The “underground” is having a second within the UK rap scene.
Led by artists like fakemink, Jim Legxacy, and skaiwater, the burgeoning “UK renaissance” has turn out to be one of the crucial thrilling hip-hop tales of 2025.
However, there’s now a brand new determine beginning to make waves, a masked rapper by the title of EsDeeKids. Shrouded in a balaclava in all his public appearances, he has turn out to be one of the crucial talked about new rappers of 2025, thanks to the TikTok success of “Phantom” and his connection to Timothée Chalamet. The two simply teased “4 RAWS” remix.
“Phantom” is a tune featured on his debut album, Rebelwhich dropped in the summertime, and simply made its debut on the Billboard 200 chart. Much like his rage-driven counterparts within the U.S. underground, EsDee raps over a number of the most intense, ear-catching beats in hip-hop, marked by haunting Digitone synth traces and blown-out 808s layered over onerous entice and off-kilter jerk grooves. With his thick Liverpool “scouse” accent, EsDee fires off bars like he’s bought infinite breath, speaking his shit whereas repping his hometown.
EsDeeKid has by no means executed an interview, so little is understood about him. But we did some snooping round. Here is all the things you want to find out about EsDeeKid.
EsDeeKid hails from Liverpool, England—a metropolis not too removed from Manchester. He drops hints of his background on “4 Raws” when he raps, “I’m a scumbag, I was raised in Liverpool slums, lad.”
On X, he’s constantly repping his hometown. In one post from June 2025 he reflected on his success stating: “grateful for life did all this from a council estate in liverpool all built off scraps mate thank you all.” (The time period “council estate” is a reference to a particular district in Liverpool related to US counties.)
The earliest tune on his SoundCloud is a remix of Rae Sremmurd’s “Black Beatles,” released in May of 2024. The track retains the airy keys from the original but adds new hoodtrap drums, with EsDee’s aggressive rapping contrasting the slower beat.
From there, he dropped a number of loosies that see EsDee leaning further into a darker sound than the 2016 hit, including “Palaces,” the track that first put him on people’s radar and has since racked up north of 2 million streams on SoundCloud.
And then, on June twentieth, 2025, got here Rebel.
Released in February 2025, “LV Sandals” helped catapult fakemink into wider recognition; EsDeeKid, the main rapper on the song, benefited also. The track’s addictive chorus, with fakemink stuttering the words “L-L-L-Louis V Sandals,” supported by verses from EsDee and Rico Ace, made it one of the biggest tracks off Rebel.
But it’s not the song that really took off.
In September, “Phantom”—which is driven by the stop-and-slow drums provided by producer Wraith9— started becoming the soundtrack for countless DIY trailers and memespicking up millions of views in the process. The song is getting huge. As of publication, “Phantom” has over 70 million streams on Spotify, and Rebel has been one of the highest-streamed rap albums on Spotify, the last week, gaining 6.2 million streams daily.
The balaclava and medieval armor EsDeeKid wears in the “Century” video reflect the aggressive tone of his music.
Many of his tracks are driven by eerie synth lines, distorted bass, and his producer’s “ok” tags tucked into the mix. As a rapper, EsDee’s strength is his tenacity—he leans into a rapid-fire delivery, overwhelming listeners with tightly packed bars while slurring and rolling the ends of his words. If you want examples, check out tracks like “Panic” and “Mist.”
One of the most attention-grabbing aspects of EsDeeKid is his MF DOOM-like mystique; publicly, he always dons a shiesty—or “bally,” as he calls it in his raps. This has left rumors about his true identity to run wild. Easily, the craziest conspiracy theory centered around EsDeeKid is that his true identity is Oscar nominated actor Timothée Chalamet.
The rumor was fueled by a series of pseudo-clues dropped by both the rapper and the actor. It dates back to August 7, when a post titled “Is timothee chalamet really esdeekid?” appeared on the rapper’s subreddit. Since then, the rumor has continued to snowball as X users circulated side-by-side comparisons.
Then on November 11th, a TikTok user by the name of @gothauntie0 floated the theory in a four-minute mini-video essay. The most compelling piece of evidence presented was a focus on the eyes which actually look quite similar.
@UndergroundSound and its sister page, @UndergroundSound.uk, also fanned the flames by making multiple comparisons of the faces of Timothée and EsDee.
