EsDeeKid

A balaclava, a broad accent and a December 2023 starting line

The earliest documented EsDeeKid recording is a guest verse on "Altered" by the producer DualSpines, dated 11 December 2023. A SoundCloud remix of Rae Sremmurd's "Black Beatles" followed in May 2024, and then a run of singles across that year — "Apathy", "Slurricane" with Fakemink, and "Palaces" and "Bally" with Rico Ace — carried him out of Liverpool's underground and into the trade press. Pitchfork picked "Bally" for its "The Ones" column and filed him as a 2024 breakout.

What he withholds has shaped the whole project. There is no published real name, no stated age and no face: he performs in a black balaclava that leaves only the eyes visible, usually under a hood. When i-D put him on the cover of its March 2026 issue, the magazine noted that he had never done an interview — including for that cover story. The music is lo-fi, atmospheric trap and cloud rap, and the single element nobody disputes is the delivery. The Guardian singled out the Scouse accent; i-D reported that fans asked to explain the appeal mostly answered with a version of "the accent", describing how ordinary Merseyside vowels come out sounding like a threat. The lyrics run on nightlife, women and designer clothing, which The Guardian characterised as entertainingly debauched. He has reportedly stayed in the same council house throughout.

Rebel and the longest fuse in British rap

Rebel, his debut mixtape, was released on 20 June 2025 through Lizzy Records, with Wraith9 handling the bulk of the production. It did nothing on the chart for three months. It entered the Official Albums Chart Top 100 at number 82 in September 2025, then climbed to a peak of number 8 and stayed on the chart for 34 weeks. It is certified gold in the UK.

The singles behaved the same way, arriving on the chart long after the fact. "Phantom", with Rico Ace, first charted on 25 September 2025 and peaked at number 12; "4 Raws" entered on 16 October 2025 and reached number 20; "Century" entered on 13 November 2025 and hit number 10 on 4 December, his first top-ten single, also reaching number 2 on both the UK indie and UK hip-hop/R&B charts. Across the Atlantic the lag was stranger still: Rebel reached number 23 on the Billboard 200 in November 2025, roughly five months after release, and by January 2026 had become the longest-charting UK rap album in that chart's history. It also charted in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. NME included it in its 50 best albums of 2025.

The Timothée Chalamet months

In November 2025 a TikTok theory took hold that EsDeeKid was the actor Timothée Chalamet, built on build, hair and overlapping clothing. Reporting dismantled it, largely on the basis of an October 2025 concert in Milan that EsDeeKid played while Chalamet was in New York. Chalamet declined to kill it off: asked about the rumour on Heart FM in December 2025, he said he had no comment and that all would be revealed in due time, then posted a video snippet of himself rapping over a remix of "4 Raws".

A second, more plausible strand of speculation holds that EsDeeKid previously recorded as DualSpines, on the strength of the voice on "Altered". In February 2026 the Liverpool rapper Mazza L20 posted a photograph he claimed showed EsDeeKid's face, after a dispute over a collaboration. None of it has materially changed the act's output or its presentation.

Where he stands in November 2026

The 2026 singles have been steadier than spectacular on the chart — "Omens" entered at number 75 on 19 February 2026, "Made It on Our Own" with Yeat and "RockWave" did not chart in the UK — but the platform metrics kept moving. "Phantom" passed 300 million streams by May 2026, and he reached roughly 20 million monthly Spotify listeners inside about a year of breaking through.

Institutional recognition followed. Complex placed him 14th on its 100 Hottest Rappers Right Now list in April 2026 and described him as the de facto leader of the surging UK underground. He was nominated for British Breakthrough Artist at the 2026 BRIT Awards, and the video for "Century" was nominated for Best Low Budget at the Berlin Music Video Awards. On 15 May 2026 Fortnite added a custom EsDeeKid skin and one of his songs. The most recent release is "BANDIT", issued on 23 October 2026 through Lizzy Records, a reunion with Wraith9 whose video was directed by Archie Erskine and shot in Liverpool.

Council House Rat: 48 dates across three continents

The tour was announced on 29 July 2026, with presales from 30 July and general sale from 31 July at 10am local time. It runs to 48 dates. The North American leg — 28 shows across the United States and Canada — opened on 12 September 2026 at The Fillmore in Charlotte, North Carolina, and included sold-out nights at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles and Brooklyn Paramount.

The European run began on 2 November 2026 in Helsinki and takes in Fållan in Stockholm on 5 November, Žalgirio Arena in Kaunas on 13 November, Forum Karlín in Prague on 15 November, Paral·lel 62 in Barcelona on 25 November — his first show in Spain — and AFAS Live in Amsterdam on 30 November. The UK and Ireland dates close the tour: OVO Arena Wembley on 3 December, Dublin's 3Arena on 6 December, Glasgow's OVO Hydro on 7 December, and two homecoming nights at Liverpool's Blackstone Street Warehouse on 10 and 11 December. Rico Ace, who features on three Rebel tracks, supports throughout.

Before the headline run he played All Points East's Outbreak day in east London in August 2026, on a bill with Deftones, IDLES, Amyl and the Sniffers, JPEGMAFIA and Interpol. He performed the set standing on top of an inflatable castle, masked and hooded, which one observer noted was not a staging choice they had seen at either All Points East or Outbreak before. Festivalgoers interviewed afterwards called it relentless; one summarised the Chalamet business by saying he was probably just some lad from Liverpool, and that this was exactly the point.

On stage

The Council House Rat set is long by rap-tour standards and built as a single accelerating block rather than a show with movements. Setlist data drawn from eight of the tour's logged North American shows averages 23 songs, opening with "Rottweiler" and moving straight into "4 Raws", "Century", "Panic", "Omens", "Tartan" and "RockWave" before the pace loosens for "Dirty", "Prague", "Apathy", "Cali Man" and "Ferragamo".

"Phantom" lands mid-set, after which Rico Ace takes a four-song block of his own material — "Malibu", "Treason", "Oh No" and "Dope Boyz" — before "Mist" and "Palaces", with "Phantom" and "Century" reprised at the end. Encores are inconsistent: of eight logged shows, four had one and four had none. The staging is dark and sparse, leaning on heavy lighting and steam effects, with the rapper himself kept as a silhouette; i-D described gale-force moshpits and a performer brandishing a sword while delivering outsized boasts. Dazed found that the menace of the all-black, masked presentation is what the audience has come for.