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This week on London Real, we have the English rapper, poet, and journalist Aala.
Akala discusses his journey as a rapper, poet, and journalist, exploring themes of identity, culture, and social issues on London Real.
Key Takeaways
- Knowledge and education are powerful tools for personal and social empowerment.
- Cultural identity is complex and shaped by diverse influences and experiences.
- Art and activism can intersect to challenge social and political structures.
- Maintaining integrity in creative and professional pursuits is crucial.
- Understanding historical and socio-economic contexts is essential for addressing contemporary issues.
What the video covers
- Akala reflects on his upbringing, influences like Wu-Tang Clan and Pan-African Saturday school, and how they shaped his identity.
- He shares experiences of racial and socio-economic challenges faced during his youth and education.
- Akala talks about his diverse interests beyond music, including journalism and activism.
- He discusses the Hip-Hop Shakespeare movement and its deeper cultural significance.
- The interview covers Akala’s views on British identity, patriotism, and commonalities with immigrants.
- He reflects on the Rastafari movement and his recent trip to Jamaica.
- Akala critiques mainstream portrayals of black culture and emphasizes the importance of knowledge and education.
- The conversation touches on the music industry, independent artistry, and maintaining integrity.
- Akala shares insights on language, power, and the legacy of colonialism in Jamaica.
- He emphasizes resilience, honesty, and the ongoing struggle against systemic barriers.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Akala and his background
- 07:08Deeper insights into Akala’s work and philosophy
- 13:56Exploring Brick Lane and cultural context
- 21:21Akala’s reflections on career and identity
- 27:49Music industry and independent artistry
- 41:05Education, elitism, and social commentary
- 54:51Jamaica, neocolonialism, and reparations
- 62:35Language, power, and cultural legacy
- 69:44Audience demographics and personal growth
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
listen to wuang forever or read the autobiography of mrox when I was 9 would I be the person I am today probably not one to many that could have been doctors and up spending the whole life boed up
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Surrounds my reflection. I do this for my own protection. If I didn't go to Pan-African Saturday school, if I didn't grow up in the H Empire, if I didn't listen to Wu-Tang Forever or read the autobiography of Mrox when I was 9, would I be the person I am today? Probably not.
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was 12 and it was a little poke it was a meat cleaver in the back of a guy's head I had other teachers that felt a person from my racial cultural economic background and certainly from my socio economic background should not have been
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One too many that could have been doctors ended up spending their whole life bored up.
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clever in fact if you drop out of school we're going to give you a hiding you say you are British and that lovely patriotism NE feed but in reality you have more in common with immigrants do with your leaders mus music is good
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Hip-hop was my life. It was something I lived. I loved interacting with it. I wrote lyrics every day. I was in battles because to me, all they do is breed conflict. The first time I saw someone get stabbed, I
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stay powerful London real presents aala knowledge is power it's fair but at at 20 you can't admit it's [Music] fear welcome back to London real looks like this gentleman behind me has a few things he wants to say but I'm
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was 12, and it was a little poke. It was a meat cleaver in the back of a guy's head. I had other teachers that felt a person from my racial, cultural, economic background, and certainly from my socio-economic background, should not have been
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nothing but love and uh the comments on YouTube and Twitter are blowing up uh and for good reason people are really excited uh to hear from uh from this man and to hear what he has to say about a a
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top of the class. These were guys who were doing well in the street, but they'd spent so much of their life in and out of prison, etc. They were like, you don't want to be like us. You know, you're
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special to get that and and to get a lot of radio play and uh he's pretty much gone uh From Success to success along the way but he hasn't had a a traditional music career whatever that is um it's funny he actually uh uh
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clever. In fact, if you drop out of school, we're going to give you a hiding. You say you are British and that lovely patriotism, nice feed, but in reality, you have more in common with immigrants than with your leaders. Music is good
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video but I'm not sure I haven't gone back and checked it but you know his interest now are extremely diverse he he just came back from Jamaica uh and he had a lot of interesting things to say to me about the the Rastafari movement
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enough if the visual is good enough, if your online interaction is decent. You can keep your integrity and have a career. If we're honest, true strength is the strength to be honest. Ultimately, any power structure in the world wants to
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clarify some things when it when it comes to the movement and and some of his thoughts about it and uh so he talked about that um he's also got a movement called the the hipop Shakespeare movement um which again true
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stay powerful. London Real presents Aala. Knowledge is power. It's fair, but at 20, you can't admit it's [Music] fear. Welcome back to London Real. Looks like this gentleman behind me has a few things he wants to say, but I'm
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it's a bit deeper than that and uh that's true about most of the things that aala does is that uh there's a lot more to it than what's the surface and uh you know I've met a lot of people
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going to start first. This week, we have rapper, poet, and journalist Aala on the show, and this is a pretty special gentleman, as you guys have been letting me know this week. After I dropped the trailer a few days ago, there's been
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because he's a guy with so many interests he writes regularly for the guardian uh he he uh is just has got so many different things going on with him you know he's not really just a musician by any means and so uh to meet him in
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nothing but love, and the comments on YouTube and Twitter are blowing up, and for good reason. People are really excited to hear from this man and to hear what he has to say about a wide variety of topics. You know, Aala has been around for a long time. He first
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that because that's their music videos or that's their Ted talk but in person uh aala is kind of even more as you'll see uh this is a guy that can uh speak uh fluently about subjects like the uh
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burst on the scene in 2006 after he received a MOBO award for his first album, and that's pretty
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starting to sound like a Kala a bit and uh he uh uh obviously had a lot of fascinating things to say so I really hope that we got a nice snippet of who this man is uh I'm always trying really
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special to get that and to get a lot of radio play, and he's pretty much gone from success to success along the way, but he hasn't had a traditional music career, whatever that is. It's funny, he actually
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it's like boom you get 90 minutes with this guy and I hope I can bring out uh the most interesting things that aala has to say uh no doubt we could have spoke for 6 hours and uh probably barely
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started off probably being known as the brother of Ms. Dynamite, and he was actually in that video "It Takes More" that he mentioned at the very end of this show, and I think he's the little kid playing video games in that
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video uh please share that with your friends and like it and uh tweet it out and if you're listening to us right now on iTunes you can actually go uh to your podcast app and tweet this episode out
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video, but I'm not sure. I haven't gone back and checked it, but you know, his interests now are extremely diverse. He just came back from Jamaica, and he had a lot of interesting things to say to me about the Rastafari movement,
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Squarespace and uh these guys are an all-in-one uh a platform solution that can help you build your website or your online portfolio and we've got it set up now on lond and real that you can search by topic so uh if you're feeling for
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which my limited knowledge about that was from the Bob Marley documentary, which, you know, in true Aala form, he was not necessarily impressed with, but he had to
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politics or success or nutrition or any of those things and you can see what we got going on at London re so thanks to those guys at a Squarespace and if you want to check them out you can click on
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clarify some things when it comes to the movement and some of his thoughts about it. So he talked about that. He's also got a movement called the Hip-Hop Shakespeare movement,
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website's got to not only be good it's got to be slamming you know it's got to really grab people's attention so uh you can do that with Squarespace uh you can set it up free uh without even putting a
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which again, true to form to Aala, is not what you think it is. At the start, it's not kind of a simplification or an urbanization of the great writer Shakespeare, but there's a lot more to it than that, and
