On the idyllic coast of Barcelona, it’s Thursday night at Primavera. The sun beams down on Feux as I find him perched waiting for me on the astroturf grass at the main stage. We stroll through the site, and find a temporary home on some dilapidated steps overlooking the Balearic sea. I’m present at the iconic festival to cover its antics, whilst Feux is here to witness them, a spectator this time around. I’m sure though, that the West Londoner envisions a set on the revered stage himself, one day in the not too distant future. “Every year my main goal is evolution,” he says, pulling on a cigarette rolled with difficulty thanks to the substantial sea-side breeze. This centric aspiration, from an exterior perspective at least, is one that he sweeps through with grace and confidence.

Feux’s origins lie in the underground UK hip hop scene that has found itself ever closer to the mainstream consensus since the turn of the decade, with him rising in coalescence with the movement. “I think hip-hop as an entry point is quite easy for a lot of artists,” he pinpoints. “For me personally, I’ve got three older brothers, so hip-hop was a major part of what I listened to as a teenager.” Youtube platforms LOUDHOUSE, the visual and cultural venture from director and scene champion Honey JD, was a launchpad for Feux, who first broke through with the release of 2019 single “Life?”. It’s a breezy, retrospective hip hop number that portrayed Feux as a playfully profound newcomer under the alt rap threshold.

The track is to this day Feux’s most streamed song; a familiar scenario to many of his cohort. The pressure to concoct a similar cut – whether in tone, style or approach – must have lurked ominously, but the artist never felt inclined to follow notoriety’s elusive tail. “I didn’t think of making a part two or anything like that. “Life?” was such a moment in my life – I didn’t know what to do, I was in a position where I was having relationship issues and I was gonna drop out of uni. So it’s hard for me to chase something like that when that’s not my reality. Streaming is just an extra – if I can have a thousand people that really genuinely feel my music and I can change their lives with that, then it doesn’t really matter what song does better. I’m always going to go with what is true in the moment.” For Feux, music creation is instinctive. The process has to be organic; to try and be anything but engulfed by his own authenticity is simply not an option. “My music has to be the mirror of what I love and what I appreciate,” he defines, and this can be seen in the progression of his sound. Just look at his new standout single, “Angel” for example – his first outing of the year. It’s dreamy, esoteric and unrestricted by sonic borders, with a stunning melodic vocal performance and sharp lyrical identity that feels plagued by regret in a charismatic sense.

On his sonic escapade of the past half decade, Feux’s charming, cultural zeitgeist-capturing, if somewhat simplistic alt hip hop has metamorphosed into a far more expressive and unique entity, and one that traverses him into a whole new echelon of artistic integrity. “It feels natural to move away from purely being seen as a hip-hop artist,” he offers on the continuous stylistic shift. “I find it hard not to sing on all of my songs nowadays. Writing a verse now is actually more of a challenge because melody is how I can show my feelings. Sometimes in hip-hop it’s hard to show a feeling – a sonic feeling, rather than just words telling a story.”

It was 2022’s Opal Blue that first threw Feux into the swirling world of conceptualisation. “It’s the first project where I put a lot of time into building a story that I’ve lived and a story that is somewhat continuous in my life,” he affirms. “It’s about a cycle of evolution as a human being.” The œuvre is split into three sections – the we (everything around us, the people, the environments), the self (what you yourself see and understand), and then the love, “which is the overarching umbrella that those two fit under; you have to feel that self love and appreciate what’s around you to feel fulfilled in life.”

It’s an ambitious and sprawling attempt at thematic collectivity, and was a statement of intent from Feux; whilst many of his contemporaries kept to their winning formula until it stales, he instead went seeking a sonic purpose, nurturing it and nestling within a pocket that is without a zip, one that breathes in new influences and fulfils its maker’s older, wiser disposition. “An album is something that has layers to it,” he explains about the process. “You want people to find it in however many years and to connect with it and have the ability to look into the message. I don’t just want to give people a collection of songs, I want to give people a piece, and a piece of them that they can carry with them. In these times it’s hard for people to consume projects unless you really care about music, but for me it’s important for me moving towards being able to do so.”

Opal Blue was something of a crossroads release, with flickerings of the moody decadence that was to come, whilst still offering the undemanding serendipity of the artist’s early discography. The following phase though, showed Feux’s progression more starkly. You need only look to “Salamander” and “Lightbeams”, two singles from ensuing projects that bolster videos shared less than a year from each other; the trip-laden almost silly visuals, bubblegum sonics and vacant, boastful lyricism of the 5EB featuring “Salamander is sharply juxtaposed by “Lightbeams”, undoubtedly one of Feux’s strongest cuts to date. Accompanied by a morose, gorgeously captured B&W video that sees its protagonist searching for the unattainable, the song itself is rich, textured and moody, naturalistic and cinematic, with the singer’s vocal performance unrecognisably good compared to the charming but unpolished sung inflections of early Feux.

The impressive single was a teaser outing, plucked from “MAX MANTRA (Side A)”, Feux’s most recent, confident and superior body of work to date. ““MAX MANTRA (Side B)” followed soon after, completing a full album released in two halves. The first segment is Feux as experimental as fans have ever heard, whilst the second leg is somewhat of an ode to his come-up, with its hip hop-leaning sonics, and a guest appearance from the meticulous maverick Mick Jenkins on “VICE”. “I just told myself: ‘I can do that, so why should I not do it?’,” he says on securing a feature with the US rap heavyweight. “There was a sense of initiative that I had with the project, of like — I can reach out to Mick Jenkins and I can get a feature with him if he likes the song. And he did, and he jumped on it.”

In the sonic and visual world of MAX MANTRA, Feux finds himself living out a romanticised version of himself; theatrical in a grounded sense, revelling in a boundless drama. His aim was to refine the attempted ideologization of Opal Blue, drive his sound forward into new sonic terrain, and attain closure from certain aspects of the past. “Side A was a lot more of a sonic jump into an alternative alley with a tiny sprinkle of hip hop,” he says. “I wanted to lead people into a more alternative sound that can be listened to by hip hop fans. I wanted to merge my sound into one and mix what I want to make with what I used to make. Side B is almost the send off to the Feux hip hop and R&B style, but evolves it as well. Sonically, I wanted to show diversity, and the two sides of me, and how those two sides find balance when they come together.”

Since the two-part album’s release late last year, Feux has shared only the aforementioned “Angel”, which is poised to be the first of four singles this year. Although he refuses to dive into his next body of work too hastily, it feels bound to happen sooner rather than later. In the meantime, Feux looks to improve and evolve – whether through producing more, rekindling the piano (“I used to play but then I stopped because I started playing Club Penguin”), foraying further into modelling and film, or solidifying his humanity and his musical ethos.

As an artist who has been dedicating his life to his sonic endeavours for a number of years now, with a high degree of success but without the kind of breakthrough that secures his future livelihood, for Feux uncertainty is a cloud he walks beneath daily. He never cowers in its shadow though; he believes in his craft, in the longevity of his art, and his own unstoppable passion. “[Thinking long term] is definitely something that I have to push myself to think about,” he concludes before we head back into the festival for an evening of blurry antics. “Because you definitely doubt yourself at times. But my love for the music, and the fact that I know I want to do this for the rest of my life, solidifies me and eradicates that doubt. The fact that I’m focusing on making the best music I can right now, and not giving into what’s hot this summer, I know that it’ll be able to live on.”