La Blogothèque: What kind of music were you into as a kid?
When I was incubating in the belly of the mother I was getting a lot of Adam and the Ants and I’d kick along to that. There was also some punk, Motown, rock stuff, Billy Bragg, Cockney Rebel, classical stuff too. My dad also listened to Ice Cube, he was sort of trendy. He was a student and then a lecturer, but he was reading music magazines and keeping up to date with what was going on, that’s where his spare money went, buying records, and of course that would create massive arguments with my mum.
When I was eleven, I was all leather jacket with tassels and studs and badges, Iron Maiden shirt, ripped-up jeans and HM gear. That’s what I was saving my playground money for. I was listening to Skidrow and Guns’ N Roses and later Nirvana. But there were always bits of rap. Then in the mid-nineties it went all indie but I also started listening to the Wu-Tang. I suppose it wasn’t until Gonzales came along that I realised I could rap. The Entertainist is an incredible record. I always thought I couldn’t do music, I was never confident enough in myself. All my music teachers pissed me off so I was crap. When I was seven I had a band. We mimed « Don’t you want me baby » by the Human League and I convinced my school I had written and recorded it with a voice-changing machine. And I had these two girls in the class singing and miming in the background. But it took me since then to work out how to do it. Good thing with rapping, you can be melodic but not sing. Biz Markie, ODB, they just holler it and it is wicked. So in 2000 I finally started to rap and 2002 starting making music with computers, keyboards and drums machines and now I can do everything. So everyone should. In five years I’m sure I’ll sound completely different because I will have worked something else out.
La Blogothèque: You used to write for Playlouder, doesn’t that get in the way of your rapping career now?
I moved to London in 1999. I turned up with a suitcase thinking I would stay with this girl but it fucked up. So I ended up staying at various crappy hotels; when money ran out, I ended up in a squat with loads of junkies. While I was staying in this squat, I blagged a job in a PR company, which was my excuse to use their computers and do my fanzine. At the back of that fanzine I blagged a job at clickmusic. I said I had written for Mojo. From that i later got approached by Playlouder because I had been slagging off a Melody Maker journalist whom one of the guys had been involved with in a beef. I went on to become the 50Cent of music journalism, being little and obnoxious and slagging people off. Rubbish really. Oh well, good I suppose.
Last week for example, I did a song with Swiss out of So Solid. I thought there was going to be a kind of beef because I am not sure I was too nice about them in a review once. That’s my problem with journalism past.
I’ve written bad reviews about millions of people. Everybody, Jesus Christ! I think I’ve called everybody in modern guitar music « rapist » at some point or another and I continue to do it I am afraid. It’s impossible not to. I may have to work with some of them at some point. The music industry is a weird little thing. Lots of people sucking each others’ cocks in a big pile and sometimes you have to navigate through to pile to do stuff like play a gig and you have to see those people. And if you called them « cocksuckers » they tend to remember.
But Swiss is cool. The track we did together was for the new mixtape, something I do monthly. I think he had heard something I’d done when I wasn’t there. When I was recording in Brixton he just came round and we just decided to do a song together, that’s what I like! Narstie also turned up. He is a really amazing freestyler.
La Blogothèque: What was Crack Village?
Crack Village was formed as an idea on the day after the millennium. We were all sitting in a pub, hungover or coming out of drugs, and we decided that music was crap and we would form a boyband. It would be animated (note that was before Gorillaz) and we would be rapping it would be wicked. A year later I booked us a gig and we had four days to write some songs. We did some shows dressed up as gods and minotaurs, it was quite fun. I wrote words but I didn’t think I could do music at that point. So it was more about shouting a lot and getting drunk. There were three MCs and a singer. And one of the MCs made beats on Fruityloops, which I went on to do. It lasted a couple years. When I worked out how to make music I got bored. It’s like a posse thing, there’s the three of you and you’re rapping about rap stuff « you’re one of the best rappers, yo » and all that crap. I wanted to do songs about real stuff. I brought in a couple of tunes and they laughed, so I just stayed indoors and made songs from there.