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watching us and and uh you're supporting the show so I really appreciate that and uh I'm walking through here uh down Brick Lane if you guys don't know it and uh if you want to check it out come down
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it's a bit deeper than that, and that's true about most of the things that Aala does, that there's a lot more to it than what's on the surface. And, you know, I've met a lot of people
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at bulletproof and uh if you're not familiar with these guys uh they make a fantastic coffee uh that's free of molds and toxins uh that I drink every day uh I add some grassfed butter and some brain octane oil and uh I serve it to uh
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over the years. I've prepared for politicians like George Galloway. I've sat down with astrophysicists like Neil deGrasse Tyson, but preparing for Aala has got to be one of the most difficult things that I've had to do
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that's going to be uh fantastic so uh uh big thanks to those guys if you want to check it out click on the bulletproof logo uh or go to our website I've got a a video we did for them on sleep hacking
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because he's a guy with so many interests. He writes regularly for The Guardian. He has just got so many different things going on with him. You know, he's not really just a musician by any means. So,
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Brian londonreal.tv uh we're always looking for people uh that want to uh help us book guests I think we got to aala uh through one of you guys who at first uh told me that he existed and then I think got me in touch with him
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to meet him in person and to have this 90-minute conversation, which you're about to witness, was pretty fascinating because I quite honestly meet a lot of people that I had this image of what they're going to be, but how can they be
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the London real radar uh then much love to you uh also we're on Twitter uh we're on Facebook hit us up but uh the the the biggest thing you can do is tell a friend about London re or uh share this
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that because that's their music videos or that's their TED Talk, but in person, Aala is kind of even more, as you'll see. This is a guy that can speak fluently about subjects like the
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the deep and uh meaningful words of aala I hope you enjoyed this episode it was a very special one for me and uh I think we're going to be seeing big things uh out of this man in the future so
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evolution of the Wu-Tang Clan and then downshift into the socioeconomic implications of the British public school system, and then again start talking about the history of slavery in Jamaica and America and the revisionist history around that topic. So, now I'm
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Scottish mother you grew up just a few miles away in Camden uh you played Youth Football uh for West Ham United as a kid and if you're uh from the states listening to us and you've just now heard about the World Cup this year
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starting to sound like Aala a bit, and he obviously had a lot of fascinating things to say, so I really hope that we got a nice snippet of who this man is. I'm always trying really
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you voted a best hip-hop act at the mobile Awards uh since then you released three more albums uh you set up the hip-hop Shakespeare company uh you performed a fire in the booth uh on Charlie floss radio show which has
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hard when we do these episodes to give you the essence of this person or to give you the best of this person, and, you know, it's kind of tricky sometimes because we have 90 minutes and there's no editing, there's no cutting, so
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over the world you've given two more TED Talks than I have cuz I'm at zero right now uh you've just come back from Jamaica um aala welcome to London re thank you welcome thanks for being here you've uh you've been requested by a
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it's like boom, you get 90 minutes with this guy, and I hope I can bring out the most interesting things that Aala has to say. No doubt we could have spoken for six hours and probably barely
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about like Jack Fresco had you know uh uh the British minister of parliament um George Galloway and Neil degrass Tyson in here writers like Irving Wells John Ronson but you're probably the hardest so uh bear with me I hope we get through
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scratched the surface. But if you're not an Aala fan, I think you will be after this, and if you are an Aala fan, I think you will be even more so after this. So, if you're feeling this
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up in Camden you know it's funny I go to Camden now occasionally and I kind of call it now the Camden theme park I don't know if you agree with me but it seems like you go to the Camden theme
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video, please share that with your friends and like it and tweet it out. And if you're listening to us right now on iTunes, you can actually go to your podcast app and tweet this episode out,
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but what was it like growing up in Camden for you and and how has it changed um for me I wasn't tied to that one specific area so I lived there but my uh stepdad was the stage manager of the Hackney
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so please do that. Give me some feedback, etc. If you'd like to see more musicians or anyone else on London Real, please check out our website. It's at londonreal.tv, and it's brought to you by the folks at
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so I spent a lot of time all over London really and I think growing up in London as a whole and and Camin was perhaps the most extreme reflection of that is is the side by side inequality is what
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Squarespace. These guys are an all-in-one platform solution that can help you build your website or your online portfolio, and we've got it set up now on London Real that you can search by topic. So, if you're feeling, for
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and you could have almost predicted it 6 years old you know 5 years old from the the way in which people entered the world the kinds of family backgrounds they were from economically culturally ethnically you know you could have added
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example, this episode with Aala, you can click on music and search by that. You'll find Ashley Walters next week. You're going to see Scuba's Pip. You're going to see all of our history of people like that, or you can click on
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there's a few exceptions to that myself being one of them I didn't grow up with my dad you know we didn't have a whole load of money but then I had some odds in my favor you know I had a in my house
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politics or success or nutrition or any of those things, and you can see what we've got going on at London Real. So, thanks to those guys at Squarespace, and if you want to check them out, you can click on
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things that maybe have pulled me in the direction I've gone but then partly it was just luck I'd be lying if I said I was never involved in any problems that could have led me in in in the other way
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the logo right here below. You can go set up your website. Do it right now. I say this so many times. You know, when it comes to the web, you get one chance to make a first impression, and so your
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interacting with both all these kinds of well I was in the lower Str of what we're talking about you know like I said it was just my mom and we grew up on and off uh those kind of problems I lived in
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website's got to not only be good, it's got to be slamming. You know, it's got to really grab people's attention. So, you can do that with Squarespace. You can set it up free without even putting a
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culturally I was kind of equipped in many ways to deal with the world that would confront me I went to a special Saturday school um taught me alternative kind of History so always led me in in a kind of
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credit card in, and for as little as like eight bucks a month, you can set yourself up. And when you go to buy, if you want to save 10%, use the code LONDON. It lets them know that you're
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what were the key factors in some of your peer group that turned out you know in the quote unquote bad ways or didn't go I guess ultimately where they wanted to go was it was it lack of the family
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watching us and you're supporting the show, so I really appreciate that. And I'm walking through here down Brick Lane if you guys don't know it, and if you want to check it out, come down
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society and it's even School even though we have access to education which is a massive benefit compared to many other places in the world education is off-putting in the current way that is to many people the things that we're
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here to Shoreditch. It's always colorful, always kicking off. You might see a few people photo bombing me behind, but it's all good. I just want to give another shout out
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eurocentric curriculum is offputting to a lot of people the glorification of monarchy even if people can't articulate these things directly even if students cannot say this is what I think is about school they just have a feeling and so I think many of the
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to the good folks at Bulletproof, and if you're not familiar with these guys, they make a fantastic coffee that's free of molds and toxins that I drink every day. I add some gra
