27. NoLay - Holy Sinners
The only female MC on the list, NoLay is one of the few women in grime that have managed to achieve wider recognition. This is sadly due to the genre's hyper-masculine (to the point of violence) slant. Many of the most female MCs in Britain in the 2000s have either been ignored or forced to shift towards garage instead, which doesn't suffer from the same issues nearly as much. NoLay has consistently put out great release after great release, and her 2015 mixtape Holy Sinners is probably her strongest to date. Her MCing skills are substantial enough that she shows up some of the best MCs in the game in Dot Rotten and P. Money, who provide some excellent guest spots. NoLay is happy to be just as dark as her male counterparts, maintaining grime's dirty and gnarly reputation with excellent lines like "Phones off, clothes off, I be loving you till my fucking bones rot" easily matching the genre's greatest. It's a shame that NoLay is pretty much alone in her relative success, but hopefully the expertise advertised in this new mixtape will shed a light on more female MCs operating in the grime scene. Get this mixtape and you'll soon see just how much potential there is for female MCs to push grime into even more adventurous spaces.