Interview and Photos by Matt Sonzala
It’s 2024. Do you consider your music Grime?
Hmmmm. I’d say to me, Grime, just like punk is a cultural attitude so yes, but I wouldn’t say yes to people who didn’t get that. So I probably wouldn’t say that this is Grime to an American audience.
Listening to your songs, there is an extremely poetic, lyrical feel to it. It’s not just straight up street, you have some really intricate lyrics and at the risk of sounding overly generic it gives me a feel of slam poetry meets those type of beats.
Yeah, poetry yeah. Slam poetry, I came up in a scene which was as much as it was rap it was writing as well and any type of writing. And poetry is a type of writing and there would be different types of writers. Some of the writers would be slam poet writers, some would be esoteric, ethereal, obscure writers. And the reason it’s like that is because I grew up listening to or getting into through music or film, different writers. I remember listening to Tom Waits and through Tom Waits hearing Charles Bukowski and then reading him, or listening to Nirvana and then going on a deep dive on them and then hearing them do something with William Burroughs, and then looking at his stuff. And that’s just the American stuff and over here was like John Cooper Clark. Arctic Monkeys when I was a kid they were referencing him so I’d go and read him. Or there would be a film like Ghost Dog, RZA did the soundtrack for that and I would read about samurais. So I’ve been interested in different ways different people wrote. Like Ian Curtis from Joy Division, getting into that stuff and who he was influenced by. And a lot of stuff is cross pollination. So you watch a film, you hear a poet, you listen to music you hear a film reference. MF Doom had so many references to cartoons and games and anime in his stuff and that’s what I liked. How much references there were and wells of culture that I just didn’t even know about. I got into Doom, and I think most people over here got into him through Gorillaz. I got into all these weird rappers, even Del the Funkee Homosapien I got that through Gorillaz. When you are a kid and you see Gorillaz and you see what all these characters are doing, and then you realize they are their own thing and you go into their albums. Born Like This from MF Doom is like my favorite thing and you listen to Doom and you listen to other people speak on Doom and then what he’s referencing I didn’t know about. I didn’t even know it was a reference I just thought it was a funny way he was saying something. It’s just the connectivity of stuff. So where the poetic stuff is, as much as it’s John Cooper Clark and Ian Dury, it’s all of that. Also I grew up in East London and everyone talks poetically. Cockney Rhyming slang is poetry. I remember this amazing Bob Hoskins, he’s a film actor. I remember this amazing thing he said, he was out with Ian Dury and they are both Cockney aficionados. He said “Look at your Ice Cream on the daily.” Bob Hoskins said it took him a week to figure it out, he didn’t know what he was saying. No, “have a butchers at your ice cream on the daily.” Butchers, hook, look, ice cream, uh, freezer, geezer on your daily mail tail. And you say that to an American and they have no, they think it’s dumb. It’s the smartest thing ever and I grew up around that. And if you want to write layers, people in America or New York or whatever talk about hip hop, that’s my layers. Aside from all those other influences I just talked about, that’s the roots over here. And next to that is maybe white working class roots, and the black music we grew up around is the same thing. All the reggae and dub artists, even someone as big as Bob Marley, he’d say stuff in a simple way. He’d say stuff like “You are the big tree, we are the small ax.” Things like that, it’d be like, prophetic, a proverb. Like “Them belly full but they hungry.” That’s a gangsta line. “A hungry man is an angry man.” Genius. People think that’s just basic, so all sides. Reggae, Dub and all that side of stuff, Dancehall, Dubstep, Grime and Garage and everything else. I think that’s what London is. It’s the two sides of like underground white and black culture fusing and that’s what happens. That’s why Grime is so important. Grime is a fusion of that, if you are gonna talk about Kool Herc in New York or Grandmaster Flash or whatever over here it is Slimzee, it is Cage, it is Geeneus, it is all these people and they are white, as much as it is Jon E Cash as much as it is everyone else it’s them as well and that’s what gets left out. So when I say is something Grime, I feel like I do it a disservice by saying that because there is so much. But when I say something is hip hop, people know what it means. I don’t think people really know what it means if you call it poetic or if you call it Grime, it’s already too deep. I’d be here forever.
I think part of why I liked Grime was in response to the simplification of when hip hop went more mainstream. We still had MF Doom, and I mostly listened to Chicago and Houston and Memphis and crazy rap back then that now is kind of hip. It all had it’s own poetry and it’s own psychotic craziness, especially from a place like Memphis. When I was able to hear the Grime that jammed so hard over here, because I had already known Jungle and Drum N Bass I loved hearing the hard hitting sound of Grime. London is one of the biggest cities in the world and it’s culturally diverse and has such history in art and music, in 2024 where are we with that? It seems to be a great time for UK music and what I like about what I hear coming from here across genres is it’s not overly simple.