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above Einstein's IQ and there's there is a portion of people in prison if you go from country to country that have this high level of IQ and I would argue that actually at five 6 s years old this mold
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this kind of Industrial Revolution learning by rope preparing us to be served to work in factories mode of Education that we're all being asked to fit in this one size fits all education doesn't fit everybody and many of the
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people that are rebelling against it Einstein included you know who's the guy everyone holds up as the worldwide measure of intelligence we know that his school teacher wasn't a fan of him did he have degrees even I mean he wasn't
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necessarily an academic by any means not from my understanding but I know that there's that famous quote of his school teacher telling him he wouldn't amount to anything okay okay so it's him and a few others probably so many others right
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so I'm saying many Geniuses are wasted because of society's preconceived notions of identity because of the approach and and I'm not saying I was a genius what I will say though is the way teachers dealt with me me and my schools
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and my brightness wasn't as you'd expect teachers to often deal with it I had some teachers that were very encouraging of it I had other teachers that felt that a person from my racial cultural economic background and certainly from
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my socioeconomic background should not have been top of the class and that pissed them off and they were clear about it that's what was interesting that at seven eight n years old my questioning and my uh display of
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intelligence was viewed as threatening and not as something to be encouraged and I learned that very early that actually this intelligence made certain sections of adult Society uncomfortable so you would play it down sometimes or subconsciously sometimes and I think I
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think conversely you're going to play up your ignorance you know if ignorance is what is encouraged and rewarded in you if sports are encouraged and given the thumbs up but being good at maths is is seen as not for people like you which
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one are you going to gravitate towards which one are you socially rewarded for um and so I'm saying all of these factors if we could put them in a kind of some kind of mathematical equation amount to a society where prisons are
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full of poor people generally you know and then the racial disproportions within prison are what they are you know where women do not end up being astrophysicist per se not because women are necessarily less good at science but
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because from very young they're taught as a woman you know you don't want to be clever than a guy you know if you're clever than a guy that's unattractive and obviously a woman's ultimate aim in life is to get married right and to have
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children that's all women should care about so I'm saying these conditionings work on on on many levels and they produce a result but I think that we act like in a society like this particularly the education and politics and the
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economics are kind of benign we don't we're not encouraged to analyze well the we we live in a society that is a result of a particular set of people's ideas you know if you read Adam Smith hist is
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the Victorious but not even just the victorious in the in the sense that our our economy and our culture and this this Society like all societies was designed and there are thinkers who are the designers of this society and so
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it's a Society in their image and so logically it reflects the the the the cultural appetites of its designers is that intentional that design or is it is it a conspiracy design or is it just a result of whoever is in power Whoever
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has the wealth that it kind of but it's not conspiracy I mean people say Adam Smith or Thomas Maus or they stated very clearly what or even ploh if we want to go back you know 2 and a half thousand
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years to the root of kind of designs of European culture they say very clearly what their design for society was if we read the Republic for example you know and so when we end up with societies that are reflection of these designs or
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mavelli we act surprised it's not conspiracy it's an implementation of a of a plan and that's not to say we are powerless to interact against that that's not to say things always go the way the powerful want them to go they do
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not because we're human beings and we all have our own thoughts and feelings and opinions and we wake up from the Matrix every s and say actually we're going to force Power to divert its course in this particular direction or
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that particular direction but those interacting social forces sadly uh the balance of power often lies with the powerful and so the results I would argue certainly of my upbringing and of the people I grew up around the results were predictable and
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they were the results that favored people that already had some access to power of some form be that wealth be that cultural be that racial social gender whatever else have you seen much change say in the last 20 years if you
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went and looked at a 10-year-old uh kid in Camden school system now to where you were 20 years ago has things have things changed significantly um yes and no so I think that the the outcomes are are broadly similar the same groups of
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people that were underachieving 20 years ago are sort of underachieving now or underachieving I would say they're achieving exactly what it's designed for them to achieve with we I don't think anyone goes into State schools and is taught you're going to run this country
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I think when people go to eat and and and and they're destined for ox they're taught as I know because I know people that have gone to they're taught you're the cream of the crop you're the creme de creme you are destined to run this
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country that is certainly not what I was told in my state school and I not I doubt anyone else in a state school was taught that we're not taught that sense of entitlement uh to have our voices heard and
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so I don't know I think I think that as I said there's been reaction to it and some things have changed for the positive some things have regressed for example when I was young uh supplementary Saturday school particularly in my community in the
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African Caribbean Community were seemed to be to me at least a lot stronger there were a lot more of them um and they were a democratizing force they were an alternative voice they were a different voice within the society and
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certainly many of the young African Caribbean uh origin students I know that have managed to achieve in spite of the odds have been products of these kinds of community Saturday schools myself included and it seems that that movement
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isn't as strong today as it was 20 years ago for a number of reasons they still exist but um I think the the more overt forms of racism that were around in the 80s and that were acceptable uh were Unapologetic within
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the society created a more intense need or understanding of need um in the community uh whereas I would say the manifestations of of Oppression are a lot more subtle today and therefore it just means the reactions to it are not
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as forthright sometimes why music you know you could have played football I know then you might have had injury you could have gone into math probably could have gone to eaten somehow doubt yeah I don't think that would have sat with my
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Persona I mean I have a lot of people that listen to this from the states and if you don't know I mean the British system is so it's so unique and the fact that you have these super Elite schools
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that even if you're not uh told that these people will run the world historically you know they have and uh the they are some of the top institutions even to get into a lot of jobs and finance where I used to work
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you know there are feeder schools from Cambridge and Oxford there is this kind of a shadow system of Elite University versus non- Elite in this country I would say much more what they call the red brick universities but even before
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University level you know what is it something like 83% of senior government in this country went went to eat and don't quote me on that exact statistic right but I know it's somewhere in that region so not only are we talking about
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people in positions of power that are similar in terms of their gender similar in terms of their race similar in terms of their economic background we're talking about people that just went to the same school you know and then and
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then we say democracy I mean how Democratic can the decision- making process be when all the people in positions of power and not only from the same background they all went to the same school um so I think I think that
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is um worthy of dialogue but people don't seem to think so um but yeah that that school system is what it is for me music um I was always involved in music I grew up on a sound system I grew up partly in
