29 May 2026
Since emerging on the scene in 2024, Pozer has consistently released forward-thinking drill singles. Today, he shares his debut mixtape Crossroads. The first time I heard Pozer was his track ‘Puppies’. His distinctive vocal tone and sampling of Radiohead’s ‘Everything in Its Right Place’ implied he was taking the genre into a new space, resisting the stylistic stasis of drill’s oversaturation a few years prior. With Crossroads, he delivers a very slick, well-mixed and well-produced soundworld with extremely well-placed features.
The first track ‘Lauryn Hill’ sees Pozer rap over a Jersey club-inspired beat where soft synths are interspersed with shimmering saxophone wails. Lyrically, Pozer puts forth the typical narrative of ascension that is commonplace in contemporary hip-hop; “I got in my bag and out my feels, I’m in it to win it, they’re in it for thrills, I’ve seen tings and it gave me chills”.
Some of Crossroad’s best verses come from the featured artists. ‘Ghetto Jazz’ is shared with Kerchak, a talented French-language rapper of Ivorian descent. It is always interesting to have artists on the same track spitting in different languages, really laying bare the nuanced differences of prosody, intonation, and how these manifest in flow. ‘Hulk Hogan’ with AJ Tracey, sees Pozer use his lower, rhythmically sparser flow for the chorus and a more frenetic one on his verse. AJ seems incredibly comfortable as he floats over textbook UK drill percussion in spite of some intricate and developed rhyme schemes. ‘100 Miles’ features Aitch delivering some of his signature witty wordplay such as “I used to spray up the set, the YGs spray up your chest, get Paco Rabanned”.
Pozer employs a lot of “like” and “no” bars that are the basis of UK drill’s wordplay: “I was slim no shady” in Double Edged Sword, “You can’t touch this like MC hammer” on Jersey King. He authenticates his US hip-hop knowledge by referencing some greats in the track titles; ‘Common’, ‘Lauryn Hill’, ‘Max B’, and ‘MF DOOM’. The latter track features a sample more emblematic of early drill with some fizzy, distorted jerk-like percussion underpinning it. The closer ‘Common’ has some of Pozer’s best bars: “I already know how to grip and shoot, way before I laid down tracks at booth, if your ting went click but it did not rip then hand it to me, I might know what to do”, which is spat in a candidly satisfying way.
Overall, the beats sound fresh. However, I would’ve liked to have heard more of the progressive approach to beat selection evident in his earlier releases. Lyrically, Pozer rarely deviates from the drill tropes that have become so engrained since the genre’s period of over-saturation. His flow is idiosyncratic and arresting, but what is lacking here is more nuanced and developed exploration of drill’s centralised thematic material. That being said, this is incredibly solid for a debut tape, but Pozer plays it decidedly safe. In future, I hope to see more of his evolutionary sensibilities imbued into his music as he certainly has the potential to take drill beyond what it has already accomplished.
3/5
Words by Charlie Edmondson