No, no but where are we at? That’s the question right? It’s hard to not compare with other people. People do a lot now, but because they do a lot they don’t do the things that they do very well. So I think before phones, you had to be a multi-disciplinary artist. People would do one thing very well and they would have a label deal doing stuff and a stylist doing stuff, now they do it all and they spread themselves too thin and there is just not enough time dedicated to it. I sacrifice some of the stuff that they will go for, for marketing and popularity, and getting their thing out there. They will sacrifice some of the work so they can make it quicker, so they can get to the shoot and their friend is doing that and the mastering is done by some guy they are paying online. And they are doing this stuff fast and they make it just good enough. It’s not shit, it’s not great it’s just good enough. That’s what makes things homogeneous. Everyone uses the same drum kit, everyone uses the same sample pack, everyone uses the same presets or everyone has watched the same YouTube video. I listen to a song and I say “I know the guy they watched before making this song. Everyone has copied him.” Or these three people. Even Kennybeats, everyone started just doing his stuff, they weren’t doing their own stuff. Even if they were it was just a little deviation. It wasn’t new, it wasn’t them completely and the only way you can do that is by studying everything that came before you and then channeling what is different about you. Using what you have learned rather than the mimicry of modern… it’s almost too big to talk about without going in for hours. In my opinion, there’s very very few good MCs now. And even back then when the MCs weren’t all great they were at least different. So growing up listening to Grime you would have D-Double E, and people will say he’s the greatest, then you’d have like Bruza, completely different, Wiley, completely different, Dizzee, completely different, Kano, like you would have variation. It was so different and they were almost trying to be different and be themselves. I don’t see that as much now and even when there is someone who is really different I don’t see the taste. So there’s really good MCs, my favorite MC right now is Kibo – and he is quite funny but his picks are funny as well when he picks his beats. I think sometimes everyone doing it themselves would be better off leaving someone else who they respect to produce it, just like if you have studied America you’d see that there was the guy who everyone rated, his production, because of his taste, and they’d be like “I am an MC but I don’t know how to produce, you do that.” Now people don’t know how to decipher an expert. It’s all community based, bring your family, bring your friends in and wires get crossed I think with that. So the motivation to make money and the motivation to succeed supersedes the art that you’re making.
Well part of the focus of the relaunch of Murder Dog, because Murder Dog was a product of the selling tapes out the trunk community of people really organically doing everything from start to finish and the producer was very important to make the sound of Oakland and the sound of any of these cities and regions. Something that blew my mind is my daughter bought an Akai sampler when she was 16 and started messing with it and she came to me and said “Dad I know where all the sounds are coming from for all these new songs. Why does everybody use the same thing?”
How many people have used Pharell’s sample kit, or Timbalands now? When Pharell used that stuff it was new, I mean, I know that kit! But they use it and they don’t even pitch it, don’t even twist it, they just use it, they don’t even flip the thing. You’re supposed to flip it. Like me and Cage we talk about it all the time, subvert, subvert the fucking thing. Make it something else. Make it you. If you could make this how would you make it? And no one does that. It’s like the first step even when you do that after the first step you find out that all these other things that you can do after that first step. It’s that jump that’s missing that’s kind of like… also a lot of stuff is “vibe” now, which I don’t like.
There was one year maybe 2016 at South By Southwest that I realized that at all the new artist rap shows, every person who went to those shows said “I really liked their energy.” That’s all they could say. They all jumped around the same way, threw water on the crowd. Yeah it was an energetic show of little kids jumping around.
