Loud and Quiet Presents Midnight Chats.
Evening listeners, Greg, here, this is Midnight Chats. Thanks for joining us for another artist in conversation and tuning in. Do you tune into a podcast?
Maybe not, but.
Wherever you are and wherever you're listening to this, cheers for joining us. Before we get stuck into this week's Midnight Chats. Can I just say what a total privilege it was to have Viv Albertine speaking to Stuart on last week's episode. She's incredible and what a powerful listen. Do seek that out if you haven't already, So thank you, Viv. When we started this we hoped but never imagined we'd probably get to a point where we'd have such icons to come and talk to us.
Now.
We always try and put a range of voices and experiences on the podcast. That's what keeps it interesting for us and hopefully for you too. In that spirit, this is something totally different from last week. My guest tonight is Cogi Radical, the East London based British Ghanaian rapper, visual artist, poet, head of an arts collective, fashion designer,
basically a master of many trades. He is a connected guy, or rather he's made himself a connected guy over the last five years or so that he's been sharing his creations.
It was a while.
Back twenty fourteen when he released his debut project, Dear Daisy Opium. Just a year later, it was his EP twenty three Winters that introduced him to more people. Since then, there's been a steady stream of releases from Koji. The thirteen track release in God's Body in twenty seventeen was magnificent, and the single Water that he did with Swindle and
Mahalia last year. It's also just dropped the video for twenty five, which is the track that we talk about in this and came out at the start of the year and it's very good, So do have a look at that. Other artists have noticed his talents as well, and we'd beer all night if I listed off the people that Cogi has collaborated with. Leave that for the conversation instead. But that's basically a testament to how respected
and well regarded he is. As I speak to you now, it's the end of March and this chat was recorded in the middle of February, a couple of weeks before the oscars. I mentioned that because he'd recently met and interviewed Spike Lee, and Spike's movie Black Clansman was up for Best Picture. Cogi came into our office in East London. He arrived on time, but then again there was no excuse for him not too because he literally lives less than a mile away, about five stops on the bus road.
It was dark, raining buckets outside, but Cogi arrived looking very stylish, wearing sunglasses, beanie cool yellow jacket, and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting him. We laughed a lot. A quick mention, if you are new to Midnight Chats, come on in. We are halfway through series seven, now five more of
these to come in the run some brilliant guests. Subscribe if you don't already, so you get every new episode that we put out on Thursday at midnight, and like and rate and comment hopefully nice things wherever you're listening to this enough from me, Let's get onto Cogi, our guest on episode sixty eight of Midnight Chats and Vice. If you're listening, We're ready when you are. That will make sense in a minute. Coagy, welcome to our podcast
Midnight Chats. Thank you for having me been excited about having your Actually, oh yeah, because yeah, yeah. I mean obviously I've been watching some of your interviews and you've always like you seem like you kind of enjoy like, you know, having a platform and kind of like and doing this kind of thing and getting out there and speaking to different people and different artists and things like that to be something you're kind of relish.
Yeah, I feel like it's it's part of the process. I think you spend so much time in sula and in your own head and then your own thoughts and in rooms listening to things on loop that once they're interpreted, they're kind of just interpreted, so and you get a chance to i don't know, talk about things or put more context to things. It helps shape things in the mind of the listener, which I enjoy.
The So for your sat on there, we've recorded quite a lot of these podcasts in this room, and we've had people from all over the world, really North America, South America, Asia, even as far as Australia. We had Courtney Barnett on the podcast still while ago literally outside of the world. You are definitely the most local person that we've ever had on Midnight Chats because you're.
From just down the road from Hoxton.
Cool, which if people are listening to this and they don't know too much about, you know, where, we're doing this just to paint the picture. We're recording this in the Loud and Quiet offices in Hackney. Hoxton is less than a mile away.
Yeah, you could probably first you could.
You could probably see that your window, if it wasn't if the if the weather wasn't so miserable, you could have walked here in about.
Yeah I didn't, but I could have.
I'm just contemplating with our walk home, but I probably won't.
Yeah, it gets soaked.
Tell me a little bit about growing up in Hoxton. You know, it's one of those places that it might be a familiar name to some people, some of our listeners, but it still always sounds like a bit of a curious place to maybe grow up in because people possibly immediately associated with nightlife and kind of trendy bars or coffee shops or whatever. So what was the reality like of growing up in Hogston in East London?