And then I went to America, to do a couple of shows. I realised that when there’s six on you, you can’t really stay on people’s floors, whereas on my own I could stay with a few mates and do some shows. So I did. But they got pissed off and when I came back, they weren’t talking to me anymore. By which point I got signed to Interscope. They are still going.
La Blogothèque: What’s the relationship like with Interscope? How directive are they? Isn’t it a bit daunting?
I don’t think about it. I get on with it. Everybody was telling me « aren’t you freaking out » at the time of the record deal signing, and no. I don’t think about what is going to happen or what has happened. The A&R guy is really cool, very funny, huge massive guy nine foot tall, eats lots of steak, headbutts people. Good to have around you.
The first thing Jimmy Lovine said when he called me was « let’s get Dre to do one or two tracks, Eminem to do another one ». So the idea is I get the vast majority of it done then go to America to mix it and hook up with people like that to do a few extra songs. What I do is quite British I guess so they want a couple of tracks specifically for America.
I am not quite sure how they are going to sell me in the US, I think they might want to go with Adam Alphabet. And it is not going to be straight hip-hop, they might go for the alternative groove by some mad guy. At the moment I got control over imaging, sleeves, artwork. They will suggest producers, mixers, running order ideas, but they are not particularly intrusive. They phone me a lot from America, every couple of weeks they fly someone over to see me. As I haven’t signed with anyone in the UK yet, I have more freedom. Certainly compared to a lot of bands I know on independent labels in this country who have an awful time with interference, I don’t get any. I am sure issues will come but I haven’t been told to go to the gym yet.
La Blogothèque: You mentioned Dr Dre, why do you reckon he is talked about in such a deferential way?
Dre commands a huge amount of respect. Hip-hop is very fickle and he has been constant for a generation. When kids got into hip-hop in 1990, he was around then, in 1992 he was in NWA, then he did all that stuff with Ice Cube, he did Eminem, then 50Cent, which is another generation after Eminem, he has always been there and he is consistently dope. He can do pop stuff but his beats are incredible, deceptively simple. He works very hard, he’s quite hardcore. He also makes people work very hard. He made Gwen Stefani cry when she did that tune with Eve Repeat take repeat take. With that kind of longevity, his impact on the game, staying as good and as big as he has for so long, people respect that.
La Blogothèque: Are you working on new material at the moment?
I hate the first EP now, I can’t stand it, but I am not sure whether there will be anything from that. Interscope might want me to remake some of it. I am writing a new song everyday at the moment. Last night I sat down at my computer and listened to some mp3s and this Gladys Knight song came on, it is amazing. So I just looped the first eight bars and arranged them and wrote a song over it in about fifty minutes and that was that.
The day before, I wrote a song, plugged my keyboard and played a little bass line, put some rhythms on top and that was it, with lyrics and everything. And the day before that, I did a tune with Alice Cooper’s Clones, using the guitar bit and putting a big beat on it. Some other time I’ll write something on the bus and I’ll come home and put it over a beat I’d already written, but usually these days I write some music and then words on top, in that order. At Playlouder, I had to write 1000 words every week for my column as well as reviews. So a 1000 words about whatever happened, that’s amazing training, I could never run out of material. It taught me you can rap about anything.
La Blogothèque: Including Bush, Tony and Condoleezza Rice?
One bullet I wrote in about an hour. I had this idea before for a tune, some kind of citizensmith-based revolution number, admitting the patheticness of it but also the necessity of it. But I hadn’t written any of the words. The music, my friend Will (DJ Slepton) provided it: he gave me a CD in a club, some stuff he’d been doing, that was obviously the perfect beat so I used it.
La Blogothèque: How specific are you in terms of sound?
I am not that specific, when it sounds right, it sounds right. You have a vague idea of what you’re going for. I like working on my own because I can get what I want done. The reason I like working with people is actually because you don’t know what is going to happen. Now I got lots of friends in London who are amazing at making noises. In the house where I live there is my DJ Birdogg, my mate Wade who’s like my muse and we do Stunners International together. There’s also Piranha Deathray I work with, we sometimes do shows, some psycho-Billy-voodoo-thrash-lounge versions of my tunes. Someone I’d love to work with is the guy who did the strings for Cockney Rebel (the first two albums) Andrew Powell. He is a genius. I don’t know whether I’ll work with him on this album but the second album might be a collaborative work with me and him. And Chris de Burgh of course.