It’s a pathetic use of language as well. That’s another homogeneous thing as well, even language. So many peoples language and the words they use are the same. So no wonder. My focus is to expose people who listen to my stuff or anything I talk about is to expose that there is all this other stuff that made the thing you like now, the foundation of the thing you like now was built on, is better than what it is now. More risks were taken. A good example of risk taking is Christina Aguilera’s “Dirrty,” and that was Rockwilder. Listen to that instrumental. There is no way in hell that nowadays an instrumental like that would get put in front of arguably the biggest pop singer at the time. It did then and it was #1 for ages. People can say whatever they want and obviously it was a song before with Redman, and she was like “I could do something on this.” I don’t even know how they came up with that idea, it was genius. A genius fusion of underground, there is no melody on that thing. It’s an industrial rap beat with like sirens and the snare will rip your face off. It should be in like the Bergheim or something. Today I can’t see anyone taking that risk and if they did they would clear everyone out. People think they are taking a risk, like Billie Eilish or someone, they think they are taking a risk but they are not. And the same with vibe and energy, I think because we are surveilled so much, we surveille ourselves as much as other people and we are so hyper aware everyone’s designed, everyone’s aesthetic, and then people also try to go against that and try to be hyper real by like streaming eight hours a day. So you get two ends of the spectrum, either I’ll stream eight hours a day or I will design my entire life down to a t. And the subversion and the messy middle thing is what I like. One thing I am doing is I am making t-shirts of people that I reference throughout my music, it’s all these founders of UK art and culture that are forgotten within music, design, film, art, comedy, performance, writing, there’s eight categories and I can go through all of them and be like Michael Powell, the reason Scorsese exists is because of Michael Powell. No one knows about Michael Powell, and Scorsese says it was his main influence, and it was Powell and Pressburger, he’s another one and they are two British film directors no one knows about. You can then go to Storm Thorgerson and Storm Thorgerson was part of Hipgnosis, on anyones mood boards you will see Hipgnosis album cover art. Hipgnosis did album covers for everyone. Led Zepellin, Bowie, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, all classic ones as well. And they were all photographs. When you see that album cover with 1,000 beds on the beach, they put 1,000 beds on the beach and they took that photo. No one can even reference him, all the people know are the things they are consuming eight hours a day like, scrolling, and it’s not their fault, it’s too addictive, so someone just has to put all this other shit, which I grew up on and even I forget sometimes, I have to forcibly dig through to find it, and that’s just two categories. That’s just design and film. Music, Labi Siffre, Labi Siffre, black, gay, British artist, wrote like the biggest hits for Madness, Madness made covers of his hits. He was sampled by Dr. Dre for Eminem’s “My Name Is.” That’s a Labi Siffre song “I Got The,” it’s in the break which is very hard to find. He also was sampled by Kanye for his song “I Wonder.” He’s a British, black, gay genius no one talks about and this is what I mean. There’s a massive gap and the people on one side, all this information is on one side of the gap and there’s huge drop and no one wants to jump over it like it’s too hard, it’s not. You just have to do what you did in the early 2000’s with the internet, just search, it’s not even hard. And everyone else is on the other side of the gap going “Oh look at my guy he’s doing this, and this person is friends with this person.” And that really is the culture we are living in now. And people think they are alternative because they like anime and they make anime references in their raps. I’m like “Do you know how many times that’s been done? And you’re not embarrassed?” And you’re not embarrassed because you don’t know, and no one knows and eventually that gap gets wider and wider the more the generation gap gets bigger and art gets worse because of it.
Did you come up having to buy tapes and things like that? Physical media?
Yeah, I was on like, I had a walkman, a CD walkman and I had tapes, but tapes when I was really little but they were more like story books, but even then, the first story book, and this is how weird my mom was right, she used to give me Rik Mayall story books. That’s what used to put me to sleep. He’s another one. Who would reference Rik Mayall? You should watch this, it’s a kids story time type thing, it’s called Grimm Tales, kids fairy tales but him rewriting them. And they are seriously fucked up. The effort he put into one episode, where he is just talking about like a frog that eats its mom or whatever he’s talking about, or like barnyard animals that join a band, it’s kids stories but his performance just of them and you watch them and a performance of anything now it’s just embarrassing.
It’s interesting to hear you relate it especially from that perspective and going that deep and referencing the things your are referencing. I didn’t expect all this to be honest because I feel the same way and kind of have to work hard to not spazz out about it.
Because it’s endless and the thing is that’s the problem, it’s so deep and endless and bottomless wealth of creativity and knowledge and information that if you’re like in your mid-20’s now, you’re too old. Even cartoons I was watching now, like growing up watching Ren & Stimpy, what are kids watching now? I know they aren’t watching Ren & Stimpy or any of that wacked out stuff.
We had a lot of psychedelic shit presented to us as well that is for sure.
I think the same things kind of happen with everything. With food this has happened, you go to the shop and you can’t trust it. So what does everyone do? You go online and you nerd out and you are like “There is this farmer who only grows organic asparagus and it just kills cancer.” There is some random video of someone doing that. That’s food. Someone else would do that for exercise, someone will be like “Oh you have been sleeping wrong your whole life.” And obviously people will spin that stuff and make money on it. But then some stuff is just true. Everyone’s nasal breathing now. And it’s free. You just breathe through your nose instead of your mouth and it just sorts all these problems out. And I thought it was bullshit, and then I did it, and it was like chalk and cheese and then I would see some UFC fighters doing it and I was like “Oh.” And it’s like nowadays, knowledge is underground. The knowledge of how like to live right is underground. And the way people are living mainstream, the overground is just disgusting. There is cancer from inside and you’ve got to like look past it and squint your eyes and lift the chair up and kick someone in the shin and then you find it. And that’s like kind of whats good about it. Because when you meet someone who pays attention in that way, you find another one. And you might only have like four friends but they are the people who are like, not believing in the dream that was sold to us that kind of just smells a bit funny. And like David Lynch if you look a bit closer at the white picket fence, it’s covered in red ants. That’s another quote, that’s a good metaphor for the state of things as we know.