It was different. It definitely weren't good like. I don't like to paint a picture of it being some kind of like coll hole. It wasn't necessarily that. But the Hocks then everybody knows now definitely wasn't what it was then. I think, speaking more positively, though, there was definitely much more of a sense of community and it felt like a majority of the places around there were very kind of like homegrown businesses and eventually you start to see
that change and kind of fade out. But I feel like what Hocksten is kind of hasn't changed in one sense. It just they put a look of paint on it. It was probably part of the reason why my outlook on life is so eclectic, because you see everything, do you know what I mean? You see every think from from like deep poverty to like flamboyant ego sharing the same paper, And yeah, I think it was just it was an interesting bontage point to have so young.
Without getting too deep into the gentrification debate, it sounds like you feel like as money's moved in in certain parts of Hoxton, at least because it's not all the same, the soul hasn't necessarily moved out of the area at the same time, or it has to a certain extent or just changed.
Yeah, well, there's there's certain things that I would attribute to the soul. I think the market. I lived like very close to that hocks the market, and I remember as a kid that used to feel like the most like hustle and bustle environment and that just started to thin out a little bit as gentrification started to take place and again more like more buildings with purpose that meant things for the community, Like the cafes and stuff are great and it's cool or whatever, but like it's
not even like they're hiring local youth. Me said, it's it's not beneficial to anybody from there. And really, I think that's where most areas should begin, do you know what I mean?
And start? But I'm not the mayor yet.
One day, one day, we had novelists on the podcast a while ago, and he was talking about his involvement in politics, and I think he was young mayor for his local constituency at one point, and that was interesting. He was talking about a similar point, how like he felt like he wanted to get involved on that front and he learned a lot from doing that. He kind of stepped away from doing that for a little bit, but it was interesting talking to him about a similar subject.
Yeah, I think it's necessary. I think people forget how much love the young have for London and for where they grew up and why actually when it was time to fight back, they were so passionate because where we're from shape us, shapes us.
Do you know what I mean? Like it?
I don't feel like I would be completely who I am if I didn't grow up in Hoxton.
You're still based around there in the family.
Yeah, my family lives in Hoxton.
And again for people if you don't necessarily know the area too well, we're talking like pretty much central London, certainly like middle of London. Really you could get on
a bus and be at Oxford Street in Yeah. Exactly what are you like now that you've been doing a lot of traveling with your music the last few years, when you leave the city and you're saying more rural areas or in smaller cities, are you hungry to get back to the energy of the city in the urban environment or are you as you get a little bit older, do you enjoy getting a little bit of time and space of being outside of that environment.
I love the space. I love the time.
Definitely, you're going to buy a farm money coaching, I.
Couldn't be bothered problem. I can't be bothered. I'm just like the definition of the quiet life. But it's cool. I know that it's going to be very hard for me to find somewhere else in the world that I'd want to settle, just because I'm used to the hustle and bustle, and a part of not having it makes me nervous. Like if I'm in faces that are a bit too quiet, I just keep thinking someone's gonna murder me. No one will be around to help, do you know what I mean? Or just like the idea of being
too distant from firmily or familiarity. But I love traveling, Like luckily it was weird, Like the traveling side of music came from a very weird point in my career, so like it forced me to open my eyes.
Do you know what I mean?
What do you mean by that?
Just like it came in a strange time in the sense that that was part of it, you went.
I think it's like I'm trying to I don't know if I'm talking in the context of like my life or like music and how I feel about this thing. But like because everyone every every time I say something, people got really or yeah, but I know how it feels on the inside.
You get me.
So when I started traveling with music, it was at a time where I felt like, even though I was being embraced, my music had kind of gone cold and I wasn't getting the love that I thought I would get in the UK. So like it, well, if it ain't happening here, it ain't really about to happen nowhere else. And then all of a sudden, like literally out of nowhere, we just started getting booking requests from like the most random parts of the world, and we was like, well,
let's go. Fuck it went to that Bulgaria, New Zealand, Melbourne, Sydney, Moscow, Johannesburg, where has to be, Copenhagen, like just wherever, like in Brazil. We did like four shows in Brazil, majority of them
sold out. I remember the last one was the Johannesburg one and that was like six hundred people sold out, first time in the country, and it was it was crazy to me to know that, like again, when you drop a stone in the river, like you're going to see a local ripple, you feel me, you don't know how far that wave travels. And it was an opportunity to see how far it travel to it kind of
reinvigorated me. So by the time I went through that experience, I think I had finished in God's body and it was out and I knew there was like some like recalibrations I had to make to make sure everything made sense. But now I find myself traveling in order to kind of spark that same inspiration that I probably would have got just walking around the ends.
