HUNGRY — Featuring No Guidnce, Nippa and Kam-BU

A quick Google search of the Scottish-Bahraini actor Ghazi Al Ruffai will throw out a surprisingly eclectic mix of results. There are the videos through which many people online (across TikTok in particular) will recognise the face: the 24-year-old showing how different pastas or rodents would dance, and what characters from Of Mice and Men would be like at a party. “I get so many DMs from people being like, ‘I’m extremely depressed and you brighten my day,’” Al Ruffai says. “I’m like, ‘Girl, I was just dancing like pasta, but period.’” Then there’s the influence on fashion – the myriad outfit posts that keep serving c*nt at their core. But scroll down Google, and it’s what pops up surrounding Al Ruffai’s acting that rings out. There are the expected actor headshots, but one link that stands out is Al Ruffai’s own creation: a video posted on YouTube back in 2021 entitled Me and My Bag. The comical short shows the relationship of living with both Crohn’s disease and an ileostomy bag, adroitly dealing with any questions and debunking any preconceptions viewers might have. “It’s cheesy as fuck, but I was trying to highlight that life isn’t over.” It’s all part of Al Ruffai’s take on the importance of acting. “I did applied theatre, which is theatre around social issues and creating work and performances that can help change society and shine a light on marginalised and disenfranchised people,” Al Ruffai says. Of course, Me and My Bag was a personal project for the queer actor, but the overall goal goes bigger: “I’ve experienced a lot of stuff that is out of the mainstream or the conventional. There’s not millions and millions of people that have experienced the exact same thing as me, growing up like myself. In the Arab world, there’s a hundred million people just like me and they can’t say anything. I just want to be able to change those narratives.”

“I think my younger self would not believe half the shit I’ve done in the past three years,” says the 26-year-old musician Kam-BU. “If you had told 13-year-old me I would be doing this right now, I would have been, like, ‘Are you taking the piss?!’” Growing up, Kam-BU moved from Nottingham to Brixton to Richmond, meaning music became the one real constant in the artist’s life. “My father, being a drummer in a reggae roots band, heavily influenced the household, listening to music with a message and purpose,” he recalls. “And my mother’s music taste was my entry point to the softer side.” Kam-BU was enamoured of music from a young age, even recording tracks on
his Fisher Price tape player before graduating to spitting bars over YouTube instrumentals. Now, a winning formula of rave-ready raps and poignant, introspective lyricism has made him one of the UK’s most exciting prospects. “My music is a collection of stories from different periods of my life,” he says. “My last tape, Built to Last, was focused on sound-system culture and made for raves and festivals, but I love making different shit.” Perhaps the only thing that matches Kam-BU’s passion for music is his dedication to eco-activism, which often leads him to volunteer in his local green spaces. “It’s my refuge and grounding tool. It’s great socially – working with people who are from all walks of life is a super-humbling experience.” And while other artists may have their heads wrapped up in chasing numbers and monetary gain, Kam-BU’s longterm focus is more considered: “To make an album that I’m proud of and I’ve poured my whole self into.”

No Guidnce started out by posting song covers on TikTok. There, the band have so far racked up 2.7 million followers. Next up it’s “international success”. When we spoke to the four members – Kaci, Zeekay, Ebubé and Josh – they’d already hopped in the studio with writer and producer Victoria Monét and done their first headline show in London. “Having our fans from online being able to see us in real life was a full-circle moment,” they say. Performing at Wireless festival last summer was equally surreal for the London natives, too. “[Wireless] was huge. That was also quite early on in our career in terms of releasing music. Wireless was in July and we’d only released our first single in March.” Broadly speaking, No Guidnce are R&B. It’s the Nineties heyday of the boyband that they hark back to with the smooth vocals and catchy riffs of their singles “Is It a Crime?” and “White Tee”. But though they take cues from artists like Jodeci and Boyz II Men, they’re not going to limit themselves either. “We’ve got a pop-rock song ready to go, and we’d love to do something with a Latinx artist. That would be sick.” Ultimately, No Guidnce will always stick to their roots: “Every time we go into the studio, we’re trying to keep in mind what we really want to deliver, which is real singing. We want to sing properly, and we want to do group harmonies, and we want the hooks to be powerful. We want everyone to shine.”

