These are Back of the head with a brick liner notes. There’s a dream version of that show that’s two hours where I’m just sitting and talking. Connecting every dot in my life. Probs for the best that’s not a thing. Away safe one.
One morning Dad comes into the living room with three CD’s; a chemical brothers album and two Bone, Thugs, n Harmony singles. He put on First of Tha Month like a cavemen showing his tribe fire for the first time. There was an enthusiasm in his voice and eyes I had never seen before, and wouldn’t see again until years later, when he’d reveal to my sister and I that the beef in our spaghetti bolognese wasn’t actually meat but a revolutionary new food called Quorn.
My seven year old self couldn’t understand what I felt when listening to Bone Thugs. My thirty two year old self still struggles to define it. That unique feeling when music physically hits you. A wave of emotion as invisible as it is all-encompassing, lungs filled up with the sound. I’ve felt this when listening to music a handful of times, but this is the first I remember. Yeah, the song is about waking up for an unemployment cheque so you can buy weed, but to me it sounded like a celebration of life.
Four years later I hear a song called H to the Izzo on KISS fm by a rapper called “Jay-Z”. On the second verse he points out people in his neighbourhood struggling to get by, then seeing himself in the centre of it all, as if he was in the eye of the storm, under a lamppost, crack in his hand (genuinely thought he was referring to palm reading). It was a Monday, and I held the name of the song, the artist, and the second verse in my head all week, listening to the radio in the hope it’ll play again. I went to HMV on Saturday, bought it as a single, and ran home to put it in the CD player. Like Bone Thugs, I didn’t know what was being said, but was drawn to a feeling in the song. The combative nature of the lyrics, a seriousness contrast agains a cheery Jackson five sample. At the time Eminem was at his peak, so any rap with a hint of subversion spellbound me.
For most of secondary school I’d buy new music, engage with what was popular without really understanding what made songs special. If an artist released a song I didn’t like, I’d feel like I had done something wrong. Feels silly to trust Nelly more than myself, but then again Nelly had millions of quid in his music videos and I saw on MTV Cribs that he had an aquarium in his living room. My only link to having any sense of taste was my love for Jay-Z (and Outkast, but it took longer to feel a personal connection to them). I had no idea he was the big rapper, He didn’t have much chart success here so as far I could tell he was less popular than TQ. Less popular than the big guy in D12. Maybe on the same level as Obie Trice. When everyone talked about how great fifty cent was, I’d wait for my moment to chip in with “yeah, I like Jay-Z” “Have you guys heard of Jay-Z? He’s really good” “I have the Blueprint 2.1, it’s got loads of bonus tracks”*
When The Black Album came out I was working a paper route and couldn’t wait to put it in my Discman, holding it straight with all the balance of a fine-dining trained waiter to prevent it from skipping.
December 4th came on, Jay-Z’s mum, Gloria Carter, talks about the separation of her and Jay’s dad. At the time my mum and dad had broken up, and I couldn’t tell anyone. The words wouldn’t come out my mouth. My dad moved out, and instead of walking to his after school, I’d walk the way to the train station with my mates, wait for them to go, and head back in the opposite direction. I don’t know why I couldn’t share it, as if to share it was to acknowledge it, face it. To say it out would would make it real. I couldn’t do it.
After Gloria tells us about the separation, Jay starts rapping again, only dedicating one line to his father on the track. Perhaps to lament anymore would take us too far away from the superman persona sold to us. Even on the song the pain from it is used as a catalyst that makes him stronger. Yes, the pain existed. I’m stronger for it. No, I won’t indulge it.
Before black album, whenever Jay rapped about his dad it felt almost dangerous, his vulnerability a weakness, haunted by a moment of his life he had no control of, giving an understanding of who he is now in a way far more tragic than I think he’d want to let on.
Fitting that it’s on his “last” album he puts his father, and his own vulnerability surrounding him, to rest on Moment of Clarity.
December the 4th was the first time connecting to what someone is saying ahead of the skill of the rhyme, or the synchronicity of voice and sounds. The words bouncing off each bone, all reverberating at once. Jay Z went from being my favourite rapper to a person who played an active role in my life. A person telling me it’s going to be okay. From this point on, lyricism became my life’s focal point.
It freed me from the zeitgeist, too. Popularity made way for experience/any record released in the 70’s or prior. Led Belly, Kris Kristofferson, Feist, Ouktast’s first three albums, Doom’s Doomsday, Gillian Welch, Patsy Cline, Thin Lizzy, The Byrds, Bruce Springsteen, CSN&Y, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, and at the top of it all, Neil Young. Tonight’s the Night and On the Beach in particular put me in touch with a pain I couldn’t reach, or feel on my own, a pain that was there but couldn’t access otherwise. This was all at the late stage of Teenagehood. Hearing about artists at boxing, school or work and then going to HMV or Virgin megastore and previewing each album track for fifteen seconds. The peak of this experience was looking for Pieces of a Man by Gill Scott Heron and instead winding up with Small Talk on 25th and Lennox, an album that introduced me to spoken word.
At twenty one I started going to a lot of comedy and poetry nights. All of them open mic. As much as I was there to bull-ride my own own thoughts and emotions on stage, I loved listening to people talk about the way they felt. Shitting on open mics after outgrowing them feels like a right of passage as much as attending them, and I get that to a point, but a good open mic provides a feeling of camaraderie and perspective no other night can.*
Going to these gigs and meeting so many new people brought with it a sobering realisation that I wasn’t paying any attention to the present moment. I felt like the world’s youngest old man. MF DOOM excluded, I had been solely listening to old music for six years. That’s not just six years of something else, it’s six years of missing out. I hadn’t bought a new Dizzee album since showtime, a new Arctic Monkeys album since Beneath the Boardwalk. As I decided to become an artist myself, it felt foolish to ignore the world I was in, and the art being made today. Every artist around my age at this time felt less like a wise sage, and more like a comrade. Another person trying to make sense of their own “right now”.
I wound up spending a lot of time downloading free mixtapes on DatPiff.com. I’d listen to a new project everyday on my commute to schools in Brent for almost three years. It allowed me to discover Tyler, The Creator before Yonkers, Kendrick Lamar almost two years before his XXL freshman cover, but also had me trying out to every single Ace Hood project. Swings and roundabouts.
On the bus and train rides home after gigs I’d play an artist I trusted. Every inch of my body tired, my sense of fatigue would fizz away like a Berocca tablet in the worlds and stories created by Feist, Kendrick, Starlito, Kevin Gates, Tink, Nipsey Hustle, Problem, Curren$y, Fiona Apple, Danny Brown, Smoke DZA, Corinne Bailey Rae, Krit, Rapsody, Ab-Soul, and of course, Joe Budden.
Joe Budden was almost the logical end point for the lyrics over music lifestyle- rapping about how awful life can be over some of the worst beats with so many of the beats he rapped on being absolutely rubbish. This’ll sound strange, but the cheap beats would sometimes fit the song perfectly. I don’t know if some of those freestyles would’ve sounded so convincing without the awful reverb from a cheap mic, or a beat that felt ten years behind the current sound. There were months where I couldn’t go a day without playing All Of Me at least three times in a row.
I was hanging out with a friend in his hostel, he was having a bit of a rough time of it. We were listening to DOOM on youtube, and I wanted to play him some Joe Budden- I thought it might click with him the way it does with me. a couple of minutes into one of his broken wings freestyle, he switched it back to DOOM without saying anything. I wondered if Joe Budden was just too blunt about rapping without depression, and lacked any nuance for it to be remotely enjoyable. It also crossed my mind that Joe Budden might be shit?
The day Arsenal won the 2014 world cup, I was talking to my friend Toby on the phone. We hadn’t talked in years, but rang him after he posted a few statuses and pictures on Facebook that scared me. He was crying on the other end of the line. I remember him asking me why I was being so nice to him, and all I could say was “Because you’re Toby”.
On the coach back from brainchild Martyna Baker tells me that she’s developed a lactose intolerance. That it came from having too many dairy products at once, and now if she even has milk in her coffee she feels sick. It made me think about my gig that weekend, how it felt more like an obligation than an opportunity.
Why did I write? I think it was because I could be painfully shy and was really scared to express myself. Especially at parties or when surrounded by strangers. That said, I couldn’t tell my friends about my parents divorce, there was this girl I was so in love with and whenever we’d hang out I’d get a nosebleed. I’d hold everything in. Performing allowed me to talk out loud.. A way to desensitise myself from trauma and regret. Turning a confession into a performance. Transforming an Intense, personal, moment into an intense, personal show. I could feel myself transform when performing, as if the person I knew I could be, the person that would tell someone how they felt did exist- in that specific moment. That the words would have weight, would convince.
I wound up talking more. Making friends, building relationships. The present moment became increasingly precious, and the need to write and perform the times in my life where I didn’t say the right thing felt like a punishment, not a release. My writing style struggled to describe this new sociable, more active life as well- myself as a person- was happy- myself as a writer was inherently pessimistic.
It was in 2014 I found K-pop. It was thanks to my friend Hibaq, YouTube recommended videos, and having a crush on the K-pop star, Gain. Her face was in the thumbnail of a video and I clicked on it. The songs was called “Abracadabra” a super camp, really fun pop song that I’d listen to on repeat, with a twinge of embarrassment imagining anyone knowing I was listening to it, and if I did tell anyone I liked it, it’d be in a sort of jokey tone. It was too loud, too silly for me to admit it was something I loved. I kept in touch with BEG’s and whatever links Hibaq would drop on twitter. It led to me finding Gain’s incredible song Bloom, a declaration of love that captures the dizziness and fun of falling in love with someone better than any song I’ve ever heard. It took me years to accept that- that a Kpop star could write a song expresses that emotion in a way I like more than anything by Neil Young or Dinah Washington. Especially because it’s in a language I don’t understand. But the moment towards the end when she says “I love you, it’s the love” frees a flock of multi-coloured doves out of my chest.
In the summer of 2015 I found Red Velvet and their song, Dumb Dumb. I had heard Red Velvet before thanks to Hibaq, it was their song Automatic. A far as I was concerned they were an RnB group. Smooth, slick, while slightly derivative. Something that wouldn’t sound out of place to (my favourite song) Body Party by Ciara, but almost too slick to feel real.
Dumb Dumb wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like any song I’d ever heard before, and it didn’t seem to express an emotion I was familiar with. Recently Pitchfork compared it to Jessie J’s Bang Bang- and I suppose I can see that, a lot of K-pop songs are essentially their take on American pop songs. And like Bang Bang, Dumb Dumb is declarative and bombastic, although I believe Dumb Dumb has way too many new ideas to really be compared to anything else. To start, the word “Dumb” is said 214 times within the space of three and a half minutes. Like a lot of Red Velvet songs, words are repeated to the point of losing their original meaning and instead become part of the tapestry. despite the constant repetition, you forget they’re even saying dumb dumb. It’s the musical equivalent of living next to a waterfall, after a while you stop hearing it (fun fact, I have never lived next to a waterfall)
In Dumb Dumb, the feeling being conveyed, to me, is losing your sanity and liking it. I don’t know if that’s the message of the song, I don’t want to know. It could also be about feeling dumb when talking to your crush? Most Kpop songs I listen to I can basically feel like I know what they’re talking about. There will be enough words in English for me to get the gist of the song. There are plenty of words in Dumb Dumb, but it goes all over the place. Halfway through there’s a rap dedicated to Michael Jackson. The video is a spectacle, feeling like a Charlie and the Chocolate factory remake directed by Hype Williams.
Kpop, and Red Velvet in particular had me re-embrace that feeling Bone Thugs gave me. There’s understanding lyrics, and there’s embracing an expression of emotion. Red Velvets’ first album was impeccable. I’m ashamed to say it took me so long to let myself take it seriously, to not laugh off that I loved it the way I did with Brown Eyed Girls. I deeply love that first album, and when Russian roulette came out, I loved it even more. Each release has brought with it an excitement as it gives me a holiday from the grey of London. A good way to make sense of life is by enjoying it. Having them in my life at 26 to 32 has been essential as Jay-Z was for me at 10-17, as Neil Young was at 17-22, as Big KRIT from 22-25. All the artists prior got me through life, Red velvet are unique in that they pushed me to enjoy it.
I’ve talked about music here before, and computer games, and I hope to try them into writing. I know most people reading this are writers themselves. Just like understanding enjoying music is more than just what the words, I found a bit of a new style when writing and it was just about stripping everything down. There’s this poem I perform all the time called wifi gods. There’s a line that I still sometimes get embarrassed to say “I miss kissing you. Miss you kissing me” It’s not a punchline, or a rhyme. Or anything than a statement.
It sounds clunky, and silly, maybe a little like Gain at the climax of Bloom- but it works. I’ve got a poetry section on this website, and love when people read my work- but I write for performance and sometimes trusting that what you’re saying is true works better than any wordplay, any zoomed in description of a lovers bottom lip that- lets be honest- always sounds more detached than it does passionate.
A few years after my parents break up, my dad wasn’t in the best place. We were in a run down flat that had very thin windows. We’d sometimes try to warm up the flat with the hob. Slightly crowding round it, but not the point where we had to acknowledge how depressing that was. It was the morning and the only light in the flat was that grey-almost blue light from the clouds into the kitchen. For some reason, I asked my dad if he was, or had been depressed. Dad told me that there might be two types of depression. There’s the one where you just can’t be reached, and there’s where he felt like he was, where he was sad, but if he heard a song on the radio that moved him, he’d smile, he’d feel his body move to it. Back then, we had the radio on a lot.
*1 Here’s something embarrassing to share, I vividly remember playing with a random curtain rail, pretending to be in a star was film while replaying Hovi Baby, The Watcher, and Meet The Parents. That’s the level of understanding I had for what Jay was talking about back then)
*2 I’d host my own night and see (oi oi, woop woop) first timers steal the show from now-famous writers, not because they’re better, but they talking like they need to be there. You can see the years that have led up to the moment they’re now in and it’s more captivating than any prose.