KayMuni

Emerging from Birmingham, England, rapper Khalid Khan—better known as KayMuni—spins raw, introspective stories across dark, atmospheric instrumentals. His first tracks surfaced during 2021, and by 2024 the mixtape Signed to the T had entered the U.K. Top 40.

A 2001 native of the northwestern inner-city district Winson Green, he put out the self-released “Hoods Hottest” in May 2021, followed by “No Cap” that October. An arrest the next month resulted in a custodial term exceeding nine and a half years on drug- and firearms-related charges. While serving that sentence he still delivered “Chat to Me” in September 2022, an early preview of the debut mixtape Time Is Money. The November 2022 project included appearances from KB and Marnz Malone, the latter also called Double M; the pair would maintain an ongoing creative partnership in subsequent years. Closing out 2022 came the two-part standalone single “Jail Duppy.”

Shifting away from prison accounts and street recollections, he turned to examining a troubled romance on the Valentine’s Day-timed “Love Letter from the Trenches” in 2023. Shortly afterward KayMuni joined an array of artists on Cypher City’s “Flashbacks Cypher.” June brought Time Is Money 2, featuring Mazza L20 just before the Liverpool rapper’s “Murdaside” broke through online. That September he and KB issued the joint project Fuck the Charts. Early the following year he returned with a cinematic cut produced by Fumez the Engineer. His visibility rose again in February via a cameo on Potter Payper’s “Free KayMuni,” taken from the Barking artist’s mixtape Thanks for Hating, which reached number five on the U.K. chart. Payper later placed KayMuni on his 36TL label, whose May 2024 release Signed to the T entered the national listings and climbed as high as the Scottish Top Ten.