "I know I look good in my dress," "I do just what I want to," and "We're like Halloween because we like raising hell," Shanny has more 'tude and confidence than I have now, let alone when I was in primary school. This is what music sounds like before you develop ego and self-awareness—fun, unaffected, and impossibly cool. This is music by children, with a lesson for us all.

Listen below.