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a theater I always loved music I always loved writing um which even though I was good at maths and science writing was still the thing that I felt I excelled at most in some form of writing and then
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Public Enemy came out but then wuang forever came out yeah so 1998 wuang Forever Came Out 97 97 excuse me and you heard that and that made you uh start reading and and start I said this is what I want to do with my life well I
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was already reading but I'm saying wuang forever Was A Moment Of crystallization almost a bunch of guys from Staten Island are inspiring a kid a kid in England to go for sure like now I look back now that album now a lot of people
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prefer 36 Chambers I get that but I was nine when Chambers came out so I've retrospectively I think it's a great record and I know wuang forever got slept on a lot in the States but for me here number one it was the first rap
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album to go number one in the UK it was the first hip-hop album that it seemed in my childhood United everybody even if we listen to you know the people who were listening to Oasis and Nana or blur
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or whatever else bhang was the first record that got everyone's attention but was still authentically Hood it wasn't trying to be an alternative music album it just was the level of poetry was that strong and that good that it seemed to
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pull everyone in and everyone was just like wow in all of these guys and and so what struck me about wuang was the level of unapologetic poetry from these guys they didn't dress differently they didn't speak differently they didn't try
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and not be who they were some of them have been to prison some have been shot some have sold drugs they had a you know cliche hip-hop upbringing right a ghetto upbringing in the projects in New York at least most of them and yet here they
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were using words like benevolent in in rap songs and I just found that amazing and I I mean I wrote out the lyrics 28 songs it's a double disc album I still could tell you the whole album back to
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front including the skits this before they printed lyrics and albums exact or you get them on the internet I mean this was when internet was really first starting to make its impact I know for the Young Generation now they can't even
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imagine a world without YouTube let alone without internet right right I mean people know they forget that music was the original internet you whether you look at the doors singing Break On Through in the 70s and promoting an
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anti-war Vibe or Wu Tang spreading a message in 97 I mean that was the way music was the way to spread a message and so for me I think that's what attracted me most football I fell out of
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love with it it was something that was very useful for me as a teenager that I think helped at least to the best of its abilities it helped keep me out of trouble I was in I was getting a train
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to runford him back three times a week from North London right which it grew me up as well you know my mom was very sick during my early period at West Ham she couldn't take me so I as a 12-year old
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boy and ronford back then I don't know how it is now you know but ronford back then was a real skined area like it wasn't somewhere as a young black or brown person you really wanted to be found to be honest with you a real NF
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territory and you know we we we got a little bit of abuse a few times you know and things of that nature but it grew Me Up character building it was character building you know it wasn't it wasn't
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what my parents had a great way to look at any horrible experience in your life yeah I mean at the time I didn't but it was I wanted to play football that much right and um I I didn't when I was 12 or
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13 years old you could have told me I wasn't going to be a Premier League football player but by the time I got to 15 or 16 I just I realized it wasn't for me I didn't want to spend the next 15
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years playing football to a lot of people that seems like lunacy especially given the money involved um but it just it's the kind of thing you have to love in my my opinion to do every day right no regrets on that no regrets on that at
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all I mean players that I was good but players that were far better than me have are not that I know personally are not playing in the Premier League also how do you how do you express your creativity as a football I know you can
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during the game but you can't on a 100 different levels like you are able to exactly A and B I think there's a football is very political though again it cloaks itself kind of like the music industry now in this uh mythology or in
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the shroud of apoliticism so so many things that are political go go on within the football in world yet footballers are encouraged to keep quiet to shut up there's this really Sly social pressure that's put on them to
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shut them up basically to keep them wellp paid millionaires basically okay political between teams or between Sovereign Nations I mean I mean all of the politics of the society that we've just been talking about all of the geopolitics of the world that we can
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analyze are reflective within sports right you understand we were talking about the World Cup earlier and the politics of the World Cup going to Brazil and now we've heard it's going to be in Qatar right you know we were
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talking about I'm talking about all of the same stratification processes that exist within the society exist within professional sports okay and and music but we get to that and there's a power structure within football and you're encouraged to be obedient to that power
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structure and it's a huge Money Maker these days which has changed D dramatically since you were playing I mean the last 10 or 20 years these I mean even when I was a was when I was a child really the money came into
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football in the Premier League was founded which was in 1992 and I was nine then so my whole life growing up football was a was big money I mean people were on even when I was a child Stan Colmore got transferred for5
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million I remember that being a big deal but if you think in the mid90s that's a lot still a lot of money right and people were on 20 25 Grand that was the I mean people are on 10 times that now
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but 20 grand a week still wasn't anything to be sniffed at right yeah it's still a lot of money you tell people that in the States they're like a week I mean you know the salaries quoted in weekly terms over here yeah it's it's
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it's pretty shocking so you were saying uh creativity uh football has a lot of politics as well so all right no regrets there no music okay let's talk wuang briefly uh you said one time uh that after the wuang album came out wuang
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forever you said immediately after that hip hop went from being about history philosophy and culture to being literally money cash and hose now is that it was that that you speaking at the time or did it really Trend that way
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um I think that's a a polarizing and extreme statement but I think that's sort of the way it felt at the time it felt like there was this brief moment with with in the mid90s and I know a lot
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of people think position it even earlier they would position it at the point of Public Enemy they would position it you know at the point the NWA came out I'm saying for me the the the final time that group of what I saw and of course
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they had their their street side which I think was cool what I loved about wuang was that they were reflective of the whole Hood in the sense that you had goes facing rayquan rapping about selling drugs and rapping about that
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lifestyle that they lived and went through and you had Rizo on the total other side calling himself the abber and rapping about philosophy you had the The jizer Who rarely swears you know so you had a and then you had ODB who you know
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kind of played the group drug addict who ironically from what I understand in real life was the only member of the group who was actually from a middle class home so he reflected this psychosis by where you know young
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African-American men particularly you know are encouraged by the stereotypes of the white Society to believe if they're not from the ghetto then they're not really black they're not black enough right and so it seems that obb was playing into that a little bit
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rather than being comfortable with the fact that he was actually from quite a nice home and so they were fairly anti-commercial they were but then they became so wildly commercially successful and it feels for me the last time that
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happened in hip-hop that a group who didn't have choruses on every song a group that whose music sounded hard a group who were rapping about serious issues of politics philosophy history you know a group that really reflected the culture of hip-hop and reflected Hip
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Hop's Origins you know in the in in the ghettos of America but also in the wider African uh cultural diasporic experience in the Caribbean and South America and what is meant to be black in all of those societies wuang seemed the last