Do you know what?
Did you find yourself almost having to make a bit of a leap of faith. So somebody books you for a show in Bulgaria and you're like, I just need to Google map. We're about to fly into Yeah, and did it, you know, explode your expectations. You turn up and you're like, this is a venue full of just people that are pumped.
Yeah.
That show in particular was crazy because the guy that booked me was a personal fan.
Like that why show?
In many respects essentially.
He was like, I've got money, I love music in particular, I love your music, and I wanted to put on a show for Bulgaria, So I'm paying for everything. Bring the whole band, bring everybody, bring the tour manager, bring everything. And we're just going to do this show and Sofia as soon as we landed, he came and got us and they're like he had like a million questions about a million different songs, like different moments, like specific moments,
and I was like, you are really a fan. And it helped me appreciate the whole thing a lot more. And I've been excited to go back to Bulgaria ever since.
It's one of them like, oh yeah, like the Bulgaria is gonna be lit when I go back.
It's like, make sure.
Everyone's like Bulgaria, Go ya Bulgaria. People don't even know there's Bulgarian grime.
Really tell me about Bulgarian grime.
Well before So the open and opening act was this Bulgarian rapper and we went in to check him out and it was like yo, like he's really spitting. And then Zulu was with me up and something. I think something happened in he set and he invited the guy back on and the guy just started spitting too. Grime temposts like on the spot, there's Russian grime as well, there's Russian grime, there's Brazilian grime.
We're basically what we're doing here is brainstorming like a new Vice documentary.
I know, yeah, yeah, trust me, they should have been done that. But like grime's heavy. The culture of grime is heavy in Brazil.
They love that.
They love that shit, and like it's weird because like I didn't come up making grime, but I grew up in London and it grime is it within you. It's like, if you grow up in the heart of Bushwick, Brooklyn, you are going to have hip hop in your heart. You're going to have Biggie in your heart. If you grew up in the middle of East London, you were going to have grime in your heart. You're going to have sc beat in your heart. You're going to have
that He's gonna puls through you. So like as much as I didn't necessarily make grim music, as soon as I landed in these countries and understood they understood our culture, it was way easier to, I guess, embed myself in what was going on. So I remember even in Brazil, we had done the festival that we kind of got booked for and it was like it's quiet, like it weren't lit, and the promoter that we was with was just like you guys want to do the parties, don't you.
We was like, yeah, you know what I mean, And he's more or less like driven us out to like quite close to the favelas, and I was like, yeah, we're just going to do a set tonight here, and we was like what I remember? It was me, my DJ, selector Suave and Pote, who's a producer and DJ works closely with Benji b. And then we took a picture outside like and send it to my tour manager, like we're here tonight, we're going off g Yeah, we're going off the grid, like if you don't hear from me,
and for hours basically cool. We've walked in and it's just like it's a movie, do you know what I mean? It's literally a movie. And we was like walking around trying to take it and everybody speaking pure Portuguese. It's not like that every other person can speak English. Were like, and then we'll walk like they're playing like Brazilian funk but also like a lot of like trap, and then all of a sudden we just hear I can't remember what grime tune it was. I think I might've been
pasing Q's or something like that. And we've all just looked at each other and went, oh, it's lip you know what I mean, Oh, it's lit like we're good. Gone in there, wrecked it like turned it into like some like like they split the middle open because there was no stage, so split the middle open, and.
It was like people on me, You're in the middle. I was in the middle and just.
Barring off and it's like people just in my face just like love it like going off. And then news kind of traveled throughout Brazil and we got booked for some other ones. We ended up flying to Rio and did a party there called I Hate Mondays Insane. I saw a kid get chucked across the room like mosh pit style, just lifted it and like catapulted when I
think after Winter dropped or something like that. And just seeing those kind of reactions to my music made me understanding a completely different light, because I think London caught me as a poet. I mean they was introduced to me as a poet. When they hear my name, the first thing that probably comes to mind is poet. So the way they approach my shows is very subdued in terms of the energy that I've required to feed off
in order to create a better show. But I feel like all of that changed when we did the Coco Show in November.
