“This was the first thing I’d written where I was really angry and I was able to verbalise that”

suppose it is theoretically possible to dislike Loyle Carner, but you’d have to try really, really hard. The 22-year-old south Londoner is a blazing, bouncing ball of positivity – a disarmingly honest chronicler of his own troubles and anxieties, and an unashamed advocate for loving and cherishing your family and friends. The boy born Ben CoyleLarner would be the rapper you could take to meet your granny, if only he could stop dropping those f-bombs. “I’ve always sworn a lot,” he admits. “It’s definitely not aggressive. I don’t know if it’s nerves. Maybe it’s part of my ADHD, but I find it quite comforting.”

And then there’s the music. Earlier this year he dropped an album – the Mercury-nominated Yesterday’s Gone – and if you hear a better set of hip-hop tunes this year, you’ll be doing very well. His age and background might have prepared the world for the self-aggrandising bars, nervy Cristal cork pops and tics of a grime artist, but this was something completely different. A languid set of soulful samples and crackling drum loops became a confessional for Carner’s stories about family, the death of his beloved stepfather, and even his own struggles with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. When I tell him that it reminds me of the “backpacker rap” of the late, great US producer J Dilla, there’s a visible intake of breath. “Thanks man, that’s a big compliment!” It turns out Slum Village, Dilla’s first band, is a touchstone for him.

“Growing up, a lot of my friends were older. I met my long-time collaborator, Rebel Kleff, when I was 19. We’d grown up on the same thing, but he was on the cusp of the older stuff. I was writing hip-hop to J Dilla beats at home, so it was a perfect match.

“It was the space I wanted so that people could hear what I was saying. I didn’t want anything to take away from the words.”

Those words are at their starkest and most glorious on his single Isle of Arran, in which he talks about being left bereft of any faith in religion by losing his stepfather (“I’ve been holding out for G when he was nowhere to be seen when I was bleeding”), until a glorious church choir comes in on the chorus. He likes the description of it as “a gospel song for unbelievers”.

“That was the place I was at when I wrote it, and I probably still am,” he says. “My stepfather had died, I’d split up with my girlfriend and I was thinking, ‘ What’s the point?’ I couldn’t believe in a higher power, but I needed something and there was that feeling of support from the choir. It was the first thing I’d written where I was really angry and I was able to verbalise that.”

It’s this willingness to expose his own fragility that makes Carner not just an intriguing artist but also a role model to young men who can end up choosing self-harm over self-reflection at times of emotional crisis. He sounds raw, troubled, but always alive to his feelings. His audience is a therapist.

“Loyle is unique in UK hip-hop,” says music journalist Neil Kulkarni, author of The Periodic Table of Hip Hop. “There’s a vulnerability to his work that I was first alerted to on the Little Late EP – it was immediately clear that this was a guy uninterested in conforming to stereotypical notions of identity in hip-hop.

“Lots of rappers rap about heartfelt subjects, but what was startling about Loyle’s flow was that he seemed to be barely coping with his feelings and was right on the edge of total despair. He actually let the emotions sometimes bubble over into his delivery, so you’d get lines that were broken, almost silent, cracked with grief and longing.

“Crucially, although his music is instantaneously affecting and would appeal to anyone who had a heart, he himself kept his presence kind of