Two weeks before our meeting, UK rapper Cristale was racing against an incoming tide while navigating a steep cliffside in Dover to film the video for her single, I’m Okay With Being Lonely. The 25-year-old admitted she had no hiking experience, noting that she was wearing head-to-toe Stone Island, full makeup, and her hair edges laid, while her mother managed her appearance on a rusty ladder. T wo weeks before we meet, UK rapper Cristale was scrambling down a cliff face to a secluded black pebbled beach in Dover, racing an incoming tide with fewer than 90 minutes to shoot the video for her single I’m Okay Wit. And while she cringes at the thought of anyone looking it up on YouTube, it gave her debut EP its title, and she sampled it on recent single H2O, she was victorious against older students. According to as we sit in her publicist’s central London office, her hair half-braided and half-flowing past a black puffer coat, she, The rush of adrenaline hasn’t fully faded.
This drive is characteristic of the artist, who currently commands nearly half a million monthly listeners on Spotify. She has just released her debut mixtape, Clear Intentions. Although it marks her third attempt at a full-length project, she considers it the first to be truly completed. Regarding her process, she emphasized her perfectionism, stating, “There’s no fillers, no bridges in between songs; I’m very nitpicky with my art.”
Raised in Brixton by a Guyanese father and a mother of Jamaican and Montserratian descent who also serves as her manager, Cristale’s introduction to songwriting occurred in nursery school via her uncle. By year 7, she had won a school poetry slam with a piece titled What It’s Like to Be Young, which she later sampled on her track H2O. Her youth was marked by a intense competitive spirit; she played for Crystal Palace’s academy but eventually stepped away to avoid the financial instability of women’s football. Despite teacher pressure to pursue an Oxbridge education, she chose to study drawing, finding that music offered a more expansive creative outlet. Come year 7, her English teacher organised a school poetry slam, and sitting in a friend’s flat looking across at her own house, Cristale wrote What It’s Like to Be Young, a misunderstood kid’s response to the adults aro. But she feared “maybe too linear” a path, and chose to follow what she loved at the time: drawing, teachers urged her towards Oxbridge. Like I’ve got 8,000 different paint brushes going in, i’ve got a big blank canvas in front of me. But with exams looming she stepped away: “I couldn’t take the risk because you can go into women’s football and not make any money, the plan was to go pro. Music was where her imagination ran freest. “It never feels like a job, even if she hadn’t realised it at the time. It’s the most euphoric feeling ever.”. Acting taught her more about herself – “having to put myself in someone else’s shoes made me feel even more comfortable in my own skin” – but her days ran to a strict schedule, “from like five o’clock in the morning. She kept up the pace, partly to honour her parents, but also to prove the doubters wrong. “Young, Black and female in Brixton is hard … you look a certain type of way, you’re categorised into a certain type of group of kids, as she began to gain momentum. But it also limits my creativity, routine really helps.
While balancing an art degree with a 40-hour work week at a boutique, she began posting freestyle raps on Instagram. Her father supported her recording process, leading to a record deal by age 21. Reflecting on her path, she acknowledged the difficulties of being young, Black, and female in Brixton, where she often felt categorized by skeptics. She focused on blocking out external noise to maintain her career trajectory, a mindset she credits to her mother’s support. With plans to become an architectural designer, she juggled university with 40-hour work weeks at a Chelsea boutique, and idly posted freestyle raps to Instagram. “It was just a hobby at first, and a reason for me to spend time with my dad, alongside her art and illustration degree. By 21, she’d signed a record deal, he pushed and helped her to record them properly and. She says; some teachers didn’t want her on their courses, assuming she’d fail. “The least I could do was block out all of the external noise, and care about myself how my mum has alway, there have been “multiple moments”.
Her professional momentum grew with the viral success of her track Bong Bing and a Mobo award nomination for best newcomer. Her versatility has extended into acting, with roles in Netflix’s The Kitchen and the series Top Boy, for which she also composed the song Roadents. While acting provided personal growth, the grueling schedule—often starting at 5 a.m.—highlighted the need for balance in her creative life.
Clear Intentions represents a shift in her sound, moving beyond the drill focus of her 2022 EP to incorporate grime, hip-hop, melodic guitars, and R&B elements. She describes the project as a personal audit, mapping the various relationships in her life and her efforts to sustain them. Despite her musical growth, she remains skeptical of genre labels, noting that such categories often fail to accurately describe Black artists. She chose not to include any features on the tape, asserting her desire to tell her story independently. On the day of her release, she plans to remain focused on work alongside her core team. Introspective R&B and beyond – she has ably hopped between football, art, acting in Netflix projects and more, in fact she seems to thrive on regular bumps of it: beyond her relentlessly articulate and energetic rap flow – put to work on tracks that span drill. Her 2022 debut EP was almost exclusively drill. “I had so much more poetic music available at the time; I didn’t understand what music projects should be,” she says. “This time round, I thought I’d give them a little bit.
