Rapper Emmeline opens up about her inspirations, favourite movies, and upcoming music
Last updated: 23rd of October 2025 
There are a few genuinely good rappers in the UK scene right now, and when you do find them, they’re underground, fenced in by nepotism.
Emmeline is one of the few lyricists managing to break out. With collaborations alongside Kojey Radical under her belt, she now looks to the future thanks to her transatlantic adventures. Stanisland Magazine stopped by her record label, Lewis Recordings, to talk about her forthcoming EP.
Your music is often listed as alternative. Would you agree with that?
“Yeah, it’s definitely more experimental. And I think when I’ve approached music making, even from the beginning of when I started, it was never to make something super mainstream or commercially viable. Obviously, that’s always a hope that people will pick it up in that way. But that was never the intention.
It was always to make something that was authentic and original first, and ideally people would latch onto it as a second. I always describe it as being words first or lyrics first, because I come to music as a writer, and therefore a lot of the music that I make has a strong, like lyrical impetus to it.
That music comes around it as a slight kind of second casing — so there is something alternative to that approach. I think sonically, it kind of sits in an alt-universe. But you know that word can get slapped across anything these days that’s just not a straight up pop tune. But sure it makes sense to me”.
Is it accurate to say your flow is a poetic crisp-narrator style?
“Good question. I think it’s been a bit of a journey. When I started out, I started as a spoken word artist, so it was definitely coming from a poetic place. In spoken word, your focus is on the sound of the words and the rhythm of the words as they come out of your mouth, and also — storytelling. So, those three things really impacted the way I wrote and performed music at an early stage”.
You have a poetic background — can you tell me more about it?
“When I was 17, maybe slightly earlier, I’d always written a lot as a child — English was my favorite subject. I’d read a lot, I wrote in notebooks, and I’ve always kept diaries. Then at the age of 16, I sort of diverted from my parent’s musical interests by listening to a lot of rap and hip hop, because it was just not something that was getting played in the house.
It felt like something that I could have as my own in the house, musically. I was really attracted to the storytelling element of it, which is also something that attracted me to English.
I think that it was around the age of 16, I started to rewrite some of my favourite songs and lyrics in my own voice and start playing with that form. And then when I was 17, I got invited by a friend of mine, a poet and a rapper called Isaiah, to join a collective called Young identity, which is a spoken word group based out of Manchester.
I would sort of semi-sneak out the house to go to those writing groups, because it was my own thing, and I wanted to protect it as that. I began performing with that group, and it was a really inspiring group of young and passionate individuals. It had a really big impact on me growing up, and ever since then, I’ve been writing in some capacity.
People told me that the way I was performing had a musical and very strong rhythmic impetus to it; that it was kind of going beyond the border of spoken word and that I should start looking for producers to add music to it. So that’s kind of how I started”.
Your track LITTLEMIXXSIXTY has a kind of movie score atmosphere. Did we hit the nail on the head?
“I was very flattered with that interpretation, it’s always so nice. You sometimes make things in a bubble, and then when someone listens to it, even if they just got close to something that you intended, that’s always really nice to read.
I do often write with a cinematic lens and see songs visually, inspired by like a world building approach. When I was making the track with The Still Brothers — who produced the song — I read them the lyrics, and then they created this sort of soundscape which felt almost a bit like James Bond.
There was something kind of eclectic and nostalgic about it within that cinematic universe. I was just really happy as soon as they started noodling around on guitar. We actually recorded the whole thing to tape as well. It has that additional listening quality to it. So I’m really pleased if that’s coming across, because that was something I was thinking about when I was writing it”.
What was the reason behind that?
“The Still Brothers are a production duo based out of the US, and one of them lives in Florida, which is where we were staying and recording music. Evan, who’s one half, had a tape machine. Because we live in different places, we don’t always have the time together to make music in that way, so we were aware that we had this short space of time and recording to tape is sometimes just really economic.
It makes you think, okay, if we can only have eight parts of this track, what are they going to be? And, you know, you play it and it has to be perfect — the thing you need. So we just kind of decided that it was going to be useful to our process of getting stuff done. It kind of fit the vibe of the track and it meant that I had to write the second verse slightly on the fly. But it all kind of works, I was really happy with it”.
You’ve been described as the next wave of female rappers. How does that make you feel?
“I’m flattered when someone compares me to people that I admire. If someone says: ‘I’m in a wave of female rappers’, if they put me within that realm, that’s always flattering; because these are people I look up to and admire. Even just to be in the same world of comparison to them is amazing.
But, at the same time, I think that the music I make sort of sits in a Venn diagram between quite a few different genres. I’m resistant to tunneling down one route, whether that be rap or spoken word — I don’t want to locate myself too strongly within the confines of a genre. So I’m aware of that”.
Your new EP is titled “LIFTGOINGUP” — When is it due out?
“It’s actually the whole thing. I can tell you the exact date. I’m dropping four singles, one a month until November, and the whole thing will be out on the 21st of November”.
What can we expect from it? Will it be similar to your last one, a continuation, or something new?
“It’s new, but compact and an EP of four tracks. The previous project I released was a mixtape, and I felt it was more of a collage of different sounds and influences. This one is a bit more sonically cohesive, and it’s very diaristic — not necessarily in a way that I’m talking about things — but it was made at a very particular time in my life”.
