Culture 5 min read By Morgan Griffin
London MC Kibo builds his own mythology with new album «Kwengletaria: Ragamyff»
London rapper Kibo explains his self-devised philosophy Kwengletarianism, his new album «Kwengletaria: Ragamyff», and how wrestling and anime shape his approach to music.
London MC Kibo has a mission: to help people find what he calls «a sense of magic» in the mundanity of everyday life. The rapper, who grew up in Harrow at the end of the Bakerloo line, has built a personal mythology around that idea, a philosophy he calls Kwengletarianism. It is not a religion or a cult, he insists, but a way of making sense of the world by figuring out which things spark inspiration and fantasy.
The concept grew out of his friends calling him Kwengletaire. Over time, he built a mythology around that feeling and gave it a name. At its core, the philosophy is about taking the life you already have and making it feel extraordinary. Kibo points to his fondness for the films of Mamoru Hosoda, including «The Girl Who Leapt Through Time» and «Summer Wars», as a key influence. He filters those fantastical influences through an unglamorous reality to create his own sense of utopia, something he believes anyone can adopt. «Everyone can have their own Kwengletaria,» he says.
The ideology began taking shape with his 2022 mixtape «FBFR4: Fuego Baby Furtardo Returns (Sorry 4 Da Longness)», a turbo-charged rap project that later disappeared from streaming services after a copyright dispute involving fellow rapper YT. From then on, Kibo kept making music without necessarily releasing it, booking raves to pay his bills. Eventually he built a catalogue of tracks that he felt best represented his origin story and the story of Kwengletarianism.
His latest album, «Kwengletaria: Ragamyff», is now out and he describes it as grime-adjacent rather than a straight example of the genre. «Some people think it's a grime project, some people think it's a rap project. It can be whatever anyone wants it to be,» he says. The record was created with the friends who had been in the room with him from the start, including producer HNRO, who holds the most credits on the album, alongside long-time collaborator Swurla and a group of friends he calls the HA-liens after his hometown. Novelist is the record's only feature, a very deliberate choice. «He's my favourite grime musician,» Kibo says. «For me, making this project, to have who I consider the greatest grime musician on it as the sole feature is a really cool thing.»
Two songs stand above the rest for him: «Iridescence» and «Red Starz». He frames them as sequential moments in the album's arc. «'Iridescence' is like the lightning bolt moment at the end of the film, and then 'Red Starz' is where it all makes sense,» he explains. The latter came almost fully formed on a late walk home. «I was looking over the bridge and saw the red stars, and I was just like, 'This is what Kwengletaria is all about,' building your own constellation from these fake stars, because we can't see normal stars in this smoggy city.» He poured out the verses in his Notes app in what he describes as a transcendental flow state.
That sense of world-building extends beyond the music. In his visuals, Kibo appears with a wrestling belt slung over one shoulder, a prop initially created for a planned tour that has since become part of the mythology. The belt marks what he calls «the first title reign of Kibo». Wrestling, he says, means a lot to him and informs much of what he does as a musician. He tells aspiring rappers to study it because «if you can get over as a wrestler, you can get over as a rapper. It's the same skill set.» For Kibo, technical ability only gets you so far; you need to create characters, build plotlines and participate in real crowd interaction.
Kibo sees «Kwengletaria: Ragamyff» as the chance to lay out his mythology in full. He spent years making it, approaching the project less like a collection of songs and more like cinema. «I felt like I was directing a film more than writing a project at some points,» he says. He wanted to establish the mythology first and get listeners to understand where it all comes from, which is why he calls the album «the rock upon which everything else is built.» By laying out his mission statement as an artist, Kibo hopes the record will provide deeper context for everything that follows. He is set to reach a new fanbase at Reading + Leeds Festival, where he is scheduled to headline a stage.
