“You can’t drink that here, mate,” the pub owner tells a member of Lewisham rapper-producer TR Gobrazy’s entourage, who sits holding a Jack Daniel’s mixer sheepishly. We’re in the throes of a heatwave in London, and I find myself standing bewildered outside of a Hackney Wick pub just moments away from TR Gobrazy’s Dazed Autumn 2026 photoshoot. His pal has skulked off round the corner to either stash or down his drink, while the man himself has borrowed my pint to pose topless for a double-parked picture. “Content, content, content,” TR reminds himself. He will post the picture during England’s World Cup quarter-final match against Norway the following day.  

This lighthearted atmosphere is surprising because, in his music, at least, TR appears weighed down by something much heavier. His voice, deep and crunchy, arrives with the force of a distorted 808 bass drum; his productions drive at a relentless, almost anxiety-inducing pace; and his lyrics are eye-wateringly direct. “Mr. Cooke told me I’d end up dead,” he raps on the single “Mr. Cooke”. Later: “My uncle got sentenced to death / I don’t even know if he dead yet / Like, how you gonna trap in a third world country? / That’s what you get.”

“‘Mr. Cooke’ is probably the saddest song I’ve ever heard in my life,” TR tells me as we cram onto a pub bench alongside his friends in the evening sunshine – one of whom proceeds to film the entire conversation on his iPhone. “He was a teacher in my college – a bald, light-skinned man with an Irish accent. He used to get the whole class laughing at me, saying crazy stuff, man. I was not a serious student; I would be in class selling beats, doing whatever, but he would always be comparing me to the smart kids in the class. A lot of rappers talk about their teachers, but not many say that their teachers literally told them that they would end up dead.”

TR turns, as he will do many times throughout our conversation, to his blood brother, musical collaborator and manager, Lez, for reassurance: “Am I saying too much?” The pair have been through a lot together. Back before TR ever considered rapping, they aspired to be footballers (“We were trying to be the Boateng brothers!”), and Lez was subsequently a key supporter of his early forays into production. “He was the first person to ever tell me I was cool,” TR says solemnly.

TR’s career during that time, credited as TR the Producer, was pretty prolific. Emerging as a teenager in the heyday of UK drill, back when UK Ug was a variety of furred boot, the Lewisham local cut his teeth producing for UK greats like AJ Tracey, DigDat and Loski. He quickly began getting placements Stateside, from original ‘Chiraq’ drill artists like Rico Reckless 600 member S. Dot to viral rapper Lil Tecca (the track was never released, but a leak can still be found via TR’s Genius profile), and soon after, TR was headhunted by the host of the formative Plugged In drill platform, Fumez the Engineer. “He was my manager from 2019 to 2022,” says TR. “A lot of the Plugged In freestyles that you hear from that time are my beats.”

But the real break came when TR was invited to a studio session with Dave and Central Cee in early 2023. “That did a lot for me,” TR recalls of his involvement in the hit track “Sprinter”, now standing as the most-streamed UK rap single of all time. “That year, I was with Jim [Legxacy] every single day and one day Kayode from Corteiz called us and said, ‘Come studio’, and then Dave asked me to jump on a track. Jim sang, and I did ad-prod. Even before I jumped on, though, I would say I was a very big driving force behind the song, which is why I think I was there for a reason. It felt like the world stood still that day.”

It was also around the time of “Sprinter” that TR also found the courage to finally pivot from producing to rapping. “I stopped doubting and started believing in myself,” he explains. “I wanted to rap before, but I was scared because there was no ‘underground’ back then; you had to fit into certain categories. But then I was around Jim and @war and those people, and I was like, ‘If he’s singing like this and he’s from the ends, why can’t I rap like this?’.” So, in late 2023, TR wiped his grid clean (“I didn’t want people to just think, ‘Oh this is the ‘Sprinter’ boy rapping now”) and, along with encouragement from Lez, Jim Legxacy and fellow UK Ug duo @war, released his first single, “Metro”. 

TR describes his releases since then as “chronological” – an unbroken story that details the tough experiences behind the happy-go-lucky hijinks I find myself confronted with on the day of our interview. Family hardships, real-life battles with homelessness (thankfully, he reminds me, he’s not homeless anymore), even heartbreak are all crammed into TR’s dense, distorted and invariably sub-two-minute UK Ug releases. “It’s like public therapy for me,” TR admits. “There are times when I record something, and I’m like, ‘Lez, shall I take that out? I just spoke about uncle; it’s a bit mad’. And Lez is like, ‘No, you know why you said it’. It’s a risk, but I took it because I want to be a rapper that lives in reality as it happens.” 

One story in particular, however, has since become something of a meme in UK Ug pages online: “Back then, I finessed my bro because I thought my bro finessed me.” I playfully ask whether TR would like to address the ‘bad friend’ allegations. “Everyone has a dark secret that’s going to make people gasp; I just rap about mine,” he responds. “I’m not proud of it; it was a dark time, but I understand that it doesn’t make me a bad person, and I’m still friends with that guy now. It’s an unspoken thing that happened between us.”

TR’s upcoming debut project, TGB (“That stands for TR Gobrazy and a lot of other things,” he tells me cryptically), is now endlessly hyped in UK underground rap circles online. However, he still struggles to align himself with a particular community. “I feel homeless in the scene, man, it’s fucked,” TR says when I ask whether he identifies with the UK Ug label. “I get compared to the Sinn6rs, Fimi[guerrero]s and Finessekids, but then I also get put next to the Nemzzz’, Kirbs’ and Chy Cartier’s – that’s the other world. I feel like what I’m making is so experimental that people don’t know where to put me.”

One artist TR does identify with, however, is Chicago drill pioneer Chief Keef, whom he repeatedly cites as his biggest inspiration – both as a producer-rapper and beyond. “I remember when he got his first mansion,” TR tells me excitedly. “He just bought a TV and a laptop – that’s it – and started making beats. I saw myself in that.” Is that the goal, then? “100 per cent. A mansion with no furniture, just me, a TV and GTA VI. Like I said on ‘Bagged’: ‘I won’t stop ‘til my neighbour’s racist’. That’s real life.” Real life, it seems, is all TR’s focused on. And these days it seems like things are looking up. 

This story is taken from the autumn 2026 issue of Dazed, which is on sale internationally from September 10. Pre-order a copy of the magazine here.