Guts Gallery is one of London’s greatest galleries. It may not be one you’re entirely familiar with, but if you move within any circles where the word “art” is even whispered, then Guts will be on your radar. And its owner and founder, 27-year-old Ellie Pennick, from Leeds, is responsible for turning the British art scene on its head in an attempt to uproot the industry’s elitism and make way for the talent who have, up until now, been locked out in favour of Daddy’s shoe-in or the nepo-baby golden children. A former artist themself, Pennick has a penchant for gnawing away at art’s rigid ways of working that stems, no doubt, from their previous work. “Theresa May wanking herself off with the EU flag was my end-of-year [sculpture] piece,” they say. Though, of course, their reason for moving away from being an artist and into championing artists through Guts Gallery goes much deeper than satire. “The feedback has been great from the artists. They feel finally heard, that somebody’s trying to take a stance, and we’re doing it collectively as well.” The gallery’s roster of celebrated creators stretches from names such as Corbin Shaw to Elsa Rouy and Olivia Sterling – creative forces that resonate way beyond the M25. Looking ahead to later on in 2024, the aim is expansion. “I’m wanting to grow, to bring on more artists. They have done so well and it’s time now to bring on more people and hopefully open up another space – that would be the dream.”

In 2019, the multi-hyphenate Malthus, then 22 years old, departed his rural hometown of Skelmersdale, Lancashire. In search of some escapism and to pursue his creative ambition, he ventured – as so many do – to London. “I feel like I’ve lived a thousand lives since I’ve moved here,” he says. “It’s such a vast and transient place.” Now 26, Malthus conveys an expressiveness that knows no boundaries, and has his finger in just about every creative pie as a filmmaker, choreographer and musician. Last year, the talent would go on to release his most significant project to date: his daring, grandiose and incredibly vulnerable EP, Convulsions. “When I was making it, I think I was just really, really sad. It was a massive exhale of all this pent-up rage and sadness, and it was firstly never meant to be heard by anyone, and secondly never seen.” Malthus isn’t producing deeply personal music for the opportunity of monetary gain or potential fame; it’s simply a release of his innermost thoughts. However, as his music begins to reach a larger audience, Malthus admits he’s beginning to approach his output more seriously. “I have ambition, but it’s a very different sense of ambition,” he says. “But now I’m having enough of an impact on people that I’m performing in Europe. What happens if I actually put money into this or I actually plan it properly? I’m really excited for what’s going to come next because this has been enough to convince me that this is the only thing I want to be doing.”

It took over a year for Eades, the lively storytellers aged between 25 and 30, to land on their current formation: Harry Jordan as lead and rhythm guitar, Tom O’Reilly as lead vocalist and guitar, Tom Barr on keys, Sam Wilde on bass and Dan Clifford-Smith on drums. But with the success of their recent shows supporting fellow Brit rockers Wunderhorse, it looks to be a set-up that will stick. Eades describe their sound as a “nice mix between garage rock, punk and alternative rock”, with diverse influences that range from what they dub as “experimental bands” – The Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth – right the way through to the “catchy hooks and choruses” found in pop. “I guess we write pop songs, but we mess them up through production and by playing them with grittier guitars. We basically tear them to pieces.” The band’s pulsating and energetic debut album, Delusion Spree, released in 2022, was post-punk done in a way that felt cleverly self-referential and verging on ironic. But in the future that might change. For their forthcoming EP, they’re “moving away from the post-punk they started with”. “We’re trying to be more melodic with our writing and push ourselves with the chords we use.” But when they eventually tour the US, the metamorphosing band might be doing something new entirely – like disco…

“We centre a lot of young queer designers from our community. We like to reference ourselves and our audience. We create the content we consume through our own lens, which is why the girlies love it! They get us and we get them,” say the effervescent creative duo Bambi, 24, and Bauti, 23. Despite their different ages, you might be inclined to think they must be twins, and in many ways they are cut from the same creative cloth, but what brings them together is their unique vision of finding purpose in hilarity. “We developed a symbiotic relationship. Two embryos grown in separate Petri dishes that came together. We’re like two Lisa Rinnas – we hold the same spoon that stirs the pot. I think our backgrounds in art, creative media and marketing have made us both equally insane and we bounce off each other’s inner worlds.” Together the pair created OPIA – a performance collective where their multimedia fantasies are born: “OPIA is both us and a larger collective that puts on queer raves, fashion events, and art exhibits all centred on celebrating the innovation within the underground. It’s the Hard Rock Cafe of the queer London scene. We want to turn our scene into household names – our obsession is quite Warholian in that sense. It’s a love letter to pop culture while producing it at the same time.”