I've seen footage from that and it did go off.
Yeah, it was nuice.
So where I mean that sounds really exciting, like going going around the world, Like a lot of the time, artists will just turn up, they'll play their show, they'll go into their dressing room, they get on whatever mode of transport they're taking to go to the next place. It sounds like you've managed to have an experienced last for years, where like you say, you've managed to discover Bulgarian grime, Russian grimes, and Brazilian grime like these scenes.
Do you feel the impulse to do anything with that, Like I mean a joke about the kind of series, but like you've made tour documentaries before, would you consider maybe doing developing that idea in some way?
I feel like more time, I just wait for people to understand that I'm a genius and then approach me with the like sufficient deal to incorporate said genius. And I'm right there. I work hard, I show up on time, there's no question mark. I think it's just more so
just going like let's just cut the fat. Like I know, we measure everything on this metric and that metric, and no, we have a person that actually, for whatever reason, can just float through any walk of life and and be embraced in a way that makes me now a part of that experience for however long I'm there.
This should be a thing. But I don't know.
You might have the genius gene too, because you saw it was an idea, but we're just still waiting, still waiting for them.
We need to put these genius genes together and find somebody with essentially some belief in some cash.
Belief in a check, and we can we can move, we can talk. I'm like hoping to do more stuff with like way more platforms, hopefully maybe some more stuff with Vice.
We did that really quick. We did it. I interviewed Spike Lee.
I was going to ask about that later. I mean, we might as well talk about it now. What did you take away from that experience of meeting Spike Lee? And I mean you were I don't know how much interviewing you've done before. This is obviously switching places, so to speak, to what you're normally used to, but did feel very natural like, you did a good job with it. What was it like spending that hour within half an hour whatever it was in the end, do you.
Know what it is?
I've always hated interviews but loved conversations, So with that, when I was in an interview process, majority of the time it ended up turning into a conversation, just because that's just the way I try to steer things, so at least I'm not on the edge the whole time. And I had done somebody had asked me to be involved in this Sky Atlantic series that was going on for a series called Gorilla, and we did like a mini documentary series with SBTV on that one, and then
I did a collaborative song with Rebecca Ferguson. At the end of it was kind of like a very like interesting process.
But yeah, like.
I did one of the last interviews with Dark as Hell, Like we interviewed everybody from the cast through the pinto like everyone.
It was lit.
I think maybe that kind of showed people that he's good at the whole like interview things. Then how did that come about? Jenna, my amazing publicist, said we should go into a meeting advice, and I went and sat down.
With Alex and he sound yeah, sound load.
And in a couple of weeks day he says Spikes.
Like, do you want to interview Spike Lee.
I said, yes, We've gone cinema, watched the film and Alex liked it. Come back. So I'm sitting in the room now waiting for him. Like this is like a few days later, so I've had a couple of days to digest it.
Sitting in the room and.
I have one long Island dice tea than another one immediately afterwards.
And I was fine after that, do you know what I mean?
I was really to go and he's come in and he's only really meant to do about twenty thirty minutes in each room, but he did about forty five minutes with me just talking, and you know, for the most part, because again it was an interview process, so like one like I've got a lot of time to have like
a deep personal moment. But meeting certain people you kind of take away certain things from their area and their presence, and being around him kind of always taught me that it doesn't matter how far you've gone, do you know what I mean, Like what you've contributed to the scale of or how much people value it. There's always more
to do, do you know what I mean? There's always more to get done, and that humility and that kind of like head down, like, here's another product, here's another conversation, here's another contribution to what I feel. It's important while I'm alive. I think, Yeah, I just try and take those kind of energies and put them into what I'm trying to do.
Two quick questions off the back of that, By the time people hear this, Black Clansman might have won an Oscar Best Picture. Would you like to see that?
That'd be good. Yeah, that'd be good.
I've got a sick little jiff meme of me and Spike laughing.
Yeah.
So if it wins, then I'm just going to drop that and be like congrat Spike in.
A timely moment, and just the internet turn up to that cogrets.
