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Eight music artists to watch in 2022
Photograph: Brent McKeever PinkPantheress PinkPantheress (who just took home the prestigious BBC Sound of 2022 award) was still living in her first-year halls at UAL when her songs started blowing up on TikTok. Surrounded by a general sense of mystery (she’s only recently shown her face in photos and has yet to reveal her real name), she has become a Gen Z icon with her short songs, relatable lyrics, and samples of ’90s and Y2K hits by artists from Sweet Female Attitude to Linkin Park. During her rapid ascent she’s already earned co-signs from Charli XCX, Grimes and Lizzo, and performed a run of sold-out shows. Her debut mixtape ‘To Hell with It’ hit the Top 20 despite clocking in at just 18 minutes long. Listen to ‘Just for Me’ Central Cee With a melodic take on drill and an ear for genre-blending beats that emphasise his west London upbringing (from the Carnival-ready sounds of reggae and dancehall, to jazz and soul), Central Cee has become one of the UK’s biggest new rappers. Capitalising on last year’s run of breakout singles, Cench (as he’s also known) earned a string of Mobo nominations in 2021, while his ‘Wild West’ mixtape showed he could easily hold his own without guest features. And following his PinkPantheress-sampling ‘Obsessed with You’ and a recent collaboration with pop star FKA Twigs, he’ll likely be making noise outside the drill scene in 2022. Listen to ‘Day in the Life’ Photograph: Hark Karan Yung Singh Clubs might have been closed for half the year, bu