“When I was travelling, I was thinking a lot about the autonomy I have as an individual to make work in different places with different people, move around the world, experience different things, and be challenged positively by that. All those things that I was thinking about culminated in these four tracks, which sit in a couple worlds.
“I’m not just a musician, really. I definitely consider myself to be a writer”
It’s half serious, half playful—half me. Half cinema, half my own creation, and the production of The Still Brothers. I was just drawn to these sounds at this particular time and the stories that I was telling. And yeah, it’s not a world away at all from what I made before — but it’s a little bit more compact”.
A little bit more introspective, would you say?
“I don’t even know if I’d say it’s more introspective, I think that it’s, maybe it’s slightly, just slightly more DIY. It felt within mine and their hands, and it was just the process of making something, hearing a sound we like, feeling like there was something I wanted to say, and being happy when we’d made something. And it was, it fit that criteria”.
Is there a purpose to your release schedule?
“Yeah, definitely. I really want to be a bit more transparent with the releasing process. I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with the way the industry wants people to release music. It feels like there’s a big build up nowadays, and a sort of pressure, and this idea that you have to have people ready to listen before you put something out — which is important — but I just wanted to be transparent about the way I was approaching it, so that people could understand that process.”
“So I said at the top of releasing, it’s going to be four tracks over a four month period of time, with four weeks in between, and that every track alongside it would have a video diary of where and when I made that track so that people could understand. This was a project that was made in a very specific period of time, again, over four weeks in four different cities in America. I just wanted to give people something that felt authentic and real”.
So this is your own universe you’re creating — visuals, music, etc
“Yeah, and I almost see it more…rather than a universe, as just being like a record of my time and experience. It’s almost like going back to a little period of time where I made these tracks and people sort of peeking at that world specifically”.
What would you say is different from your last project?
“Well, definitely the physical geography of being in America and then making it within a two week period in the studio. I’ve never made a whole project out of one place, and it was just something we decided to lock our heads together and do.”
“There was a camaraderie and a sort of brotherhood involved in that process and it made the project very special. A lot of the people who were staying with us at that time have features on the project. LITTLEMISSSIXTY features a singer called Marina B, who is Evan’s partner, and is, just like, the most beautiful singer — she has separate projects associated with Lewis.
We’re like, hanging out and watching TV, making breakfast, and then it’s like, ‘oh, Marina, you need to be on this!’ And we played it to her and and she loved the song. And then we have a friend that will come in and play some drums, a friend that comes in and gets involved in a different way. It’s like a little family”.
So there’s no strict roles within your process?
“We all rotate roles. One person will be on keys one day, another will be on drums, one person on guitar. The thing is, I’ll just always stay on words and get involved where I can with everything else, but that’s like my sole role, and then everyone else gets involved with everything”.
Outside of music, what else impacts your work?
“Yeah, so I’m not just a musician, really. I definitely consider myself to be a writer — journalism, essays, and I’m working really slowly on a long form project. I’m constantly thinking about why I’m writing in what form. I definitely think about that too sometimes.
I love film and cinema, and I’ve always been really inspired by television as well. A lot of my songs often come from a visual, cinematic world. And I think it’s because of my mental enrichment from visual worlds.
So I kind of just like to expose myself to as much art as possible. Whether it’s theater, a gallery show, or just talking to people about their reactions to things. I always find exposure to art to be inspiring rather than a stopping force”.
Given the visual optics of your music — what are your favourite films?
“Erm, I’ll give you my top four. My favourite film of all time is School of Rock. My second film, I love Lady Bird, that was a really formative film for me. Little Miss Sunshine was my favourite film growing up. And I love, I really love Silver Linings Playbook as well.
I love a film with a good dance sequence. I’m often attracted to films that are kind of vaguely about, the drama in our domestic lives, and within a sort of suburbia—the everyday, the extraordinary that happens within the everyday. And actually, all of those four films have that completely in common”.
If we opened up your voice memos or rhyme book, what chaos would we find in there?
“This is not going to be very good for you, but voice memos are like…” (Emmeline opens up her phone)…
Wow, that’s a lot of voice memos!
“Like, it’s gonna go on forever”.
That’s definitely the mark of a true musician.
“You don’t want to miss something if it hits in a minute, or getting recordings of sounds that are, like, on the street, or, yeah. I mean, it’s gonna be at some point I’m gonna have to, like, sit down and file that—that’s gonna be a nightmare. But it’s just a really useful tool to have, just as inspiration strikes”.
Who are you listening to at the moment?
“Yeah, it’s a good question. I’m constantly making playlists. I have a sort of quarterly, sometimes monthly playlist that are an eclectic mix of stuff that’s coming out now. Stuff that I’m leaning back on. I’ve been trying to slowly listen to DOOM this year, in different contexts, and to take the albums in a sort of intentional and measured way. Just because his writing is exemplary of doing it well”.
Are there specific places you enjoy creating? Or is it whenever inspiration strikes?
“It’s whenever inspiration strikes to a certain extent. I don’t have enough structure in my life or in my music at the moment, to work in a way that always suits me. So I’m just trying to be as reactive as possible.
I hate having my phone on me all the time, but I do — I write a lot of my notes up just if it comes to mind. I have a lot of notebooks. I like writing on my laptop a lot. Often when I’m traveling, I find that if I get a quiet moment to sit in either a cafe or somewhere with my notebook, stuff comes out quite quickly. On planes, trains, anywhere I can”.
Stanisland Magazine 
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