“Music Connects Us All… Even When We’re Confused”: AL99 Reflects on Faith, Culture, and Growth in Elevate’s “WHY II”

Don’t let the sweaty, pearl-blue-lit hedonism of his album cover fool you: when Lancey Foux (born Lance Omal) joins NME’s Zoom call, the 30-year-old is coming from a morning spent in regimented rigour. Already, he’s completed a full-body boxer-style workout and spent the rest of his morning sharpening his skills behind the decks, with a Cupra car event later on. It’s a typically restless schedule for an artist, DJ and budding label head whose career has rarely settled into one lane. “I get super busy, so I try to go to the gym five or six days a week,” he says. “I just try to get it in where I can.”

Foux wasn’t always a 6am riser. His cutting, almost samurai-like focus has been tempered through years of learning and relentless work. Before all that, however, the rap crooner’s cult mixtape run began with the double shot of 2015’s ‘Pink’ and ‘Teen Skum’, alongside breakout track ‘About It’, before gathering momentum with ‘Too Far Alive’, ‘Pink II’ and 2019 cult favourite ‘Friend Or Foux’.

“When I kicked off doing the things I was doing, there wasn’t anyone else doing it how I was,” he asserts, in reference to his style of rap in the mid-2010s rap pantheon. “I might be new to fans who only discovered me last year, or I might be looked at differently by people who’ve been tapped in for 10 or 15 years now. I never rest on my success because there’s always more to do. I’m always going to be making music.”

His trailblazing intuition continued into 2026 with the release of his new 21-track album, ‘The Time Of Our Lives’, which is filled with rousing sports car bangers (‘Porsche Poet’) and ATM-emptying anthems (‘Seeing To It’). Foux describes the record as a “refined version of everything I’ve made” up until this point, distilling years of experimentation into one project.

‘The Time Of Our Lives’ arrives just six months after ‘First Degree: 2nd Charge’, a sequel to his 2021 mixtape that sidestepped streaming services entirely. Released exclusively through the direct-to-fan platform [untitled], proceeds from it were donated to charities supporting independent musicians. Foux’s mixtape and new album feature a medley of newly created material and songs from 2023 (for the former) and 2024.

“This year, a lot of the tracks I’ve put out have been in the vault for a minute,” Foux explains. “Songs like ‘Change Your Mind’ and ‘Naked On A Yacht’ were among the first solid songs on the album, and those were created in the summer of 2024.”

When you make as much music as Foux does, it’s easy to rack up stacks of songs. “You could go on a flight to Japan and listen to unreleased music, and when you land there’ll still be another couple of hours of music. Both projects were about me going through what I had and thinking, ‘What makes sense for how I feel right now?’” he explains. “If it doesn’t resonate with me and the truth, I’ll leave it out and put something that does.”

The sole guest on ‘The Time Of Our Lives’ is also someone who resonates with Foux. Rising South London rapper Finessekid appears on the slick and silvery ‘To The Money’, on which skippy production practically places the listener under legal obligation to head-nod as the pair launch into a molten back-and-forth. For Foux, the collaboration was dead simple: he was a fan. “When I see someone new coming, especially when they’re Black and from London, I see myself in them in that sort of way, not always musically at first. I feel like I have a responsibility to support them and be of service.”

“When I see someone new coming, especially when they’re Black and from London, I see myself in them”

Foux understands the weight of an early co-sign, having collected a few formidable ones himself. Skepta became a frequent collaborator, Kanye West invited him into the infamous ‘Donda’ sessions in 2021, and Kaytranada helmed two tracks on Foux’s 2022 LP ‘Life In Hell’. Yet he has remained just as attentive to what is stirring beneath him. “I’ve known about certain artists before they think I’ve known about them,” he says with a furrowed, focused brow. “That’s why, with a lot of them, I end up being so early on people – even producers.”

In 2024, Foux’s underground antenna started pinging particularly loudly. ‘Black & Tan’, his propulsive, viral link-up with YT, arrived first, followed by ‘Conglomerate’ – a three-headed alliance with Fimiguerrero and Len that became an instant piece of UK underground folklore. Since then, he has linked with SINN6R on ‘Female Top’, while ‘Finally’, a forthcoming collaboration with the Afrobeat-and-drill-blitzing rapper N4T, is slated to appear on the latter’s mixtape ‘A Good And Long Time’, due out in October. “I just love music, I love our culture, and I’m involved in that sense,” Foux utters with a smile as the rapper breaks his Teflon demeanour for a moment of sincerity.

“I couldn’t force making something that wasn’t real”

Perhaps surprisingly, ‘The Time Of Our Lives’ began with Foux stepping away from making music. After years spent inside a near-constant cycle of recording and releasing, he became what he calls a “student of the club” – studying the anticipation before a night out, the abandon of the dancefloor and the bleary journey home. “I started not being in the studio as much as I had been for most of my career,” he explains. “I was going outside and experiencing stuff.”

That research stains the album’s opening stretch. ‘Reap What You Sow’ is a cloudy, psychedelic mush of emotions, reeking of spilt bottles, body glitter and jittery club lights. ‘Who Do You Love?’, meanwhile, folds a Southern hip-hop and R&B twang into punchy, marching-band drums, before dissolving into a synth-soaked outro seemingly pulled from Frank Ocean’s ‘Channel Orange’ playbook.

Initially, Foux says, the record was intended as “just a pure fun party album”. But every night out eventually turns. As the album’s gestation stretched on, songs such as the cloudy ‘Therapist’, the ’80s-like ‘When It Rains It Pours’ and the piano-speckled ‘Trying My Best’ pulled its final act somewhere darker and more contemplative. “They’re very real songs for the times when I recorded them,” Foux says. “I might not feel like how I felt on those tracks now, but they were real feelings. I couldn’t force making something that wasn’t real.”

As our conversation winds down, Foux poses a potential retirement clause for his current rap persona. Completed before he turned 30, ‘The Time Of Our Lives’ sounds to him like “a refined version of everything” he’s made across the past decade. “It’s almost like the end for certain shit – a farewell to what people know me as,” he explains. “I’m signing out of everything I’ve built a little bit.” Far from abandoning music outright, he hopes to explore creative pursuits beyond rap. “If I wanna go behind the DJ decks and then jump off the DJ decks and rap, and then leave the DJ decks and go sit in the office, it’s all the same person.”

Foux has already been crowned the “godfather of the UK underground”, and, to him, that title feels equally fitting and gratuitous, and slightly restrictive. After all, he’s still closer to sixth form than a pension payout. “I put my hands together and say, ‘Thank you’,” he says, commenting on the weighty moniker. “But there’s so much more to do.”

That next phase is already taking shape through Cultcaine Records, his newly launched label, which has signed reggae band The League of Rebelz and rapper Ayrtn. Built around 50/50 partnerships, which throw out the traditional label framework, Foux’s label aims to create a system in which artists can remain “100 per cent free” and avoid compromising their vision.

With over a decade in the music world, longevity might as well be Foux’s middle name. “I think it’s just my approach. I’ve always approached everything from the world,” he says, reflecting on what has allowed him to stick around for so long. “I wanted to go to New York, then China, Jamaica and Canada. I didn’t want people to be able to tell what it was or where it was from. I just wanted them to like it.”

Lancey Foux’s ‘The Time Of Our Lives’ is out now via RCA Records.