PREMIERE: Ryder ft: BXKS - WTF (Official Video)
Rising 20-year-old Hull producer Ryder drops a brand new track ‘WTF' featuring acclaimed Luton based rapper BXKS, taken from the upcoming debut EP due later this year.
Co produced by Leon Jean-Marie, Ryder deftly melds various genres, shaping futuristic atmospheres, zipping between BPMs and tempos. Laced with a Brazilian funk element, ‘WTF', is every bit as bassy and banging as you might expect. “When people hear that they just go mad” he says.
Ryder is living proof of the internet’s democratising power, scoring huge online attention for his #skeptacore project eventually meaning he would make an entire EP 48 Hours in a studio with the grime and rap legend himself. Ryder also counts J Dilla Labi Siffre Moby and Kanye’s production style as musical influences – avant-garde sounds that have soul that don’t always fit into a strictly 4x4 template. Ryder continues to explore his eclectic tastes through his DJ’ing career having made his debut at The Lower Third with Shortee Blitz in 2024.
Having been granted a scholarship to London’s prestigious BIMM Institute through Spotify. The time and effort he’d put into music paid off and he moved down to London from Hull in 2022. Ryder decided to take his music even more seriously, splicing a Skepta acapella over a guitar sample and posting it online. This was ‘#skeptacore pt.1’. These attracted views, and he kept going, posting parts two and three. Within two hours of posting the third, friends were ringing him about the rapidly escalating views: ‘Have you seen it?’
Something about Ryder’s re-imagination of iconic Skepta bars with inventive production really captured the attention of an online generation. He’d put sparring lyrics over jazz and garage fusion, gaining millions of views on TikTok. Labels started DM’ing him. Ryder was contacted by Skepta, asking him to come to the studio in London to work on an EP.
48 Hours was the result, the name a literal description of their time spent in the studio together. It featured two brand new tracks with Ryder, Skepta and rising vocalist Dré Six, and #skeptacore parts one to three. The EP connected with listeners, earning over 50 million Spotify streams. Publications including Complex, Mixmag, NME and Hypebeast rushed to write about it, and he’s had airplay on BBC 1Xtra and been spun by Benji B as well as DJ Target.
Young, bold and innovative, you sense that Ryder is in search of a bigger stage in 2025.