Well we have talked about your influences but I want to talk about your process. I assume you make the music, are you a one man show?
Yeah, I mean, usually. I also make and produce with I Don’t Matter, he is my producer partner and he is the engineer and Nick Cage’s engineer. He is the in house engineer of Belly of the Beast studios that Cage runs and me and him just make stuff together. We’ve got an album together, it’s an eight track album, our thing is called East End Gravy. It’s kind of like Pharrell and Chad of The Neptunes, they are their own individual artists but together we are East End Gravy and my solo work is Casper Grey. When I make stuff, it could start from a sample, it could start from a YouTube clip that I’ve like, fucked up. I normally just have endless sample packs that I download. I’ll just put like computer effects, or screams or whatever and I’ll create a pallet. So I have probably like tens of thousands of samples I have collected over the year and then I will create pallets from them. So I’ll go through each one, I’ll mark different sounds and put them in a pack and I’ll make four beats out of that. So I’ll make four beats out of the same sounds and the majority of stuff I do is just pitch shift and arrangement and using the James Brown philosophy, “Everything is a drum.” Then I’ll use maybe like a Bowie or Beatles philosophy of melody and I will try to create a melody. Normally when I create a melody it’ll be something from how I would speak. So if I say to you that’s a melody (hums a melody) now whatever I say, or whatever I express that’s what the melody is. Cuz when I talk, when I express something, it comes from somewhere, I don’t know where that comes from but whatever that is I’ll try to capture that and then re-express that through different sounds. All my stuff is sampling, I might sample a tune and cut it up like an old tune or something online or whatever, but most of the time it’s like I will just make stuff with sound effects. I record stuff on my phone of just like me doing a whale or some other noise and then just pitch that down, drag it out, texturize it. I’m all about palette and texture. So my snare might be like me when I was pissed off I broke some glasses and then I do it again and record it, or whatever. I’ll just capture sounds every day and I’ll fuck ‘em up. For example there’s one of the tunes “True Say,” actually I think I Don’t Matter had the original thing but that is just really slowed down piano and a crazy delay on one part of it. It’s only got one sound really and then a massive snare. So to just set the mood, get the palette and set the mood. So if I am going to use someone elses sound that could be recognizable I’ll try to fuck it up and twist it to fit whatever idea I’ve got. When I write a song normally I do experiment with shit but normally I’ll make some beats but always with the intention. I’ll think of an idea in my head and I’ll try and make that come alive and it will all be fully formed. It will be music video, artwork, as well as the production and the words and the lyrics.
Some insanely legendary records have been made in the Belly of the Beast studios with Nick Cage and them, how did you connect with those guys?
So my brother Izambard, he did a tune with God Colony, a producer duo, and I was in Homerton and Izambard had this studio in Homerton which God Colony was in, Sega Bodega, I think Let’s Eat Grandma might have been in there. Let’s Eat Grandma you should check them they’ve got a tune that SOPHIE produced called “Hot Pink.” It’s one of the greatest songs of modern times, it’s fucking insane but so creative. And anyway all them lot were in there and God Colony did a tune with Izambard and then Izambard and me basically linked up with I Don’t Matter to mix Izambard’s album and then from there I was always making stuff, I linked with I Don’t Matter as well and just started making tunes with him and we got on straight away and started doing East End Gravy, we made the album and that got sent around to like, different people, Nick Cage heard it and wanted to meet me and first time I met him we sat and chatted for like nine hours about everything. Like about Grime and other music because he is the architect of a lot of that stuff and people don’t know about it but I do. And then he started pitching the album around. Everyone liked the album but we didn’t have a following because we didn’t give a shit about that. And I still a little bit believe that good work will translate and I don’t have to be some like popular twat with my tits out online to just get a fuckin record deal. I don’t see music as an accessory, which is what it is now. So if you are funny then you make a song. If you’re fit if you’re good looking, then you make a song. It’s an accessory to your brand. I don’t see music as an accessory. And anyone else who is popular for something else then wants to jump into music and do a thing that’s all you are. You’re making accessory music, you are making a hand bag. That’s all you are to me. That’s how you mitigate risk for a label. Oh they have a lot of eyeballs on them, lets also give them a song and get some ears on them.
Leave a Reply