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commercially successful group that was successful and that year they didn't win the Grammy for best hip hop Puff Daddy won it for no way out okay you know and to me to argue that Puff Daddy's album is a better rap album it was more
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popular we're not talking about commercial success we're talking about best rap I do believe the category was to argue that in essence Puff Daddy is a better reflection of rap or hip-hop than wuang I think is a far stretched
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imagination but it made it very clear what the mainstream industry in spite of Commercial Success what it to what it wanted to elevate and what it didn't want to elevate in in my opinion okay and how did that direct your music in
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your career did you want to bring back did you want to not go in that direction well at that stage the idea that you could have a career as a British rapper was was kind of ridiculous cuz it wasn't
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happening it just wasn't there were there were guys doing it and respect to the guys who paved the way respect to the London posy and to skinny man and to all of these guys that paved the way so
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someone like me could exist right or Ty or whoever else but the idea that you could actually make a living in a career this is before YouTube this is before the internet interacted with music in any significant way right it just it
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didn't seem possible to do that and keep your integrity certainly and so even though I wanted to do it I didn't know how I was going to do it yet and I was still playing football so I saw this
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politics of hip-hop I was hip-hop was my life it was something I lived I loved interacting with it I wrote lyrics every day I was in battles I did this I did that but if you'd have told me then that
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you know I'd do seven or eight UK tours I'd release you know four albums and three mixtapes independently that are literally perform in 30 or 40 countries all around the world as an independent artist I would have been pleas very
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pleasantly surprised even though a lot of people were like well you should be more commercially successful you should sell more records I see it differently I'm very grateful for it m because I feel like I've been able to achieve a
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certain level of success but maintain that integrity and that message and and and I don't see too many artist able to do that and that doesn't mean I'm dissing other artists cuz I don't think every artist views it the way I do if
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all you care about in life is buying Gucci and drinking champagne and your music reflects that doesn't make you a sellout but if you're someone like me and you care about different things and then you make music about Gucci and
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champagne just to sell records then you are a setup I don't think everyone should see the world the way I see it I'm saying for someone with my predisposition to then start making music I dislike just to succeed is is
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something that would compromise my spirit and I'm not willing to do but I am like I said very content with where I'm at in terms of my career if you look at 2006 at that mobile award whether you
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consider that a milestone or not I guess it is an event that happened back in the past I mean what did it take to get there well one of the things I was able to do in 2006 I was probably one of the first and
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one of a tiny handful of independent hip-hop artists that I've ever managed to break a radio one playlist and the way the industry Works in this country if you don't get onto radio one they're really the gatekeeper in
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terms of selling being commercially successful still to this day to this day if you're not on radio one you're not going to sell over X number of albums I don't want I don't know what the magic number is but let say it's 30,000 or
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50,000 and that hasn't changed in 10 years if you're not on the hasn't changed since forever how is that even consider because the playlist I mean obviously there's Radio 2 as well but Radio 2 doesn't sell you as many records
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you can literally correlate what radio one playlist you're on with how many records you're going to sell you can have a small independent fan base like me and succeed self-released right but you cannot be exposed to a wider and the
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way the music industry Works in this country when you go to magazines when you go to say MTV when you go to any a area of the industry they ask you for what's the plot they don't ask you is
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the music good or not they ask for what's the plot I.E who's writing about you uh who's playing your video but ultimately and most importantly who on radio one is playing your records and if you've got got a play from this guy and
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that guy and that guy and you're about to go onto the playlist then you're going to get written about you're going to get talked about and your your status goes up that's the way it works one of the things I was able to do in 2006 was
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to to break that which is not easy to do I had one as an independent is I had a song called Shakespeare get onto the playlist by the back door really it got played by house DJ by Pete Tong okay so
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didn't it didn't come the traditional way that that rap is supposed to go on the playlist Pete Tong played it and then it got played by other people from there from by Zan and others and it made it onto the playlist which not too many
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Independent Artists do then it meant the video would obviously get played a lot by MTV Etc and so it meant even as an independent artist I had a certain level of visibility that I could be in a category with much more numerically
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successful American Artist and a lot of people diss the mobos and there's contradictions within the M but for me the only major award ceremony I saw supporting Independent Artists I wasn't the first independent UK hip-hop artist to win that award sway won it the year
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before me you know and again he was an independent artist there were no other Awards ceremonies giving people people like him are looking and so for me for such a commercial uh award ceremony which does what it does uh that was something that
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gave uh a lot of people an awareness of who I was and was a weighing and and frankly in economic terms at that point it sold albums when you could put mobile Award winner sticker on your on your CD
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this is back when you had record stores HMV would rack you differently you know you have to buy a racking a lot of people who are not in don't know that if you want to be book if you want to be at
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the front of store you pay the the the the the the the retailer thousands of pounds to be at the front of the store but if you win a mobo I mean or a Mercury or Brit or whatever else you
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know you get priority racking so that debut album sold a lot of physical copies because of that so there were consequences and it it just meant I had a lot of people's attention um but you know I think I made some mistakes and me
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and my team made some mistakes in the way we released that record in our understanding of the industry we were new to things then was your first album that my first album we didn't fully understand yet I mean YouTube had just
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come around and we didn't understand really how to use and embrace that we spent a lot of money on videos that we probably didn't need to spend but we were just at that curve where you still needed to get on the television and to
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get on the television you had to have you had to make videos that looked like they could compete with these big budget us artists that that having millions of pounds SP they hiring Hollywood directors to make their videos exactly
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right so I mean Channel you also changed that channel you was a big part of the industry back then where it was the first channel and it forced MTV Bas and other stuff and give more attention to UK artists but also showed there was a
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market for underground UK hip hop people like myself and Kalashnikov you know and others came out of that you know or Kano or sway or any of these guys in this period Channel U was a big part of of
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giving people a platform which was independent Music Television only was an independent music channel that basically played anybody did the people vote that up at all or they just people voted you know people voted people could request your video but the point was it was a
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non-play listed channel so it meant that anyone with a decent video sometimes not even a decent video there were some terrible videos played on there the point was It was kind of democratic in a way you know it had its own internal
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issues or whatever else but it certainly gave many many people who wouldn't have been heard otherwise a platform the first way I know I heard someone like Kalashnikov for example who was a you know was was his video murder and I
