“No no no no no no no!”

Panic is the first thing I hear from FLOHIO when I log into our Google Meet interview. She’s in the UK, I’m in the States. I hear her before I see her, but when her video feed kicks in I see her make a mad dive for the camera to try to cover it up with her hands, only to realize it’s futile. Her hand can’t hide the virtual background she has on.

There’s a cat dressed in full astronaut gear floating across the screen.

“You caught me,” she says with an embarrassed sigh. While she was waiting for me to join, the British rapper had been fiddling with the Google Meet backdrops to pass the time. “Of course you would join when I had the space kitten on the screen.”

And just like that, FLOHIO has become my favorite person.

Born Funmi Ohiosumah, the genre-bending hip hop star has one of the most vibrant and infectious personalities around. We’re laughing within seconds about the cat, and soon she’s over the embarrassment. She’s instantly curious about my location, and suddenly I’m showing her the mountains outside my window. “Isn’t Utah also the one that looks like mars?” she asks. Without a pause, she continues: “I've never spoke to anybody from Utah. This is awesome. Straight up, the mountains look like a big wall. That's why I'm like, yo, what? Utah? That's so sick, man. I've only heard of Utah in the movies.”

Now, Flo is showing me around her space. “I'm right in the middle of London Bridge, where the shoot is. So, this is my scenery,” she says, camera in hand. She’s in the middle of her shoot with tmrw, and she points the camera out the window. “I can see the little train tracks and stuff. People down there. You see the red buses? I wish I could show you outside. We’re in an abandoned office. So, before they break the building down and smash it to bits, my friends were like, let's get some shoots.”

Her music is an extension of her: undeniably fun at its core. As hard as her music can go, FLOHIO is keen on slipping in subtle things (like Castlevania and Build a Bear references) into her songs here and there – almost like clues to who she really is underneath all the badassery.

Redefining the landscape of UK music, Flo is emerging as a fierce force with her genre-blurring sound that melds gritty grime with trippy house beats. The rapper, singer, and songwriter is making waves with her high-energy anthems that resonate with a generation hungry for authenticity and self-discovery. Flo is as authentic as they come.

Her latest release, “All The Thrills,” is a powerful showcase of her flow. One of her more straightforward rap tracks, the verses are ferocious and the hook is infectious. We talk in-depth about the song’s chorus. Though technically spoken and atonal, the chorus is powerfully and hypnotically melodic.

“I’m a rapper. I love rapping. But I’m a true musician,” she told me. “I've always wanted to melodize on my songs, but I came up rapping. But I always had melodies.”

The way she delivered the hook for “All The Thrills” was intentional from start to finish – a perfect example of FLOHIO’s ability to inject vocal melodies into her music even when she’s rapping.

Lately, there’s been a shift in her sound. Things are getting increasingly melodic, and FLOHIO is getting to show the world her powerful voice. She references “Juice,” the single that dropped just before “All The Thrills.”

“I'm intentional because now I would actually like to start putting my melodies out there,” she says. “You know songs, like ‘Juice.’ When we started producing it, I already knew what the vibe was gonna be because there's certain songs that I'm like yes. I need to have my melodies on this.”

Live music is incredibly important to FLOHIO. The British-Nigerian grew up in an African community where live gatherings were key. “The culture is so live. Everything is live music. You just have to get involved,” she says of her time in Nigeria. “This is the culture we grew up in. You know, it was literally just right outside our doorstep. We grew up seeing the whole DIYs of Nollywood – the do-it-yourself culture. Nollywood is a thing of its own.”

She laughs when she says, “And it's by the people, for the people, of course – until it becomes so big and then a corporation buys into it. You know, a neighbor would be like a big star around the neighborhood, right? But it's a neighbor. His ass is crazy. He's got guards or whatever. But there's a big star that lives in the neighborhood.”

You can hear that infectious, aspirational energy in her song “Highest” – off her 2022 record Out of Heart. It feels like she’s swinging for the fences, and she knows without a doubt she’s going to hit a home run. She’s a world champ. An all-time great. If her crazy-ass neighbor can do it, why not her?

The youngest of two, Flo grew up watching her big sister get excited about music and pop culture. “That's a big influence, you know? Because my sister's just the first to get everything into the house,” she laughs. “So things like that just caught my eyes. From Afrobeats to hip-hop to pop to soul to blues.” She lights up when remembering all of this, and you can tell how much it inspired her then and continues to inspire her now.

When she moved to the UK when she was eight, she realized it wasn’t going to be the same. Since becoming a professional musician, she’s wanted to give people that communal energy that she grew up with.

Movement is incredibly important to Flo. “I love the bounce. I love a good bounce, you know?” she laughs. She walks me through an analysis of electronic music, hip hop, Afrobeats, and more. In Flo’s philosophy, if the music isn’t getting you to move, there’s something wrong with it. What’s fascinating, though, is the way she describes the different ways different kinds of music can affect the body.

“In my music, I feel like the bounce is a bit more staccato,” she explains. “It's a bit more cold, you know? Whereas I feel like Afrobeats is a bit more limbo-y. Bendy type. I don't even know if that makes sense. It's very syncopated. It's like a swing. Bounce could be in trap beats. It could be in dance beats, electro. It could be in a soul beat. But I just need some sort of bounce in it, you know? That's how I approach music.”

FLOHIO believes that everyone has a default tempo – a pace their body naturally gravitates towards. For her, it’s 160 BPM. “I swear to you, I could be in the studio and that stuff is on 80 BPM, bro. But I'm on double timing. Always on double time. I just like the bounce.”

If you ever see Flo live, the energy is the same. “It could be a very calm song or whatever, but it's just a part of me that just has to have that energy. If the song doesn’t have it, what am I doing? Why am I here if I'm not really having fun?”

Warmth and movement. Vivacious energy. Wide-eyed exuberance for life. Deep interest in others. Aspiration and hope. These are all present in FLOHIO’s music. It doesn’t matter if you’re listening to her introspective “2 HOURS” or the explosive “Make It Bang” – they’re all there.

I’m confident that all that effortlessly positive authenticity – working in tandem with some serious bounce – is going to give FLOHIO staying power in the music industry.