B of Briz - Behind The Mask
There is a new face on the scene in British Rap… kind of. B of Briz, as the name suggests, is a Bristol based act who last year won the city’s coveted ‘Future Sound of Bristol’ award, beating out 110 other emerging artists to scoop the £5,000 first prize. A year later and the masked musician has released a flurry of material to great acclaim, including standout single, Man at the Party. Championed by industry talking heads and tastemakers alike, B is now setting her sights on a debut album, slated for release later this year. Before dropping her most recent singles Master Debater and You Do You we had the opportunity to sit down with her and take a rare peek behind the mask.
As the call connected on a gloomy midweek afternoon, the face that greeted me on screen was one that confounded my expectations, proving strikingly at odds with the acerbic zeal I recognised from B’s music. Kind eyes exuded an immediately comforting warmth. In the days preceding our conversation I’d been mainlining Man At The Party, entranced by its intellectual, almost academic rigour. “Bellum omnium contra omnes” she starts before deconstructing Hobbes and his social contract theory over lo-fi beats and DIY production. Pairing the primitive and the profound, the track is both upfront and in your face, but more than that, I also found it to be personally confronting, recognising the heavy-footed, pseudo-intellectual posturing of its central protagonist from my younger years, a realisation that filled me with a mild sense of trepidation at the prospect of the chat that lay ahead.
Yet, this sense of anxiety was to be short lived, as B guided me gently through her story, starting naturally, from the very beginning. Growing up in the south-west, she was raised in a progressive household where culture was placed at the forefront of family life. As she explained to me, “I grew up in a musical family…instead of the ‘TV room’ we had a music room and it had a piano in there and a box full of tambourines and that kind of stuff”.
Despite her early introduction and access to the arts, B would eventually find community in the rich, local club culture, “I grew up spitting distance from Bristol. When we were teenagers we would get the bus over and go out. That was the late 90s when Trip Hop was big, the Bristol scene was big and going out was fun”. Before then, B regularly attended folk festivals with her family; however, it was observing the rhythms of an evolving city that would become central to her evolution. Reflecting on this time, she insists, “It never occurred to me that I could ever make music”.
It wasn’t until starting her “wonderful pandemic project”, developing a podcast alongside a close friend, that the years of influence from her exposure to the Bristol scene would be exposed, as she began experimenting with the music making software that would come to form the foundations of her sound.
B of Briz. Credit: Inshot Media
To understand her art, you first have to appreciate B’s extensive academic background. Originally moving to Bristol to study Philosophy, she searched long and hard for ways to engage people in the big ideas that illuminated her understanding of the world, “While I was doing my PHD I was learning more about academic writing but I was also writing about philosophy in popular culture”, an early attempt to make these ideas more accessible to the masses.
For B, a general ignorance of big philosophical ideas has contributed to the societal unease that we have experienced in recent years here in the UK, “I do think our philosophical education is lacking, even when you compare it to Europe. Philosophy is something that is studied a lot more at school age there and I think that shows in their politics. By that, I mean the kind of deeper acceptance of workers rights for example”. Originally experimenting with formats such as blogs and screenplays to illustrate and disseminate her ideas, she eventually found music to be the most effective means of doing so and released her debut EP Fourty-two back in 2022. Little did audiences know, she was only just getting started.
Having “never written any poetry or really read any”, hard-hitting lyrics appear to have come easy to B as she made the transition from writer to musician, although, this is a title that appears to still sit heavy on her shoulders, “you could call me a musician and I'd be very uncomfortable with that” she confides.
One of B’s strengths as an artist appears to lie in her ability to turn her extensive philosophical understanding into electric vignettes that eloquently outline some of the most pressing issues of our time. Perhaps most notably, the continued plague of misogyny and violence against women proliferating within our society. With a smirk she confesses, “I've got a lot to say about men and the way they operate in the world”.
On her recent releases, she has made an unapologetic attempt to deconstruct the bedrock of modern misogyny and the full spectrum of aggressions that have kept us locked in a systemic cycle of abuse. Confrontational and combative, her music necessitates the protection of anonymity as she kicks back against the rhetoric of former fringe voices such as Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate at a time when their toxic bile has begun to break into mainstream culture and infect a whole new generation of boys. “The rape threats maybe don’t hit so hard when you’re a guy although, hostility like that effects everybody online”, she considers as I acknowledge the privilege afforded to these men who continue to shape the conversation, especially in online spaces.
B of Briz. Credit: Inshot Media
Master Debater, one of B's most recent singles picks up where Man At The Party left off, sustaining a laser focus on the public discourse surrounding gender. Set over a minimal, tribal drum beat, she spits effortlessly, “You're not really interested in a truly level playing field, You really don't like the idea of your privilege being repealed, You think the scars of the past are healed, You're using equality on paper as a shield, But I think you're scared of what would happen if what's hidden was revealed”, drawing to mind a whole host of faces while perfectly encompassing the apparent impasse we find ourselves at.
The central question B is posing is, “What do we owe each other when we are engaged in public discourse? What are our aims?” With her upcoming album An Encyclopedia of Patriarchy (incomplete) she will inevitably come to illustrate where she believes we sit in relation to these questions although, one thing that is immediately apparent is that the tone of the discussion needs to change. As B outlined to me, “If we are aiming to move forwards together, towards truth, we need to seriously think about how we are conducting ourselves in these conversations”.
So, what can be done? What are the roots of these systemic issues that continue to plague our society? B is able to offer some explanation, “I think the misogyny question lies within a set of other considerations around how do you deradicalise people and what responsibilities do the companies who are profiting from this radicalisation hold in all of this. We can't rely on corporate interests to police themselves in this way”.
As our conversation wrapped up, it became clear that B of Briz is more than just a musician, despite her protestations. She’s a thinker, commentator, provocateur, and perhaps most importantly, a voice for those grappling with the complexities of modern society. Her music will inevitably challenge her growing audience to reflect, to question the status quo, and engage in those difficult conversations that many shy away from. With her debut album, An Encyclopedia of Patriarchy (Incomplete) on the horizon, B is poised to further disrupt the cultural landscape, offering a mirror to our apparent societal ills and a roadmap for navigating the future discourse that will one day lead to breakthrough.
In a time when voices like hers are more crucial than ever, B of Briz stands as a reminder that music can be a powerful tool for change. Whether dissecting the roots of misogyny, critiquing the rhetoric of online debate, or simply sharing her unique perspective on the world, B invites us all to think deeper and engage more meaningfully. As she prepares to take the next step in her career, one thing is certain: B of Briz is an artist who won’t be ignored, and her message is one we can’t afford to miss.
