Virtually famous: Flohio

The BBC Sound poll is with us again, the annual list with which music’s movers and shakers attempt to predict the stars of the coming year.

Rap won’t be going anywhere in 2019, apparently, with three rappers on the 10-strong international list, all from the UK. Nigeria-born, Bermondsey-based Funmi Ohiosumah, aka Flohio, is the only woman of the trio, and is making some of the most daring music – fast and furious rhymes backed by harsh, jittery electronic beats.

It seems unlikely that she’ll follow past BBC Sound of… winners Ellie Goulding, Adele and Sam Smith to the top of the charts on the basis of the songs she’s released so far, but Pounce, a new collaboration with top US producer Clams Casino, is edgily brilliant, and almost half a million YouTube views for her performance on the Colors channel suggests a sizeable audience is out there.

The presence of friends in high places – Naomi Campbell named her one of “10 Rising Female Stars Reimagining Our Future” in Vogue – is another indicator that her 2019 is going to be a good one.