Yeah, my old power knows me.
We're talking a minute about all the different things that you do. You're a bit of a polymath, you kind of in terms of your art and what you create. If you've always been quite fearless about basically trying something new, because something like often fear does kind of hold people back, and they sort of think not everybody would basically have got in that car and driven to the almost favelas and turned up at a show and just been like, Okay, I'm going to go with this and this might be
an amazing experience. Some people would have been like absolutely not, no way. So if you if you always live without fear, was there a moment where you're like, I need to kind of let go and basically I'll give anything, most things to go at least.
What have you got to lose.
We're here until we're not here, and I've seen a lot of people die, So for me, the the process of living is literally to experience. And if you have an idea, you were a vessel for their idea, so in a way you kind of have to give life to it. And that was just my process for being on the Earth's just giving life to your ideas and seeing what happens with them. I didn't know. I knew I wasn't going to be regular, but I just couldn't be bothered. I kept getting fired from everything.
What the jobs that you started doing.
I got fired from every job I worked, per se, maybe like.
One exact because you just you knew it was in your passion, and.
I don't know. I thought I was a good employee.
I thought I had some reputable skills for I was all right to have around, clearly not like got fired. I don't know what happened, but I always knew that I'm not the guy that's taken more hours. Don't matter how broke I am.
Can you cover this?
No, can't cover it. Can't cover it. Can't cover it because my time is my time, you feel me, and I If I keep thinking that it's only like my personal time is only worth the amount of hour that they suggest it is, then I'll never be able to kind of get out this phase of of accepting that and wanting to push past that. So my time was my whatever. I didn't like the days I head off, I did everything like you get me, like I'm trying to do everything.
You just get lost. It's so easy to get lost.
It raises an interesting question now, because presume you feel like you're in a fortunate position whereby you turn your passions into your career. Right, So your job is your passion being music, making videos, interviewing, spight ly illustrations, et cetera. All of the different elements of what you put together to create what it is your universe, what you do when it becomes your job and it's your passion at the same time, that brings up its own challenges, doesn't it.
Because the thing that you just mentioned there is like when you're doing a regular job and it's like, you know, you're clocking in for eight hours a day, and you're kind of like, that's my job. In my brain, I can like siphon that off. That's over here, My passions are over here. When those two things come together, it becomes more difficult, presumably because you're like always on. So how do you do you have ways of managing that in Yeah.
Nah, okay, I smoke a lot of weed pretty much like that. I laugh about that because like it was kind of there was a point where I was like, yeah, I'm done, not smoking no more.
Finished.
This was like maybe three years ago, and then the next day I think I started the project. Smoked every day because my brain never it never turned off. If I ever got a free moment, I had to think about. I was like I was independent for five years. I was the brain behind everything to get me. I was pushing everything, making everything stay afloat, so I had to worry about everything, everything from Texas to insurance, so silly, get me that everything. So it just it was long
like now I don't have to worry about that. I think I probably made some of the sickest music I've ever made in my life, like in the last few months, just because I ain't.
Yeah, because parts of those things have taken care of and that's part of that. You don't have to concern yourself with that, some of those logistics.
Yeah, exactly. I just it was like I find that, like I don't know. I was always just more Soto typed, like do what you got to do, handle what you've got to do. Just bomb and don't worry about no one else's opinion, you feel me. So I'm not the showy guy. I'm not the show off. Like all the things I like done in my life, I could easily be. I could glow every day. It's pointless me like, you.
Only win with more work, so that you just got to keep going to work.
Let's talk about music.
Start by talking about twenty five, which was the track that you started twenty nineteen by releasing, and to my mind, at least, it felt like a bit of it felt like you taking stock, like kind of reflecting on the past twenty five years because you just turned twenty six and my right, yeah, so this was you kind of taking a moment to just sort of like reflect on on years ago, but also kind of what's happened in a particularly busy spell for you the last two or
three years, Like we've already just been talking about. Is that Am I reading that right? Is that how you felt about that track? Tell me a little bit more about twenty.
Five twenty five? Was that it was like, well, you've been here twenty five.
Years, bro, you got your court century up.
You know what I mean? Like, you're here, what does it feel like? For me?
