Music
Jammer in Jamaica
"I was going to go and meet my idols that I'd grown up listening to, I didn't know what to expect"
The Boy Better Know stalwart on the collective's recent trip to Jamaica, discovering Newbaan, meeting U-Roy and the life of grime.
Jammer and U-Roy
© [unknown]
How much are people aware of grime in Jamaica?
U-Roy wasn't that knowledgable – obviously he knows that there are things going on in Europe and there's escalations of sound culture. He'd heard that we'd won the last Culture Clash and congratulated us on that. As an older veteran he most probably wouldn't be sitting down and listening to grime mixes with Dizzee Rascal and Wiley! He knows that there are digital, electronic sounds going on in Europe. When we landed in the airport there were fans there, they were mentioning tunes and quoting lyrics and stuff like that. It was kind of weird to come there and hear people making references to Skepta's Ninja man lyric. So they are in tune – the internet broadens the knowledge of everyone, but I think it would take us to go out there and be there for six months or a year to make an impact. Me and Skepta have been back and forth this whole summer, going around everywhere and pushing the sound. It feels like a time when people are really ready for it. Sometimes things are ahead of their time, we've been doing this for 15 years. It's weird for me, I didn't give up because I loved the music so much – I've seen every up, down, good, bad time, whatever, but this time it feels really good. It's in our own hands, people want to see us, they want to buy our music, they want to support us, they may or may not have seen our journey, but they love the music and culture, they love the style, they love everything about the collective and they're just buying into it. I feel a lot better that we've been the long way around as it's turned out a lot better for us.
What were you expecting from the trip?
The fact I was going to go and meet my idols that I'd grown up listening to, I didn't know what to expect. What you don't want is to go and meet people and have a bad experience so I was more thinking about being natural and being myself rather than acting like a character. These people are some serious cats. Meeting them was overwhelming, but what I took from there was the people do it for the music.
Music is everything in Jamaica. The culture revolves around the music. And that's what happens with grime in London. it's a pivotal force.
it makes people feel like they're part of something. You feel like you're part of a movement. With the actual art form of the grime music, there were no rules and it was edgy and whatever happened, happened. I think everybody's gone full circle, everybody's made their money and made their hits and now they want to be creative again. It's not necessarily about the money - I didn't start doing it for money. In any situation that you're in, money's going to come and money's going to go, but my initial purpose is to make England respected for music and to have a deep and embedded history that is our own. Before that it was a bit shaky, we were always picking bits from different people and putting things together and mixing and blending and we didn't have nothing from ourselves. I think garage even came from the US originally and a lot of the garage MCs didn't speak in an exact English accent – it was a funny cartoon accent or it would be a mix of semi-Jamaican mixed with American. When we came through and changed up the beats and pushed the accents, that was the first breaking point when we had something about us. Now you look at it, you've got people like Danny Brown and A$AP Rocky and all these people that are using digital sounds, dub step, square bases and hits and stabs that we're using. You're kind of thinking, "OK then." Some of them think that we don't know that they're getting it from us. They'll take it and sell it to the world on a much larger scale and not know that they found it in this little hub. But I'm cool with that. Do your thing because the truth will always come out. I'm not one of those people that gets upset people are using the sounds, I'm happy.
I'm happy that Jay-Z made New Slaves with Kanye. That to me is a grime tune.
All that does is make it easier to me so when I play my music, to people's ears it's not so alien.
What were your highlights of your time in Jamaica?
So can you tell us about the track, Shaky, that you did with Newbaan?
We went over there, spotted him, got a bit of a talent, put the tune together and hope to get as much income from it, which we'll give to him so he can start building his career over there, get in the studio and get recording. I think giving someone like that a chance, he'll take it up, he's talented as well. Because he can do double time, we knew we could get him on the grime thing. That's what sold him to us – not only was he lyrical, but he was fast.
You discovered Newbaan at a clash in Portmore right?
He was stand out – that is the element of these projects that we're doing. Although we were in Jamaica and met all these amazing people and doing these amazing interviews. He wasn't written into the script, he wasn't meant to be in it and now something amazing's come out of it. He's no older than 18 - he's a young buck, but he's mature though with it.
Did you guys get up at any of the clashes?
Skepta was going to – he was getting himself all gassed up, but do you know what it was? It was more of a moment for us to just be there and absorb. And you know what? It was a good thing that Skeppie didn't get up because it would have changed the frequencies of us looking out for the likes of Newbaan. It would have been the whole thing of, 'how did I do?' when he came off rather than us just watching the show and finding someone from over there to network with. Because it would be good to see a really good story come out of this.
WIll Newbaan be at Culture Clash?
That's what we wanna try and do and we're still looking into that right now. But obviously we don't want to give away too much as the others might try to counteract that.
How many dub plates did you bring back from the trip?
That would be telling!
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