Who Wiley is
Richard Kylea Cowie Jr. (born 19 January 1979), better known by his stage name Wiley (formerly Wiley Kat), is a British grime MC and producer from Bow, London. Wiley is often labelled the "Godfather of Grime". In the early 2000s, he independently released a series of highly influential eskibeat instrumentals on white label vinyl, such as the first in the series "Eskimo" and is known as a grime MC both for his solo work and for material released with his crew Roll Deep. Wiley first tasted success as a member of the UK garage crew Pay as U Go, with whom he had a top 40 hit, "Champagne Dance" in 2001. Wiley has continued to make grime music while also releasing mainstream singles, such as the UK Singles Chart top 10 hits "Wearing My Rolex", "Never Be Your Woman", and his UK number-one "Heatwave". Wiley's eleventh album, Godfather (2017), peaked at number nine on the UK Albums Chart, becoming his highest-charting album of his career, and also won an "Outstanding Contribution to Music" award by NME. Wiley has been stabbed on several occasions. In 2008, a stabbing left him with a visible scar on the left side of his face. On 24 July 2020, Wiley made a series of posts and videos on…
Biography from the Wiley article on Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Most played tracks
The tracks Spotify surfaces first for Wiley, with its own 0–100 popularity score alongside.
Latest releases
20 recent albums and singles. Cover art links through to Spotify.
Listener trend
The trend line fills in as weekly snapshots accumulate.
Scene ranks
Around them in the chart
Artists to compare
Acts at a similar level in drum & bass, and the biggest names from United Kingdom.
Wiley in numbers
How many monthly Spotify listeners does Wiley have?
Wiley has 1,500,000 monthly Spotify listeners in the week of Aug 17, 2026, as published on their public Spotify artist page.
What is Wiley's world ranking?
Wiley is ranked #312 of 1214 electronic music artists in the DJ INDEX, which ranks purely by monthly Spotify listeners.
Where is Wiley from?
Wiley is from United Kingdom, where they rank #57 among the acts we track.
What kind of music does Wiley make?
Wiley is categorised as Drum & Bass and Bass in the DJ INDEX. Spotify tags them as grime, uk grime.
Snapshot from the week of Aug 17, 2026. Listener figures come from Spotify's own public artist page and are rounded.