I always got what does it feel like? And then that dictates the production. So it was bright. It was a good feeling because again, like a lot of my friends didn't make it this far, you get me, and like you want a way to to celebrate that in a way that that honors their time on earth and what it's taught you moving forward. The overall tone of what I was actually rapping about outside of the music was really sad. So I like, our whole thing at the moment has just been like juxtaposing.
The memories of me being in.
Like depressive state with the optimism that I now want to have in life. I'm kind of messing that together with the music. So it's interesting. What's funny is that whenever I make songs like that, I think to myself, what's that? What's like the twenty fourteen crop. I'm gonna think about this one? A sold out? Why is it all like trappy? Why it's so bright?
Ah?
Fucking idiots like I love I love everybody. I remember I used to because I didn't get like, I didn't get fucking mountains of attention in my opinion anyway, But so I listened to everything. If I saw somebody did like a project review on YouTube, it don't matter if twenty five years I was view twenty six.
I saw it early. You get me.
And I remember when in God's Body dropped, it was just like some old stands. Let me not even call them that, that's rude, but like just old supporters that it was like, ah, we missed the experimental production of like like his earlier work goes, what.
Are you talking about? Like?
I made every beat like not even like I mean like, but we made every beat as we went along. There was no like today we're moving into this world.
We just made music.
Clearly, you just like one type of music and not the other. So if you just like that stuff, then I've got music. There's music there. Listen to that stuff bare times. Those songs don't have a million plays. If you really liked it that much, you would listen to it a million times.
How are you feeling getting into your twenty sixth year then, do you? I mean you celebrate your birthday at the start of the year day, so just into January? What do you do for your birthday?
Heat just gone?
Yeah, Oh did you tell me about that trip I went.
There for just after Christmas to just celebrate New Year's do my birthday out there, chill, catch up with my cousin who makes music as well. Just in break like I'm learning to refamiliarize myself with because I spent so much time here. I know I'm originally from Ghana. At some point I would like to go spend an extended amount of time there, but there's some kind of like
acclimatization that you have to do just before that. So it's just making Ghana a normal place for me to go to making it home.
So when you got back, you've kind of been busying yourself with making more music. What's happened with the first kind of chunk of this year? What's that I have been spent doing predominantly?
I was in Sweden for about a week.
Okay, so you went from hot, you went from hot to cold. Then that's brutal. Yeah, Sweden must have been cold.
Yeah it was. I came back from Ghana.
I think I did like a week or two weeks here working on music, just straight, and then just flew to Sweden snowing, just locked myself in homestall. Yeah, just wrote, just wrote and wrote and wrote things down that might never get used.
Considering that you do a lot of collaborative work when you writing your stuff, your your parts, do you still work best in isolation?
Do you think if people really want me to like dig deep, yeah, a little bit. If you want me into style a verse out and bring everybody in the room, I'll just try and outrap everyone. But like for like depth fear some of the deeper records. I wrote that by myself at like five am. Cold, do you know what I mean? Like being cold?
I write It's been interesting to note the last few years that you've worked with so many different artists. I mean, I could probably spend about ten minutes of this podcast just listening to people that you've worked with. Well, actually, I can name a few that are kind of different. People would consider have different vibes from people like Goldling, to get Ray Black, Michayla Cole, Tom grennan Aj, Tracy Obunjaya, Swindle Wretch, Like these are people that all have different
approach to what they do. So I wanted to ask when it comes to working with another artist, that's a lot of disparate sounds that those artists create. There must be something that you always look for in order to feed you to go, yeah, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna do something with this person.
What is that thing?
Vibrations?
That's it to get in the room and vibrate, that's it. All of them collaborations there weren't know deep thought of like yo, we should get this personal, like either I hollered them or they holler me until them managed just buy the phone in it.
Once the phone call comes in, it comes in that.
I'm trying to think that gold Link, I met gold link outside the pub outside of Barney Artist show in Hoxton on my road. He hung out a few times, got really close. He was working on on his album at the time and he wanted to do some like vignettes, like video vignettes using some poetry. So we had these little sixty second things directed for us and then I wrote over the top. But it was like such like when people say like working with them. He was like, yo, coach,
I need this. I bet I've recorded it in a voice note and send him the voice notes. So he was wherever else in the world. I was lit see my room, bought those things, send it across and I didn't expect it to go as far as it did, but I did. It was cool Tom Grennan. It was interesting because I had never met him when I worked with him. I worked with a guy called Selassie, producer who was working with Tom at the time, and they
had just done some random demos. One of the random demos was Footsteps, like the beat as ray as it was, and it had that thing that I am joying, and I was like, keep all of this, keep all of this and sendul this beat. I'm going off tonight, And I said, I sent Selassie a voice note. That same night the songs come out. It's obviously like blown up, done what it's done. And I met Tom in a smoking area of some random ass event and just hear it off immediately like that was immediately my guy.
