One Pixel at a Time: Inside TayoLoxs & bib sama.'s 'GAIA'
Beat oracle TayoLoxs and rhyme wizard bib sama. invite us into GAIA. Strap in.
bib sama. (left) and TayoLoxs (right) in 2025. Image via Press.
Rising London stars, rapper bib sama. and producer TayoLoxs collaborate on a glitchy, maximalist, autotune-tinged body of work, GAIA, an 18-minute flash of digitised escapism. In a world of uncertainty and overstimulation, TayoLoxs and bib sama. offer their community of supporters across London and beyond, the escape they want.
They've coded a portal tucked somewhere between the Milky Way and a cloud rendered in 64-bit nostalgia through sound. GAIA feels like an entry point into a parallel plane—imagined, painted and engineered for our listening pleasure.
Fresh off co-signs from Complex, NME and Genius, plus a standout On The Radar performance alongside rising contemporary N4T, their universe keeps expanding. Their audience, now in the hundreds of thousands, is already locked into the vision.
"It's really an adventure," says TayoLoxs. bib, on the other hand, frames it as a utopian counterpoint to his 2024 LP DOGMA: where darker, heavier tones reflected uncertainty. Together, they've created a whole extraplanetary experience. "The project is a whole sonic universe where people can engross themselves in the world that we've built for them," says bib.
At their release party, this vision translated live, "I feel like the reception's gone very well", Tayo recalls the energy of the crowd: "It felt very weird to see everyone I know online, my fans in person… I feel like I kind of starved my fans for a whole, and now they finally got something to eat." GAIA is the portal out of a London mired in overstimulation.
Both TayoLoxs and bib sama. were inspired by a generation of artists who built entire musical empires from their bedrooms—armed with nothing but a mic, a laptop, an internet connection, and a dream, namely during the SoundCloud era.
bib recalls the spark tracing back to the 2016 XXL Freshman Freestyle: "I realised I can do this as well. [So I] picked up a USB mic, downloaded the Ugly God type beat, and the rest is history", a moment that shifted everything. bib's household played a considerable part in shaping his sound, as his parents played Senegalese and Gambian records while his older brothers put him onto UK and US music.
For TayoLoxs, it began inside an HMV with his mother, when they first heard Calvin Harris's 2009 LP, Ready for the Weekend, a moment that snapped electronic music into focus. "I tell you, when I bought it and brang it home, I listened to every single track. There were no misses, and it just inspired me so much."
While Tayo's uncle put him on to the Street Fighter soundtrack and other "games-type of sounds", his brother showed him UK artists—foundations that would later materialise into his own production style.
Together, bib sama. and TayoLoxs have created a unique soundscape through their intricate world-building. Their music features a glitchy mix of bright, onomatopoeic synths, maximalist arrangements and vibrant melodies. This distinctive sound feels like the perfect soundtrack for a two-player intergalactic adventure, showcasing two artists who were raised in different musical universes and are now crafting their own.
Like the fiery Y2K bands that came before them, Tayo and bib converged as music nerds to form their own band. But instead of a garage or a shed, it's happening on Discord, SoundCloud and Spotify. "I've always been some sort of music nerd, surrounded by music," bib adds.
Their creative chemistry first surfaced on bib's 2024 EP DOGMA, where tracks like "OH YEA" and "SAND" with TayoLoxs hinted at a shared instinct for world-building. Those early sparks made the next step feel inevitable: coming together on GAIA, their first official collaborative project.
"I think it's been cool. I think it's been different from what I'm used to—my first collaborative project as well," Tayo reflects. "Now I'm seeing people really enjoying not only each contribution we made to the project, but also how we manifested it into something new."
TayoLoxs draws inspiration from the world outside, seeking perspective in nature. When asked where their dream studio session would be, with no limits, both ponder the idea of naturalistic wanderlust. Starting with Tayo, "I'd say either my homeland countries, Jamaica or Nigeria, or just anywhere high up on a mountain," he says.
“The project is a whole sonic universe where people can engross themselves in the world that we’ve built for them.”
Tayo continues: "If I could make a beat on my laptop up high and see the landscape, it would give me too many ideas… honestly, I'd be overstimulated, but it would be fun. For bib, it might be somewhere glacial—or off on an island, where he can hear tropical birds in the background, laptop, interface and microphone in tow.
GAIA is closely intertwined with the isekai anime subgenre, in which the protagonist is transported to a fantastical realm—a different universe. "When people listen to my music—that feeling of escapism, I even want to feel that as well," says bib.
TayoLoxs and bib sama.'s creative ethos teeter along that line between nature and digital, the dichotomy between the overstimulation of our phone screens and the desire to reconnect with the planet around us. With GAIA, we get a microutopia, a moment of reprieve, a moment to "touch the grass, let the sunbeams hit you."
"Deluxe? Deluxe. Deluxe… bringing listeners even more so into the world of GAIA", bib teases. "He's [TayoLoxs] not gonna be on not only GAIA but also a project that I'm starting to work on. My next solo project, Tayo's definitely gonna be on there." Meanwhile, TayoLoxs's fans are also pushing for more "My fans have been telling me for a long time, to make a solo project of just instrumentals", Tayo utters.
Stream GAIA below: