Can you tell us something about your very beginnigs, from the Pay As Go Cartel times and how from there the things developed for you?
Me and Wiley grew up together from young age, we were always music, MCing and being creative. He was always a step further because he was a producer as well as an MC. My start was with Wiley coming out of the studio one day with a new instrumental and he requested me and some other guys to come on the track, because he knew that we were MCs. That track was called Terrible. It wa the first Roll Deep song ever got made. On that song a lot of people agreed that I stood out as a different sounding MC, because of my voice tone and the subject matter I was talking about. That was quite different to what people was doing at the moment. That highlighted my style as something new apart from PAYGC. That was the introduction of Flowdan to the scene that was already bubbling.
Compared to music genres like Uk garage and jungle/d&b, the grime sound has a darkness to it, an harder edge. Which are in your opinion the reasons of that kind of developement?
There are probably a lot of factors but principally, it has a lot to do with how the young people feel about the world and how they translate what they are going through life. Everybody expresses themself somehow. When it comes to this type of music -and I feel that even with dancehalls and bashments- we always gravitated to the songs that we could relate to and the bass lines that made us move, in an almost subconscious attraction towards the dark, heavy bassline and subject matters that are true to life. Not just talking about parties all the time. It was a combination of all this things. That fascination for that heavy sound was nothing new, if you think about dancehall and d&b and the sound system culture. We took different elements and came up with our own product. One can call it dark but it´s expression of our life. And I feel comfortable in that place, when I´m operating in the underground, operating in the nightime. Doing music that provokes a response from other humans.
Talking about darker, deeper sounds. Many fans of electronic music know you from your collaboration with The Bug, What can you tell us about that experience?
He´s not from my area or my age so, the main thing that we had in common was the love for music with an edge, music that is unforgiving regarding the compromises of life, trying to get radio play, trying to attract listeners. That attracted me to his music and that attracted him to me. Once we met it was perfect for each other, I was the vocalist with the style that he wanted to work with. That kind of collaboration was very natural. He don´t compromise, he does exactelly what he likes and only that, so I learned a lot from him. At that time I was someone who´s coming up in the grime scene so I was always looking for ways to improve and ways to be accepted, and he was the one who said me: “you dont need to be accepted, you just need to do exactelly what you do, because you are good at what you do and people will respect you”. And that is always good.
What about your experience with Hyperdub?
Regarding Hyperdub, that was a natural progression, because Kode9, the owner of the label, is the Bug´s friend. That was the first label to show interest in Skeng, the song that me and The Bug realised together. That had the collaboration with that label happen in first place and then, when I put out an EP with them a couple of years ago, it was again with them, because we already had a relationship. It was something that worked for them.
How did you get to Tru Thoughts for the release of your last album “Disaster Piece”?
Two or three years ago I started working by myself. For the first time I really sat in the studio working on my solo projects, because anything before would´ve been collaborative work or featuring. I started to to get myself in the routine of making music alone, focussing on my own ideas -because sometimes I just record and I don´t know why or when the music´s gonna to get heard, but I still do it- so I ended up having a catalogue of a lot of music, and after the release of that EP for Hyperdub I´d never stop recording. At that point my manager met Robert Luis at a social event and he asked what I was up to, if I was still making music, because he was a fan. So from there he continued the contact until we sent him lots of songs and he said that he would love to put out an album, and then I fined tuned some of those tunes and delivered them.
At that project you also worked with producers such Cato, Masro, Kryptic Minds and Echo Deal. What can you tell us about those collaborations?
They aren´t necessarelly the big name, established producers but they are making music that I enjoy to hear. When I´m involved in a project I need to enjoy it and feel confident enough to delivering it to the people. For instance Masro, he worked on four tracks on my album. He´s unheard but I think he finds a perfect balance between the traditional grime and the uk bass sound as well. Or Dexplicit, who worked in the track Grime. He is one of the pioneers of the genre with a track called Pow!, in which I also featured. So my decision of who I was working with was made solely on who I could trust to make music I liked, as opposed to trying to find producers who are hot at the moment or the media and the press find exciting. I wanted to go to names who were making music I was comfortable to add my vocals.
I would like to ask you in particular the meaning of the lyrics of the track called Grime.
The lyrics came after the instrumental I recorded around two years ago. The thinking behind the concept was that a lot of people were talking about grime and it´s resurgence, because the success of JME, Skepta or Stormzy. For someone like me, that never stopped doing grime and never ever had a break and never ever had another job since having decided to do music, it sounds weird to hear that grime´s back or the genre is on the raising, because in fact it never gone away. The writing on that track was to trying to highlight the difference between people that live it and people that come and go, like fashion. For me grime it´s not a fashion, it´s my life style.
More in general, what do you think about the state of grime in 2016?
It´s the most healtier state to date! It´s very interesting to see the success in many different levels of the music scene. For instance you have Skepta, it´s very obvious because of his mainstream success and then you got new people coming out like AJ Tracey or Abra Cadabra so the scale goes from the top to the bottom and it´s a good thing because before, for the up und coming artists, if you wasn´t Wiley or Kano or Dizzy Rascal, it seemed like it wasn´t worth it. But now there are different reasons to feel that there is a place even for you.
What´s your plans for the future?
Beside still promoting the album, I m already working on a new , more collaborative project. I want to mix my energy with different artists to potentially provoke a different reaction.