La Blogothèque: I was really surprised to see that you loved Patrick Wolf and Joanna Newsom.
Patrick Wolf is a genius. There are very few of them, certainly in this country. He’s diverse, not bracketed in any way; he hasn’t sat down and gone « right, I’m going to be the Clash ». He is just making songs and expressing them the way he can with whatever is available to him. You’ll hear bits of glitchy stuff that he likes or bits of Donovan or bits of Smith, but not done in any considered way. As Bruce Lee said in Enter the Dragon: « don’t think, feel ». I think Patrick Wolf operates that way and I agree with him on a lot of things. I thought the Libertine was very well put, I have a tune on a very similar sentiment but it is not nearly as subtle as Patrick’s. Cos mine goes « fuck Pete Doherty »! (laughs) It’s actually addressing Dominic from the Others and it says « fuck you and fuck Pete Doherty ». And Patrick is very beautiful and venerable and he is a proper pop star. We don’t have them anymore.
I am a very heterosexual person. I’ve had attempts at homo stuff when I was a teenager because I was « I must be ». But I wasn’t. But Patrick Wolf actually made me blush when I interviewed him because he was so beautiful and writes these incredible songs that are otherworldly. He’s got that ethereal Celtic pixy thing. So he’s dope.
Same with Joanna Newsom. I saw her with my mate and we were going dribbledribbledribbly.
She is amazing.Oh my god. I used to read the NME when I was little, I used to love the NME. I haven’t read the NME in ages. Someone showed it to me recently with Joanna Newsom in it. They had a big picture of her with her harp and it said, « Fancy a pluck »? I wanted to set fire to Kings Reach Tower, I couldn’t believe it! This is 2005 and you have a female musician who plays the harp so you have a header like « fancy a pluck? »
La Blogothèque: I suppose most of the gansta rap lyrics are much worse than that…
Some of the guys do it tongue in cheek, some people don’t. You are thinking about Snoop Dogg? Still on his new album having a song about smacking a ho. Then another song about how much he loves his wife. But then you think « well, each song is expressing a different thing, telling a different story ». Like in a book, the narrator says « I » but it doesn’t mean the author did this or that, or that you should burn the book because someone got killed or raped in it. That sort of thing happens. There is harshness and ugliness in the world and that is reflected through art. And people communicate different experiences. And what you do with that and how you take it is up to you. You can sit down and watch a film, it could be about a paedophile and it might be harrowing or you enjoy the experience, but walking away from it would it make you an evil person?
And if you don’t talk about that stuff, it makes it worse. No-one would know about ghettos in America, no-one would know that 40% of the American population lives below the poverty line and there is abject poverty and warfare were it not for rap music.
They don’t report this stuff on the TV. We’d have no idea that there are these black kids being thrown out by their parents and getting shot at. Now we do know, and maybe had rather we didn’t. So we’re making it out like they are bad people and should all be locked up.
La Blogothèque: Yeah but doesn’t the rap industry get a little stuck in it?
I very much agree that ten years on, after living for so long in a mansion like Eminem, you should write about something else. When he came out, it was great how he was writing about him being the skinny little white dude who couldn’t get laid, his mother, drugs. Now he is 32 and writing about shooting people, and he still has a song on there that goes « you make me sick, I fucking hate you bitch I hope you die ». Dude man! What happened? I want to hear Methodman rapping about being 33, having a kid, having colon problems, back problems or something. The industry is certainly very youth orientated. So you end up with LL cool J who’s been in the game for 30 years and should get respect for that, feeling the need to take steroids and have botox injections and do songs with Jennifer Lopez and pretend to be twenty. He is a grown-ass man and should be rapping about being a grown-ass man and being wise. Age should be celebrated. In the east they revere their elders. Over here we put them in homes and make jokes about them smelling of wee.
La Blogothèque: Who raps about the real things then?
