Krept & Konan Vinyl Records
The organic, wordy, and literate hip-hop created by Casyo "Krept" Johnson and Karl "Konan" Wilson -- aka South London duo Krept & Konan -- had slipped into the mainstream in a relatively natural and gradual way by 2013. Formed in 2009, the pair eschewed the traditional quest for major-label interest, concentrating instead on spreading the word via social media, and eventually via their own label and clothing line, Play Dirty. It was a 2010 mixtape titled Tsunami that initially turned the heads of a significant number of people, before their cover of Jay-Z and Kanye West's "Otis" racked up millions of YouTube views in less than a week in early 2011.