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remember watching that video I'm thinking W this this guy can really rap right and it was Channel U that gave him that exposure to me even as someone who's in the scene um and so there were a number of converging forces in that
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period that allowed a few of us to break through and and and many of us are still here you know 10 years later but the same challenges remain in terms of the way the industry works the way radio and
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TV works but what you do have is you have a the internet which we're using right now which is a way you can have a career with really very little compromise you can shoot what video you want to shoot you
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can make what music you want to make and if the music is good enough it will find an audience it might not find an audience commensurate with the quality of the music you might feel that you should sell X number of albums and only
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sell X but if the music is good enough if the visual is good enough if your online interaction is decent you can keep your integrity and have a career I know because like I said I've performed in I don't know 35 40 50 countries all
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around the world and what's ironic I don't say that to show off but I think what's ironic and what's important For Young Artists to see is that in this day and age precisely because of the Integrity in the music precisely because
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I talk about things that other artists are not talking about is why I've been invited to go to all of these places it's not an accident and so that's not to say again that someone who doesn't have my predisposition should just rap
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about the things I rap about to try and be successful is to say and to encourage artists that there is another alternative there is another way to market now that there wasn't 20 30 40 years ago if they curate a fan base they
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can kind of make a living doing that they're not going to be flying jets and stuff but these days but you really do have to work at it right because of the competition's there and you still ultimately for the big success like you
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said you need to be on the playlist you need to have the label a million per have you seen this movie uh called artifact it's by the guy that uh his name is Jared L he's the lead singer for
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30 seconds tomor so it's this whole film about his fight with his uh uh label I think it was BMG or something about how they had this whole they had basically had like three or four number one albums
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and after 10 years with the label they owed the label $2 million or something and yeah and go ahead Sor but anyone who understands the way the music industry is designed you know there's a very simple book oh I should read it's called
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everything you need to know about the music business by Donald ESP pman and it breaks down loads of things that they do in the music industry like for example they have a system called free Goods so they sell 85 of every 100 CDs to a
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retailer right and they give 15 away free but they charge a higher percentage for the 85 so they the label doesn't lose money it's literally just the way because the artist gets paid off a retail R it's a way of giving away 15%
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of the CDs so that the artist doesn't have to be paid on those 15 they have another clause for breakages back in the day when vinyl used to break now they charge the clause for vinyl breakages on MP3 downloads you know even Eminem had
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to sue his label to get back the millions of dollars that he lost for vinyl breakages for sales of a digital thing you know so there's a lot of scams and ways in which I mean TLC owed owed
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money after selling 10 million album right so we know that this kind of uh shafting and robbery and fevery is the music industry is notor that's one of the reasons I didn't want to go in that major label route I'm not saying it
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happens to every artist but I'm saying that if you can have three or four number one albums and owe your label money saying if you study the mathematics of the way the industry works that doesn't mean the label's lost
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money on your product people shouldn't make that mistake no it means that the things that are charged to you the things that are recuperable are unrec from your percentage so let's say you get a 12% royalty it means the
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production costs the cost of making the album 50% of the video budget has to be recouped out of your 12% right so the labels already made their money four five six times over right but you're un recouped does that make sense and so
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this kind of that puts a lot of artists off yeah you would either love or hate this movie watching this cuz they they talked about exactly what you just said they're selling digital downloads and paying for breakage fees
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etc etc and now you look at 30 seconds tomorrows and they're touring like Mad Men and then you realize oh it's cuz the label's not taking a cut of the tour so that's how they've made their money over
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the years but in this day and age most labels are taking a cut of the tour or merchandise of everything now listen I think in an Ideal World if the label spends money invest in you in a fair
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world there's a way of constructing a 360 deal which is the model La do today that is fair if you're the kind of artist that wants to be massively popular and sell millions of Records only a major label has the capability to
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make that happen for you if they make that happen for you and they construct some kind of fair deal where they get a cut of the things that come out of that I don't see for that kind of artist that
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that's terrible the problem is is people are so greedy they have to you know shaft you that extra mile they can't just say you know what we've made $100 million off you you know we should cut you in a piece of the pie you know a
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fair piece of the pie we'll take 99 and we'll leave you with one you know there's just this propensity to just steal and steal and steal there isn't necessary cuz there is uh money going around but yeah most artists that are
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touring now on that scale the labels are taking a cut of that as well did you ever think about signing with the label yeah it's something I contemplated um cuz after the mobile you must have been approached by a lot of people yes and no
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you know there were whisperings but I think the general understanding was that I was a bit hard-headed and I'm not one that was really willing to compromise and I also CU of my knowledge of the music industry I wasn't going to sign up for
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for the kinds of Clauses that we went through so I I I kind of made the decision then that I would do it myself independently and will continue to do it myself independent unless someone makes me an offer I can't refuse
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and what does that mean it doesn't just mean money it means creative license it means complete creative control it means no censoring on anything I say Etc and I don't think there are very many major labels in the world today willing to go
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for something like if we're using analysis and my briding Loki you know I know he sold thousands and thousands and thousands of albums with no radio no TV just off YouTube now if the music industry was just about making money
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labels would be beating down his door there's very few rock bands very few uh pop artists that have sold the amount of albums he's sold that have been able to sell out the garage both me and him independently of one another have both
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sold out the garage in holway venue I don't know what's the capacity 650 700 or whatever is which as an independent artist no song on the playlist my song on the playlist was 7 years ago right 8 years ago so no one can say it's because
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of the radio literally because of a strong fan base online because of YouTube Etc we can sell the amount of tickets we can sell the amount of merch we've sold we can sell the amount of albums we sold label should be beaten
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down his door if they want to make money right but his political message is is it's just never going to be never going to be played on the radio not marketable and but that's the thing it is marketable because how is it he's able
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to sell that amount of albums and that amount of tickets just off YouTube if people don't want to hear all that political how how is his success or moral techniqu success you know how is that explainable they tell us it's not marketable what
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they mean is again it doesn't fit with the agenda of the people who control the music industry that's not about conspiracy what would be the consequence if the song terrorist for example was that popular just off a YouTube video
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what would be the consequence if it was played daytime on radio one do you think people would just suddenly not like the song and not listen to but what he's saying is unacceptable to be played at that time of day to that audience not
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because it wouldn't resonate with them actually quite the contrary because if it resonates with them what are the consequences of that and what are the consequences of making someone like Kareem Dennis AKA Loki a national superstar in a country like this he's
