Bugzy Malone: Manchester’s Father of Grime Bounces Back to the Top 

From Fire in the Booth to working on set with Guy Ritchie, Bugzy Malone’s path to success. 

Following a stint at HMP Stoke Heath as a teenager, Aaron Davis, better known as Bugzy Malone, wanted to get away from a life of crime. So, he turned to music. 

Bugzy’s debut mixtape was released in 2010, titled ‘Swaggaman’. Around this time the rapper was also regularly freestyling for Northern Grime YouTube channel KODH TV on their ‘Spray Out‘ series. He also appeared regularly on Grime Daily. Since then, Bugzy has become a household name. With his trademark Mancunian accent, he is often credited as being the first Grime artist from the city to achieve national commercial success. 

Hollywood Inspiration 

Within his lyricism, you can often hear Bugzy’s passion for film. His third mixtape, ‘Lost in Meanwhile City’ takes its name from the 2008 British Sci-Fi film Franklyn. Talking about the Mixtape the Mancunian said “I could relate to the dark atmosphere at the time and some of the characters faced similar problems I felt I was faced with i.e family problems, girl problems, lawsuits, depression. I felt ‘Lost In Meanwhile City’ was the perfect metaphor for my position in life at that particular time, I felt lost and basically in a world of my own.”. 

His fourth mixtape gave a deeper insight passion for cinema. Similar to a visual album ‘Journal of an Evil Genius’ had narrative music videos released with each single. Spanning over six weeks, the videos were uploaded onto YouTube every Monday evening. Bugzy credits Quentin Tarantino as being one of his greatest influences for the mixtape. 

2015 is a special year in the history of UK Grime music. Aside from the great revival that was happening, Bugzy was featured on Charlie Sloth’s ‘Fire in the Booth’. It is now a legendary episode. It has the most views of any episode coming in at over 28,000,000. Since then he has gone on to release two albums and many singles. These have continuously successfully charted in the UK Top 100. 

A Difficult Two Years 

The past two years haven’t been the easiest for Bugzy. In March 2020 he was involved in a serious quad biking accident where he suffered a brain bleed. In September of the same year, he and his family were the victims of a violent intrusion at their home. Acting in self-defence, the ex-boxer ended up breaking the jaws of two of the intruders and was charged with grievous bodily harm. These charges have now been dropped which he revealed to fans in a video on Twitter. 

The future is looking very bright for Bugzy. After the news of his charges being dropped the musician went on to carry out a UK headline tour. This tour included a sell-out show at Manchester’s AO arena. The show featured numerous guests like Aitch, JP Cooper and even an appearance from Chip with whom he had years-long beef. Following his tour a documentary was released which showed the lead up to his Manchester show, which gave an insight into his milestone moment. Coming up, the rapper will star in Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, Guy Ritchie’s latest American spy film, his second acting role in the past 3 years.