And that's what I'm saying.
I feel like life and the vibrations and energy just forced people to connect, do you know what I mean? Like Rich, I remember when I went to Richer's like writing camp. It was like the biggest learning experience ever because he is a master at work. He's literally a master at work, and it's like you feel like you're karate kid. Wait till you see mister Me's that's Rich Who else?
Like what are those writing camps like? Because like I a few years ago, I went to one out in West London. It was actually for Justin Bieber Record, so a different viable together but like effectively again, if people don't know what a writing camp is offering in the run up to somebody putting an album together, they'll put it's basically a meeting of minds. It's put some heads together, see what we can come up with and like spark
some ideas. Basically the one that I attended was in a big It was like a residential studio, like an old house, and imagine this mansion where in each different room at this place, there was a couple of different writers all getting together. You know, we're giving a kind of theme, giving them some ideas, and said, right, let's meet back again at lunchtime. See what we've all got, See if there's something that we want to develop, and then buy dinner time.
We've got a new song. How have you found that experience of doing those things?
Wretch's one was the first one I went to, and like that would be a slow process for him.
I can imagine that.
Would be intensely slow like his I think he had two. I only went to one of them. But the one I went to was play Deep Studios, Vinis an Angel or King's Cross or something like that. I was like, four might been four rooms a producer and every at least maybe one or two producers in every room. Rioters floating about in between each rooms, laying things down as they go. And he literally walks into the room while standing up and will wrap to the song, no pen,
no paper, wrap to the song on the spot. You hand them like a microphone that you can hold in his hand. He'll wrap a demo and leave the room, go into the next room and wrap the next song. And the song in this song room could be song in this room could be a party song. Song in the next room could be a deep song about him and his mother or something like that. The one in that one could be about him and his girl. The one in that one could just be another party with him,
and he can do them simultaneously. And I think for me that was like such a massive learning experience because it was like it taught me to understand like first set the vibe, get the vibe. Set it's not a race to finish the tune. But if you could at least set a good precedent for the tune, and you know it's a banger, it will always be a banger. You can't just not be a banger, won't they You can go back in and really add the context and at the depth. So that's been like one of the
things that I took into my process. At the moment, it was just like set vibes vie vibe by vibe now got too many vibes, but now we're just es. Yeah, Well, like we were just were sitting there go and like, well, I mean like we could drop like three albums today, but like, we're just not going to We're just not going to do that. I feel like you only get X amount of chances at a body of work that represents you, and I feel like people have lost the that need to have a great body of work. Now
it's like how many songs can you fit? How many of them will immediately be bangers and the rest of them can we can generate streams off the back of the ones that are Do.
You aspire to read interviews you in the past where you say, when it's time to deliver a debut album that it has to be the right body of work that represents you. We just take your time over that until it's the right thing. Or it's interesting hearing you say that you you do aspire to want to do that, because let's face it, like you know, the album as a format, if that's what we're gonna call it, it's
not it's not necessity anymore, is it. You could you could just forever just keep releasing bangers like individual genes, So why do it? Where is the desire come from?
I feel like I've just like sunk into like ships, the version of me that is like fucking incomplete belief of like postmodernity and just the idea that like nothing is new, it's all just things that have been done before. And then on top of that, nothing is so nobody wants to be labeled as anything, or nothing wants to be labeled as anything because it creates too harsh of a definition. And then box this sit and I might never drop an album. It don't matter. It don't mean
people won't get music. But I feel like people really go to ask themselves what is the point of.
Things these days?
Because I've never not gone to click somebody's music because it was just the EP, it was just the album, or it's just a mixtape. I want to hear it, and if I like it from top to one, I'm going to listen to it from top to one. If I don't, I'm gonna separate anyway, So the album can very quickly become three or four songs in somebody's.
Playlist the next day.