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not harmless he's got something to say what are the effects on people's consciousness of making someone like that a pop star so he will not be made a pop star even if he can generate money and you're saying that starts to break
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down other institutions political of course commercial of course everything yeah of course and and and and this is not unique or new a lot of people say it's conspiracy no throughout the ages even in the Bible they talk about
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singers and players of instruments you know and their interaction with power you know if we go from ancient Egypt to to the griots of West Africa to the Poetry of the Islamic world the interaction between musicians and entertainers and power has always been
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there if we talk about the classical world where certain phrases were banned because they were considered devilish and demonic or associated with infidels with the Moos Etc you know so this interaction between music's spiritual and esoteric and human power and the
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power of the state and the church and all these other stakeholders in society has has always been there this is just the modern manifestation of it but when you talk about people say conspiracy theory you know on that note let's talk
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about one of your favorite individuals Shakespeare yes and you've had a long uh association with him whether it came from uh didn't you didn't you write some tracks on the Fly and perform them originally about Shakespeare yeah and
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then later you've you know you've got this whole Shakespeare project let's just get your general read on Shakespeare now we also have we have here the English Rel relationship with Shakespeare we also have the rest of the world and America's relationship which
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is even different but how do you break down that well shakesp is a genius that's fairly obvious right he's not a a genius without flaw all Geniuses have flaws right and what I don't do even though I use Shakespeare to teach and even though
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I have a tremendous amount of respect for him I don't engage in this kind of he's the greatest writer of all time that's kind of culturally biased you know maybe he's the greatest writer in English that's the only way you could
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even analyze it because if you don't speak and understand all those languages how you could ever analyze their poetries Beyond me I don't not see the contradictions you know plays like The Merchant of Venice or the Tempest that
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quite xenophobic you know I don't see his Li I see his limitations he also has 15 poems to his black mistress that everyone's completely ignored they're completely inconvenient even though he refers to her over and over again as
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being black even though a lot of people believe it was this lady called Lucy Morgan you know so there this whole politics around shakes but remember he's living in his grandparents lifetime Spain was an Islamic country governed by
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African an and Arabs you know many of those Moors when that Empire fell came all over Europe some of them even came to England Shakespeare's queen Queen Elizabeth the issued a proclamation complaining there were already too many of these people and wanted to expel them
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so even the world in which Shakespeare exists the violence the kind of grotesque uh lack of Sanitation that existed in London and London's position within the world London was not the trading and banking center of the world in
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Shakespeare it wasn't the Industrial Revolution there were cities all around the world particularly in China and India and Islamic was least even in West Africa I mean timbak 2 and others were sort of in decline by Shakespeare's birth but nonetheless London was not
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what it is today in geopolitical terms it was not the center of the world but we retrospectively project that back into Shakespeare's World um which I think actually gives him less flavor and gives him uh less of a real touch I
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think analyzing the real world in which Shakespeare lived uh trying to really understand the society understanding even why people say well he didn't really write the plays you know people prefer Kevin Bacon or somewhere they don't consider that Shakespeare had the
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right education to be able to you know write this kind of material I find even all of that interesting and how he's become the ultimate symbol of British elitism in some ways but for me that's the very reason why I claim it because
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but he wasn't part of the elite was he exactly right you know he didn't grow up from that his talent took him into that realm you know and eventually he became you know his company became the King's Men Etc right but his talent took him in
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in in in that direction not his birth um and so for me I find him an interesting character for all of those reasons for his influence on the English language and and also because of the Brilliance of his work ultimately um withand in all
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of those contradictions and so I find that using his work particularly because it's perceived that way because it has this PR attached to it because it is brilliant because it is so widely translated it's about who's going to be
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the custodian of that knowledge there are people who see themselves as the legitimate inheritors of Shakespeare you know many of whom wouldn't see someone like me as being a legitimate inheritor of that tradition but I don't give a sh
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do you understand I I see any writer in the world as my intellectual property and something I can interact with as an artist and I I see for young people in a school system like the one we live in where you have to study this
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guy having someone like me interpret him and someone like our company interpret him not in a way that it's not about dumbing Shakespeare down and doing it in you speak and ghetto speak the musicality is right there in the words
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I'm not figing something if you know Shakespeare's work you know all throughout his career he's experimenting with rhythm and changing Rhythm and you can see visibly if you look at the Tempest which is his last play and you
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look at his earlier plays you can literally see in the shape of the stanzas right where he's made a conscious decision to experiment and change rhythms right so I'm saying this musicality is in there to not teach Shakespeare as what it primarily was
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which is performance poetry right to not see it performed and hear it they used to say back in the day you're going to hear a play which is where the word audience comes from because the word was considered more important than the
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visual right so for all of these reasons I feel that we have have a a position and a a place that some people would like to use and a place that some people consider inconvenient they would prefer I think I don't know who the they is you
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know but there are people that that that even though they say they want these Traditions to be taught how much do they want young people from in a city like London from workingclass backgrounds from multi ethnic backgrounds to say
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well actually this is my take on it and my take is just as valid as yours that's democracy we don't really want democracy we want the people who are the owners and controllers of the society to to filter down their interpretation of
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the Traditions our interpretations are not seen as as valid so I'm I'm aware and cognizant of the politics of this uh this guy but ultimately it comes down to the Quality also of his art you see Putin in Russia now and he's almost
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rewriting history and kind of glorifying Stalin in a lot of the history books where not he was you know known for killing millions of people and and you always see it with the ruling power how they either rewrite history or maybe in
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some ways try to reinterpret culture you know for their own means whether it's intentional or not no I think I think ruling um I mean I can't speak to to Russia particular cuz I don't know enough of the history right but
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ruling Powers will always flatter themselves that's normal and natural or direct even the proletariat to do this or do that or yeah but but I think that said I mean the the the there are different types of ruling powers that
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interact with Society in in in different ways but ultimately any power structure in the world wants to stay powerful right nothing about human history tells us that people in positions of power just say I've had enough of all this
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power wealth and privilege I'm just going to give up you know there are individual occasions of it there are individuals who've got enlightened and said actually I don't need this you know I'm going to go and study in the
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mountains or I'm going to engage with the working classes and be part of a revolutionary Force but as a general rule you know a lot of the time privilege is invisible to you as well if you're born into it it's just it's
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normality it doesn't seem like a contradiction right it's just what you're born into and so I think for me what I'm more fascinated with and what I try to engage with in the teaching of History which I also do
