Maverick Sabre

Mixing hip-hop attitude with pop production and a background in folky, acoustic storytelling, Maverick Sabre was dubbed the Irish Plan B when he first appeared on the scene in 2011. Born in London, but raised in County Wexford, Ireland, Matthew Stafford started out MCing as 15-year-old and took his stage name by flicking through a thesaurus and finding words that seemed appropriate and matched his initials. He cut his teeth working with Irish rappers Terawirzt and Nu-Centz but, restricted by the smallness of the country's urban music scene, he moved back to England in 2008 and released the mixtape The Travelling Man (2010). It led to collaborations with Wretch 32, Chase and Status and Professor Green, and his style of rapping over acoustic guitars and reggae melodies stood out as something unique. His 2011 singles "Let Me Go" and "I Need" both made the UK Top 20, while debut album Lonely Are the Brave (2012) made it to Number 2 and showed a political edge with a cover of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" and the track "Sometimes" confronting the historic Anglo-Irish troubles. He has released studio albums at a consistent rate since then, cracking the UK chart with Innerstanding (2015) and When I Wake Up (2019). His fifth studio album, Burn the Right Things Down, emerged in 2024.