Shogun

Breaking a Scottish Artist onto the National Stage

Shogun — rapper Joe Heron from Paisley — arrived on the UK music radar the way few artists do: through a single viral moment that the industry couldn't ignore. When his freestyle "Vulcan" exploded online, accumulating millions of views in a matter of days, it sparked immediate interest from music media across the country. Our role was to support that momentum and help shape it into something lasting — building Shogun's profile from viral talking point to recognised, credible artist with a sustained national presence.

The challenge with artist PR at this level is that speed matters, but so does placement. Being everywhere isn't the same as being in the right places. The focus was on coverage that would carry cultural weight with the audiences that shape an artist's long-term reputation — music press that tastemakers read, national broadcasters that mainstream audiences trust, and platform-defining titles that position an artist within a broader cultural conversation.

Over the course of working with Shogun, that coverage materialised across all of them. VICE profiled Shogun as Scotland's great rap hope. Dazed explored the Scottish grime movement he was helping to define. BBC featured him across multiple formats — including a television interview and a BBC Three profile that brought his story to a mainstream national audience. Metro named him Artist of the Day. The Daily Record, Glasgow Live, and The Skinny grounded his rise in the community and city that shaped him.

The result was a body of coverage spanning culturally defining music press to national broadcast — a profile built on authentic storytelling and placed where it mattered most.