Jake and Ben—who run the pages—spoke to Complex specifically about the creation of a meme that splits EsDeeKid and Chalamet’s faces. That image has since become the go-to reference for comparing the actor and rapper.”
Jake defined that “Ben made a split screen of the two of them…and then people ran with our split screen.” “I, maybe, expected 2k likes,” Ben provides. “It has now gone viral. It has gone everywhere, and @HiddenNY posted it all over and I was like, ‘That is crazy.’”
There can be the headscarf. Over the summer time, EsDeeKid was seen sporting the identical Alexander McQueen cranium scarf that Chalamet has been noticed sporting a number of occasions over the previous yr, together with at SNL 50. While it’s totally believable that each a rapper and an actor may very well be sporting the identical streetwear merchandise, this commentary additionally fueled rumors that they is perhaps the identical individual.
Chalamet—who’s preparing to launch a brand new film, Marty Supremesubsequent month—has principally been mum. He was lately in New York City selling the Marty Supreme jacket the place he was getting peppered with questions asking if he was EsDeeKid.
We do know he’s fairly tapped in. Back in August, Chalamet popped up at a fakemink present in London. He’s lengthy been a hip-hop head, displaying love for artists like Lil Uzi Vert, Cardi Band, after all, his co-star Tyler, the Creator. He’s even been interviewed by Nardwuar and, at one level, was knighted by the Base God, Lil B.
And on December nineteenth, EsDeeKid and Timothée Chalamet teased the discharge of a “4 RAWS” remix.
The rapper and actor shared a snippet of the collab on Instagram, adopted by a clip from a music video that includes the 2 facet by facet.
EsDeeKid has developed a good circle.
His fundamental collaborators are producer Wraith9, one other UK expertise who produced each monitor on Rebeland fellow rapper Rico Ace, who seems 4 occasions throughout the eleven-track undertaking. The two have simple chemistry: their voices complement one another’s timbres, with Rico’s slick, fluid supply contrasting the onerous, staccato punch of EsDee’s vocals. At occasions, they sound like they’re passing the mic forwards and backwards between verses and choruses.
EsDeeKid’s most well-known collaborator is fakemink, who has additionally had a meteoric rise this yr, with co-signs from Drake, Frank, and Playboi Carti. These two have been locked in for a minute, with collaborations courting again to late 2024 when EsDee did a remix of fakemink’s monitor “Tropical.”
Earlier this week, he was introduced as an opener for one in every of Yung Lean’s UK reveals. Another notable co-sign comes from Yeat, who has flicked up with the Liverpool rapper. Could a collaboration be on the horizon? Last month, an EsDeeKid affiliate posted a pirate flag—the emoji EsDeeKid has adopted—alongside a bell, which Yeat has popularized, on X. The put up got here after the 2 linked up on the JD Clout pageant in Poland over the summer time and Yeat has continued to present love to EsDee on social media.
Nettspend and OsamaSon additionally linked up with the Liverpool rapper after they performed reveals within the UK in July and September, respectively. While Jack Harlow was seen bumping “LV Sandals” again in March.
Well, this one is hard.
Right now there’s so little details about EsDee that we have no idea an excessive amount of about him. His id has not been confirmed, though Rolling Stone reported discovering an alleged CashApp account linked to him itemizing “Damario Jones.”
His age can be open to hypothesis, however given the ages of his friends, we are able to assume he’s fairly younger. In August, he posted on X that he “did all dis as a teenager.”
As for the rumors that he’s Chalamet, EsDee’s devoted followers aren’t shopping for it. On his subreddit, customers have largely rejected the conspiracy principle, jeering on the “newgens” who consider Timothée may very well be the Scouse rapper. Instead, these followers are extra targeted on one other principle, which is discovering out the reality behind EsDee’s earlier alias, Dualspines.
In 2023, EsDee was featured on a Dualspines monitor referred to as “Altered;” when listening to the tune now, the vocals sound like the identical individual all through. Since the discharge of that tune, Dualspines has gone ghost, main some followers to consider they have been truly the identical individual all alongside.
EsDeeKid has turn out to be too massive for the U.S to ignore. On November 11 he introduced an eight-city world tour the place he will probably be going by way of cities like New York, Chicago, Sydney, and Montreal in early 2026. Right now, tickets on the Bowery Ballroom in New York City—the place fakemink performed in September—are bought out and can run you anyplace from $700-$1000 on third social gathering websites. If that’s not indicative of him being definitely worth the hype, I don’t know what’s.