When a person listens to a good song, and they can look out at the world and their lives and see the dark and the light, the negative and the positive, all the different elements, all come together in one holistic poem, that is a very healing and very reductive thing, and that’s what my music is about.
I’ve been blessed with so many opportunities and so many amazing things throughout this process. But all the while, I remember that the reason that I’m here and the reason that I do music and tell these stories is that people come to know the love, the God that I know.
I guess, in a way, I grew up mixed race: half white, half black. That question’s always been on my mind: ‘What are you? Are you this or that? Are you a white dude or are you a black dude?’ In a strange way, music and comedy is kind of the same thing. I’m both. They’re just different modes of expression.
I know that I’m here because of the grace of God. But I also know that I’ve been given this second chance for a specific reason, and that is to bring love to the world again through the voice of my music, and I’m so honored to be able to do it. I’m so blessed that God has chosen me to do that.
I grew up in Deptford in south London, and at that time I used to wear toppers, loon pants and tonic suits from shops like Take 6 and Topman. I was a bit of a soul boy, but I had a very eclectic taste in music – I was into James Brown and Bowie; and I was the only kid in the neighbourhood who would also be listening to Chopin.
My dad had records, but only one deck, so Skep used to try and play a song on one deck – the Music Centre we used to call it, a cabinet with a glass door – he would play one tune on the record and then mix the tape to it, that’s what he used to like doing. He became a DJ.
The thing with me is, about that – about rock and all that – years and years of crate-digging, listening to old music, you kind of start to connect the dots. And I was seeing the thread that was connecting everything together, which is pretty much the blues. And everything soul or funk kind of starts with that.
Things can be really empty in this world, and I don’t just mean the music world. It can become a very meaningless place if you don’t really understand: ‘who am I? Why am I here? What am I doing?’ To feel fulfilment and have a deeper level of understanding, personally, that is the most important thing.
I find Indian music very funky. I mean it’s very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it’s the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground.
I dropped out of high school when I was, like, 15, so I just focused on doing music. It’s all I wanted to do; I didn’t want to work or anything else. I took all the negativity and obstacles that came with life, and I just put it in the music.
I think my style is quite grungy and punky. I love the ‘90s and the music from that time, and I love punk music. I’m also a fan of mixing vintage with some high fashion, which links back to my musical taste because I tend to mix old music with newer songs.
Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, ‘I’ve never seen anyone run like that before.’ It’s more than just a race, it’s a style. It’s doing something better than anyone else. It’s being creative.
Poetry itself is music. I’m just lucky that I can convert it into music. William Blake is my favorite poet of all time, and he said that he wasn’t quite familiar with the sounds of music. If so, he would have been a musician. All of his poems are all like songs, and that’s how I always try to start my thoughts.
I’d rather be a Jack-of-all-trades than master of one. If I became an icon, where my whole life was music, I would probably have become a vegetable. I wouldn’t be able to have all these talents I have today and be an interesting ‘character.’
The music of ABBA is not that happy. It might sound happy, in some strange way, but deep within, it’s not happy music. It has that Nordic melancholic feeling to it. What fools you is the girls’ voices. You know, I do think that is one of the secrets about ABBA. Even when we were really quite sad, we always sounded jubilant.
I went to jail at 17. While I was there, I discovered that I could write. Once I started making some songs, other inmates wanted to know a little bit more about what I was doing, and they asked me to rap for them. They really liked it, and I made it a goal to come out and try to make something out of the music.
If Death Grips isn’t the fourth horseman of a hip-hop apocalypse, its music at least tests the genre’s threshold of extremity: The trio’s abrasive, jittery style teeters on the edge of palatability, and plays toward a morbid curiosity to which many listeners won’t succumb.
I went to see ‘Phantom of the Opera’ with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music… Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time – the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music.
Truth of the matter is, jazz is American music. And that doesn’t mean bebop. Jazz is really about improvising. All the music that’s been created in America has been pretty much improvised… Whether it’s hillbilly or rock n’ roll for blues, it’s basically jazz music… It’s basically about another way of hearing what comes out of America.
I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans – the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today.
I love so many different types of music – hard rock, bebop, jazz fusion, R&B. And I’ve loved meeting and painting so many amazing artists like Lionel Richie, Ronnie Wood, Sia, Steven Tyler, Swizz Beatz, Taylor Swift, James Moody, The Fifth Dimension, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Michael Jackson. It makes me smile thinking about each one of them.
Music is the language of the angels. You can hear just one or two chords, one or two notes of a song, and bam – you’re right back there, you’re right back in that moment, you’re back in that day, you’re back at that prom, you’re back in the car.
I stream this radio station, Radio Nova, that’s based in Paris. They curate a beautiful set that’s really all over the place – they’ll play blues or some West African music, then A Tribe Called Quest, then funk from Ethiopia, then James Brown, and then the Beatles. It’s an amazing mix.
Oratory is the masterful art. Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, architecture please, thrill, inspire – but oratory rules. The orator dominates those who hear him, convinces their reason, controls their judgment, compels their action. For the time being, he is master.
As long as it’s making you happy and you’re enjoying it, then you should never stop writing music. Whether it’s going to take you somewhere, viewed by other people, or it’s literally you in a bedroom at home, it should be something that you do for yourself.