Thankfully there are loads of people in rap who talk about real things: in mainstream rap that sells fuckloads you don’t really see it that much, but otherwise there is Ghostface. He is a master at that kind of thing, he’s getting better all the time, on his last album for example he’s talking about how he’s got back off tour and his wife is having an affair and the kids are gone, he’s wicked. There’s also Sage Francis; MF Doom who talks in riddles a lot, but he’s wise and funny; Dead Prez; Ice Cube even though he did sell out to Hollywood. Actually he didn’t sell out, that’s bollocks, he’s got black-owned and black-made films that are number one at the box-office in America and that is amazing, so respect to him.
La Blogothèque: Do you accept the « emo hip-hop » tag to qualify your music?
Sage Francis, Atmosphere and Buck65 are stuck in that emo hip-hop bracket. Emo means emotional, right? Which I also thought was funny, like emo hardcore, emotional hardcore, why wouldn’t normal hardcore be emotional? Whether I have an affinity to those people, i don’t know, but I respect them, Sage Francis, Atmosphere, Brother Ali all those guys are wicked and I wish there were more people like them. I aspire to be as good though i don’t know if I am yet.
With the boys don’t cry attitude, we’re answering another period of ridiculous testosterone. That’s why someone like Ghostface I really respect: he will cry in the mike and go « maybe that guy has got a bigger dick than me, maybe that’s why she went ». Most rappers won’t say that. They’ll go like « I’ll punch your face ».
La Blogothèque: And you do end up being punched in the face
I was brought up in a valley in North Wales. When you talk about what you know and what you are concerned about, people respect that, whoever you are. When I was in Miami, I got lost and ended up stuck in the ghettos down there for like a day, hanging out with the local rap kids who were all busting stuff about shooting people and I was rapping my thing about getting lost in a quarry or something, and it was wicked and we were all getting down and we all loved it. Half of my Internet traffic is from America, most of it comes from hardcore gangsta rap sites like realestniggas.com and stuff like that. Certainly there are some people out there calling me a faggot and throw things at me, and they do and they will. But then there are the other people who just like rap or music.
I’ve done lots of gigs but I definitely had the best reception outside London. The further out of London you get and the more hardy people get and the more rowdy people are. They jump up and down a lot and break things. And throw piss at you. So you get the piss and the love, if you balance it, it’s alright.
La Blogothèque: Don’t suppose it will be safer when you play Wembley…
If you just work in a little club and people whoohoo are having a party, you get up and add stuff by rapping, that’s great. But if people are paying fuckloads of money, driving across the country and queuing up to see you and you are the focal point of their week, then you’d better be doing something that’s worth that! We’re all very alike even though we all pretend being all sorts of stuff. Most people are lied to, punched and smacked around the head and they lead miserable lives not doing what they should be doing and never knowing what they could be good at doing, and they’re pissed off and upset and they go out on Friday and go really really really drunk and they work all the rest of their lives. So long as I have something to say to these people that is in some way useful and make them question the awfulness they are being put through and perhaps make them reject the shit they’re given, that’d be good. If I’m just doing a big light show in a big boomey echoey room and no one can quite see what is going on or hear it properly, then I might as well shoot myself in the face.
La Blogothèque: When you get all the dollars in, will you buy a mansion?
Jackie Chan pays himself a hundred grand a year. Nine months of the year he lives in his studio, three months of the year, he sees his family. The rest of his money he gives to charities and foundations. That’s the way to do it. You need somewhere to work at and somewhere to rest at. The amount of fucking money that record companies can generate, you can settle a fucking country’s debt with it.
Why people don’t do that more often, I suppose it is because we’re told to make loads of money and keep hold of it, that’s the monopoly game. That attitude is changing.
Someone like The Game has already given away millions to two youth foundations and basketball schools. A lot of those rap kids are getting a lot better for that now. If you’re a spastic you’re going to end up giving your money for a stupid little red piece of string, I want to disembowel that fool. Britney is doing it too, isn’t she? It is depressing. I’m going to join the Church of Scientology.
La Blogothèque: Where will you be in five years time?
I will have made five albums, four by myself, one with Birdogg, a bunch of mixtapes, covers albums with Wade crooning out, I’d written a book, a sitcom, made some toys, cartoons and comics, I’d draw Spiderman for a special one-off Marvel edition cause they will let me by then. Oh! And do a movie with Jon Voigt
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