Rapper Tinie Tempah Is Launching a New Chicken Brand Which Aims to ‘Reinvent’ Wraps

British rapper Tinie Tempah is launching a new fried chicken delivery brand in March, via which he hopes to “reinvent the wrap.” The brand is called Raps and will launch with a four-month pop-up at Willows on the Roof on the top of the John Lewis department store on central London’s Oxford Street.

“The reinvention of the wRAP by Tinie Tempah located,” as first reported by the Evening Standard, will be available through Deliveroo — servicing Shoreditch, Dalston, Brixton, Camberwell, Queen’s Park, and Willesden from Kitchen Venture’s so-called “dark kitchens” — from 11 March, with a menu that the rapper designed with YouTuber and ex-Sardine chef Hasan Semay, aka Big Has, who graduated from Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen training programme and who has, by coincidence, just announced the publication of his debut cookbook.

The menu, which nods to fellow London musicians such as JME and Burna Boy, will include “wRaps” such as:

“Unruly”: Jerk chicken with plantain, barbecue sauce, and lime mayo slaw; “African Giant”: buttermilk fried chicken with a jollof salsa; and “Jmeeee”: a vegan not-chicken goujon effort. Also on the menu are “Unknown T’s” tenders, “Peng” wings, salads, and sides of fries, pickles, and slaws; at Willows, Hackney bar Night Tales be in charge of the cocktails.

“Food is an exploration of culture through its ingredients and flavours and London, the city I’m from, is rich with diversity and culture; it was really exciting to work on something where I was able to combine the food I love and grew up on (both in the home and on the high street) and the music that inspired me to be who I am today,” said Tempah, according to the Evening Standard.

The website’s blurb says “RAPS is an inclusive community of indulgent and healthy soul food fans, with hip hop ideologies at its core brought to you by Tinie Tempah and Kitchen Ventures.

“The brand delivers a nostalgic nod to Tinie’s early childhood spent frequenting the chicken shops of South East London after school and to family dinners, RAPS is both a trip down memory lane and a celebration of Tinie’s desire to reinvent a classic wRAP.”

Kitchen Ventures also looks after other food-music collaborations, such as Gizzi Erskine and Professor Green’e Giz n Green’s pizza pies, alongside other well-known London-based food favourites like Happy Endings ice cream sandwiches, and Breddos Tacos’s Nud Dudhia’s Tacos El Rey.

Tempah will be hoping that his venture does not go the way of US rap icon Nas’s fried chicken venture, Sweet Chick, which lasted mere months on central London’s Market Place.