My Way: How British Street Rap Built the Stories NoMates Tells
A British Rapper Self-Releases His Next Single Two Months After the Seven-Track Short Straw EP
My Way lasts two minutes and 25 seconds, and NoMates released it on 11 September 2026. Born in South London, United Kingdom, he makes UK rap about growing up surrounded by street violence. So the single adds a new page to a long British tradition of rappers turning hard experience into records. That line runs from Jamaican sound systems to drill.
NoMates’ My Way sits in the playlist below with the drill, grime and hip hop this desk follows. The rapper’s coverage across our network sits on the NoMates artist profile. The single reached BlackSounds.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Press play, then read on for the line it comes from.
British Rap Told Hard Stories From the Sound Systems to Drill Long Before NoMates Recorded My Way
So the story starts well before 2026. Jamaican migrants brought dub and toasting to the United Kingdom between the 1950s and the 1970s. The first British MCs built their style on it. They quickened the delivery as the music around them sped up. The same sound-system culture fed jungle, UK garage and grime. So in Britain, the MC was talking over records before hip hop arrived.
Then the stories got harder. UK drill grew out of Brixton from 2013 onwards. There, groups such as 150 and 67 took a sound first heard in Chicago and made it their own. 67 did more than most to pull it toward a homegrown style. Through each wave, the records that last say plainly where a rapper comes from and what it cost him.
Where NoMates Fits, From Letter to My Mum to the Short Straw EP and My Way
NoMates carries both sides of that story, because his roots are British and Jamaican. The title of his new single also fits how he works. His music comes out through NM Music, his own imprint, and he has his own clothing line. The video for My Way went up on YouTube the moment the single came out.
He has been building a catalogue for a while. God Knows Best (Thug Cry) came out in 2024 and Sixteen Sixtysix in early 2025. Then came Letter to My Mum in March 2026. In July he released the seven-track Short Straw EP, with Queen Size Dreams among its songs. My Way followed two months later.
NoMates wrote, produced and raps My Way, Lavish produced it with him, and Choisez recorded, mixed and mastered it. It is a gritty, confident record from an artist who keeps every part of the process close.
Three British Rappers Who Made Hard Stories Into Records Sit Closest to NoMates and My Way
Still, a lineage is easiest to hear through records, and three of them sit closest to My Way.
Dave made the therapy record. Psychodrama, his 2019 debut album, is built as a therapy session. It works through his older brothers’ prison sentences and his own mental health. It debuted at number one and went on to win the Mercury Prize. NoMates thinks of his own music in much the same way, as an escape and as therapy.
Stormzy shows where independence can lead. He put out his first EP, Dreamers Disease, on his own in 2014. Three years later, Gang Signs & Prayer became the first grime album to reach number one in the UK. In 2019 Stormzy became the first British rapper to headline Glastonbury, and on that stage he wore a stab vest designed by Banksy. It was there to point at rising knife crime. NoMates shares both with him. He releases on his own terms, and his songs come out of the street life that vest was about.
Giggs gives the plainest name to the sound. As a teenager, Giggs played reggae, ragga and dancehall as a DJ in Peckham. In 2007 he released Talkin’ da Hardest, which later went silver. He has said again and again that his music is UK rap rather than grime. NoMates puts that same label on his own work. So the line from the sound systems to My Way runs straight through Giggs.
Start With My Way, Then Go Back Through the Catalogue
So where should a listener begin? Start with My Way, then go back through Letter to My Mum and the Short Straw EP. That order lets you hear a British rapper add to his story one release at a time.
Two minutes and 25 seconds is short. It is also enough, when the story is your own.
BlackSounds.News’s curator team: “My Way is for listeners who came to British rap for the stories and stayed for the honesty. NoMates is still early in his catalogue. That is the best time to hear an artist, while he is still telling you who he is.”
Stream My Way on Spotify or Apple Music, and watch the video on YouTube. Then follow NoMates on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, SoundCloud, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X. His official site has the rest.
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