Having Planted his Seeds and Stolen the Shine, it’s Kofi Stone’s Moment to Blossom | All The Flowers Have Bloomed
Evan Dale | January 13, 2026
Kofi Stone
The best hip-hop album of 2025 may very well have been rooted in the UK. More specifically by way of Birmingham soil, rap veteran Kofi Stone delivered All The Flowers Have Bloomed early in November, putting his exclamation point on a prolific run of work dating back to another album and a slew of features – including on fellow emergent Birmingham artist, RUBII’s Change & Remain– in 2024. From a rapper that has been angling towards the cementing of his signature metronomic delivery overtop jazz-integrated production since his 2019 debut, Nobody Cares Till Everybody Does, a listener might make assumptions about what a new Kofi Stone project would come to sound like. And yet even within the boundaries of his unmistakable flow, voice, and beatscape, the album is expressively and musically vast, immersive in its blossoming emotionality from beginning to end.
It is at the same time proudly derivative of all his prior work. Where so many artists experiment wildly with their sounds – particularly while still young in career and in age – Kofi Stone has spent nearly a decade refining what has always been most authentic about himself artistically and personally. A fan can listen to 2019 single, Talk About Us while in the midst of rinsing All The Flowers Have Bloomed without feeling any sort of stylistic whiplash.
Rather, his latest project is an expression of growth worthy of its title. From where his seeds were planted, now Kofi Stone’s dedication to his sound bears fruit. Musically, the album finds its median in tracks like Water. Built on the foundation of a beat that folds cold keystrokes and a simple drum kick underneath the liquid crooning at its hook – where our protagonist flexes the soulful power of his vocal chops – he floats effortlessly from bar to bar all the while never failing to instill each with purpose and meaning that help drive an overarching, intentional storyline that tightropes his path to where he is now, and all the hurdles he’s overcome along the way. There’s love, loss, personal strife, growing pains, and ultimately contentment. Perennially a master of the thematic edges of his craft, each of the album’s 14 tracks are infused with heartfelt anecdote without ever feeling overcooked.
A timelessness slicing backwards to the roots of hip-hop has always epochally tethered Kofi Stone to multiple places at once, and throughout All The Flowers Have Bloomed, there’s no greater example than What’s The Plan. From its onset, the track’s beat immerses a listener in 90’s hypnosis. Boom-bap production with a swirling sample lays the groundwork for the rapper to lean heavily into the stylistic particularities of his flow. It’s no surprise he’s listed Common and Lupe as two of his earlier influences. Fitting harmoniously, Stone and his beat dance together for three minutes, asking of his listeners to likewise bounce to the addicting hook and each intertwining verse.
Speaking on cadence, delivery, and downright confidence, Flowers Flow is one of Kofi Stone’s most dynamic additions not only to the album, but to his canon at large. Double timing his signature flow, he flies through a keystroke-laden beat with fiery braggadocio, challenging other emcees to match him. And when any of us listeners take the time to think about it, emcee – from what the word implies lyrically, to the rap eras it recalls, to its definitive roots as master of ceremony – is perhaps the most all-inclusive noun to describe Kofi Stone and his skillset. A timeless wordsmith and a tremendous host, his is a rare addition to a modern rapscape sorely in need of authenticity and purpose.
But perhaps most impressive about All The Flowers Have Bloomed is the emotional breadth it carries. Poised between the ups and the downs, the flow at first seemingly spoon-fed is actually flexible and dynamic enough to immerse and evoke deep depths and high highs without ever losing his grip on the album. If Flowers Flow was Kofi Stone at his most haughty, Pansy is the emcee at his most uplifting and inspiring to overcome any hurdles that be. If Thorns is his most emotionally vulnerable track to date, bleeding with the downtrodden struggle of grief, the album’s funk-laden, titular closing cut is his most danceable and fun. The breadth of his blossoms spans continent and sea, while the continued adherence to his signature sound propel hip-hop forward while honoring its tether to the past.