I control that there's nothing you can do, so like even even now, even entering the new situation, and we've got it's like just keep telling them like, yeah, the album's coming, but for now we're doing this. So they're like, is this the album? And I go, no, it's not how we're going to market it. That's not the album. Huh, that's that's it. It's not the album.
Okay, just keep going. I'll tell you when I'm ready.
Yeah, exactly.
It's been interesting and imagine possibly a bit frustrating from your point of view, but I don't want to put words in your mouth being sometimes held up in terms of interviews and features and wherever it may be media press about being a so called like political rapper making
political music. How frustrating can it be when you get kind of tired with a brush when ultimately you're writing output, be it songs or whatever, outlet of creativity that is ultimately just a reflection of your experience.
Me, people get the bite size is that first, if you don't know who I am at all, and you go who's coady and someone has to loosely describe me, they'd probably be like, oh, it makes and then I get stuck and it's like, well, it's a bit like then they get stuck again. Then then they just start listing off things that they think sounds close to it. Then they go but then it's not like rubbish. He's not talking rubbish. It's like poetry. But so like is
it conscious. It's like, no, it's not conscious, but like he's not afraid. Like he'll talk about things that political. I'll say it's political. It be like, well, yeah, but now you know, I mean, like the songs that I wrote that were like more politically charged never had political intent. So to me, they're not political songs if you are look at the context in which most of these songs
were written. They were all written were purpose. So I'm guessing the ones that people list off, Quime and Krima, crime and Chrima I wrote because at the time, that whole project in the context was about me becoming closer with my dad and understanding more about Ghana and his
process of migration. So as I was turning twenty three on that project when he was twenty three, that was when Gharnaways made it independent, and he was standing there at the speech when when Crimean Kremer said today Ghana is free forever.
So that is an important moment to him.
So now I'm like, well, that seems like a pretty big moment.
In history.
How come I don't know that much by it? I'm going, well, obviously it won't talk to me in school, so now I have to educate myself. So in the process of educating myself on who he is and his policies and all the things that happened, I see likenesses and I feel like, maybe, rather like if I could be in his head, what would I feel like When I said, they felt like they're twenty mon time, I feel like
I'm Crimean Kreman. I was like literally, it was like, I'm learning about this guy and I feel like him, Like I feel like I have the potential to really spark a change for free thinking, and not in a Kanye sense, but just like actually just like thinking. Then it come out and it was like political song and I was like okay, and then what like open hand.
Open Hand I wrote? I wrote at the time of.
The elections, I think when just before we got made into that both sides and what's the one the coalition?
So we're talking like what must be five years ago?
Yeah, ages ago?
I wrote open Handed ages ago, and people still reference it as he's a political artist. I guess I was five years ago. Yeah, coalition just happened. But for me, that's when I started to see it was almost like I predicted the future. I saw, I like four saw all of these seeds of hate that will grow and grow and grow and grow and grow to the point where now politics is about separating people. And I wanted to make a song that people could use as like a manta for not believing in that.
And yeah, that was five years ago.
Comen Kruml was like maybe three three years ago or something like that. I'll say politically like political things like I'm not afraid, like I know what world I live in, and really music is my last outlet to just like say what I fucking feel.
But I'm not I'm not. I'm not here to.
Be like the token political artists because certain political issues again that's not at all political issues affect me. But some are going to come to my end way quicker than others because of the experience.
I live in my day to day life.
So if they come out, I want them to come out as easy as conversation, Because in conversation people might talk about political things, it doesn't necessarily make them instantly a political person. You feel me, it just means we all have existing it's political.
It came up in that conversation you had with Spike, lying, yeah, but you both put it really nicely. Everybody's making a political decision when they make art and share it with other people. Even if you decide that it doesn't address politics directly, you're still making.
That Even if you decided not to vote, it's a political decision.
We listen really good to chat to you. We should maybe we should stop this podcast and get brainstorm in our documentary series.
Series on where should We Go First? Kenyan Grime. Okay, so just watch this space that's going to be coming. And thanks for joining us.
On the podcast. Thank you for having me, man appreciate it.
Midnight Chat is a Loud and Quiet podcast. Music courtesy of gold Panda. Search Midnight Chats on iTunes for more episodes and to subscribe. For more information, visit Loud and Quiet dot com