This originally appeared in Pigeons & Planes' "25 Artists To Watch in 2025."

If the wind could rap as it swept over mountains, as the calm Trelawny breeze gathered strength and greyed the Jamaican sky, I’m convinced it’d sound like that self-made fashion girl from Hackney who’d still crash your house party. John Glacier has obeyed no clock but her own since her ageless 2021 project SHILOH. It’s in her Maroon bloodline to personify defiance.

So she returns on a comet’s cycle, unrushed even over the most jackrabbit bpm, with a voice like a wand. Vegyn, SURF GANG, Kwes Darko, Andrew Aged, Zack Sekoff, and Tony Seltzer stand in her production corner. Her official debut album’s out next month, finally, eight-plus years after making iOS GarageBand sketches and Britney Spears covers with a PC headset. 

“I’m proud of what I’ve become and I’m proud of my parents for raising me,” Glacier tells us. “My album Like a Ribbon is a full circle moment, a new cycle, about the ripples of life and how they cascade. A ribbon is an instrument that takes on any shape and form, depending on how it’s tied. Despite this, all knots can be undone.”

You get the sense that the only growth that truly matters to Glacier is imaginative. Her plan and the game’s are not the same. (She once said she was dead because her energy put her out of reach of most earth dwellers. Religions have been started for less.) Inertia can get a bad rep: we’re often drawn to dynamism over immovable force. But it’s Glacier’s unwarpable presence on any given song that makes her feel inevitable, like an erosion-proof boulder in white water rapids. Tune in to hear her lyrics (“I weep 1000 rivers dry,” from “Timing”) and boom-bap affirmations. There are pick-me-ups for never-pick-me girls, flexes for the subletters, notes to self we can all benefit from (“Steady As I Am”). Self-love made wavy. 

“I want people to want more for themselves when they listen to my music,” she told Interview last October.

Trace amounts of M.I.A. and Clams Casino, soca and Mssingno and chopped n screwed, glimmer in her cloud rap beats on speed (“Found”), the negative space she makes homes out of (“Satellites”), the noir skin-crawlers that sound like faintly lit E1 roads (“Cows Come Home”). Like A Ribbon, a package of three EP-length chapters, dials down the lofi that Glacier’s long been known for. Her vocals hit harder, the synths more crystalline. “Nevasure” is an intergalactic blockbuster; the Eartheater-featuring “Money Shows” embraces abrasion. Whether it’s “Ocean Steppin’” featuring label mate Sampha (!) or the tear-jerk closer “Heaven’s Sent,” Glacier’s hypnotic as she rain dances in the middle of a downpour, molasses flooding the orchard. She’s gone from couch-surfing to crowd-surfing with her pen and an infallible ear.

“My mum brought up on a council estate in Hackney and now I’m journeying… Flowers for the women them,” Glacier tells us. “As someone that’s been impacted by class and class structures, I think it’s important to highlight and reference genuine experiences that are important to you, but class isn't an influence on my art because I'm my own being. I’m the type of person that wears a random ‘I’m retired’ cap in the midst of releasing an album.”

If she called it quits today, she’d walk away as one of the most captivating artists out. Like A Ribbon is set for release on February 14 via Young.