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is reality but is also the history of Ordinary People the ways in which Ordinary People not kings and queens and exceptional you know leaders but the opinions thoughts and actions of ordinary people in my view are actually what direct history but then the history
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is written you know Rewritten I mean the ending of slavery is the best example right the way that that's all the most clearest example to me the way that's Rewritten as being the product of a few Elite guys in Westminister and Abraham
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Lincoln and that's what happened right you know we don't want to talk about the maroons in Jamaica you know in their 80-year engagement military engagement with the British we don't want to talk about the Haitian revolution we won't
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talk about palz in Brazil which was an independent African state that lasted almost 100 years against the Portuguese we're not going to talk about the change in uh requirements of industrial capitalism in that period which Eric Williams uh outlined so well in his
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classic work capitalism and slavery we just going to rewrite the history and say and this happened to me I went to school as a kid I wasn't lying about it when I said in my fire in the booth
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about my school teacher we went to the National Portrait Gallery and there was a a picture of William Wilberforce and my teacher she called me as side of all the kids in the class now I went I was
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the kid who was a bit controversial who went to the panafrican Saturday school who had a big mouth and an opinion right and she called me and she said this guy at Kingsley he stopped slavery and I said miss you mean he like he helped he
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contributed cuz even at that age I was aware that people didn't just say oh I'm going to wait for some guy to come and save me how old were you 12 10 no was seven seven seven I was I was in year
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four and she went no he stopped slavery that she got actually got angry with me and I this has stuck with me my whole life this that she was I mean could she have been that unintelligent that she
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thought one individual stop this what what in its own time would have been this multi-billion dollar industry or was she trying to impose on me a particular ideal without even realizing it I think it's the latter and so what I'm saying
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is the the rewriting of history is very powerful because even very recent history you know can be Rewritten very quickly and people forget here in the UK there were riots all up and down the country in the ' 80s every time the
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Tottenham riots for example get mentioned on the news the ones in 85 they mention the police officer that was killed yet they don't mention the grandmother who was killed right the police enter um the house of cyia Jarrett looking for her son Floyd
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Jarrett and cyia Jarrett ends up dead now every time it's mentioned on the news they mention PC Blake clock but they don't mention CIA Jared this is way of rewriting history by Omission when they talk about the brickton riots which
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occurred in the same period of time they do not talk about Sher gross getting shot in the back by the police and paralyzed another grandmother right so it's a way of just saying well there were riots it was just crazy people
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burning stuff for no reason right and the root of of of the frustration not to mention what was going on in the society generally at the time but the particular Sparks are not included and so you get rewriting by a mission and that's the
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80s and that's right here in London does that stuff make you angry yeah but I understand it I mean it does make me angry and it used to make me very angry okay now it's more uh uh uh a reserved
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pissed offness like in a sense that I expect it it's predictable it's boring I almost get shocked when I see something that's alternative or a bit truthful I'm like what huh you know every s a program comes on the tell you and it it leaves
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me scratching my head because it's so honest you know but it doesn't happen very often but I expect it I understand it it just it's part of the structure of power and is it part of your role uh to to
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continually remind us or to challenge these things and to remind people that this stuff is happening I mean do you feel like that's that's necessary for you kind of wake up every morning and and every week just to be like back to
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what I was saying this stuff you still need to understand it because if I don't keep talking about this stuff you're going to forget yeah I make no claims whatsoever to be objective a lot people use this word be objective which I think
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is just liberal hubis crap it's impossible to be objective you can try and be fair from within your own biases from within your own condition from within your own culture even your language predisposes you to view the world a particular way so this idea this
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kind of fluffy fairy idea that you can step out of all of that and speak B on behalf of all of humanity personally I think is is BS right so I am giving my particular bias I'm trying to be fair
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but I am absolutely conscious and 100% Unapologetic about speaking from within my life experience my studing of the world my view of the world my family and my cultural background if I didn't go to panafrican Saturday school if I didn't
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grow up in the hany Empire if I didn't listen to wuang forever or read the autobiography of m x when I was n would I be the person I am today probably not right if I instead grew up with my
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Scottish family in the outer herdes it's entirely possible that I would view the world a completely different way right so I make no apologies for that I'd rather just be honest about it and say upfront because I think when people talk
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about objectivity it's one of these ways of kind of fooling you into believing in the myth of universalism this idea that we can like I said speak on behalf of the whole world but the more different biases you can hear the more different
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biases you can see the fairer picture you can build up of the overall picture you know I don't want to impose my beliefs on the history of India I'd rather study the history of India from the perspective of an Indian person and
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then within the context of the globe understand the history of India but this idea that I can understand the history of India based on the history of Jamaica two places with completely different histories completely different ethnic makeups completely different
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uh longevities and religious beliefs and all these things there are some similarities but there are also many differences and to me the beauty is in difference a lot of human beings want to erase difference and say we're all the
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same why can't we just no to me the beaut is in especially these days yeah I can't it's trending it's trending that way I can't but that's in a way of erasing people to the dominant culture they're not saying let's get rid of the
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dominant culture they're saying when they say can't we all be the same they're saying why can't we all just fit in with dominant culture in my view that's what people mean when they say that oh we're all just the same l just
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all be the same let's all speak English and believe in this and you know wear these kind of clothes let's all like everything yeah no there are people that are different and to me that's amazing like I I I like what we were discussing
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earlier right we practice martial arts that are not from either of our respective ethnic backgrounds right I don't want to change Brazilian jiu-jitsu or muai to they're not Scottish Jamaican martial arts they're just not and no matter how my coach is African Caribbean
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the aan which is the grandm that teaches all of us is also Caribbean guess what no matter how many champs of mu Thai no how many J Joneses Anderson Silvers practice mu Thai it will still be Tha and that's okay that's one of the
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beautiful things that the Tha people have contributed to the larger human uh the larger pot of great things that humans have access to for want of a better set of words but to distort it and pretend that we're all the same and
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that we've all that we all produced that martial art not that it's the specific production of that culture I just I just find a little bit dishonest and I find the beauty is in that difference of philosophy like we were saying we've
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both been to Thailand right and the contradiction between the the the fact that Tha people don't shout you will not hear people in Thailand shouting this kind of non-aggressive warm culture and then fighting is their national sport that's amazing it's
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amazing that's amazing right now the background I'm from is the complete opposite right I'm talking in fact both Scottish people and Jamaicans are loud right and both of them can be kind of aggressive but fighting is not the
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national sport in Jamaica and it's not the national sport in Scotland so this kind of beauty by where philosophy philosophy of that part of the world can have this kind of polite balanced meditative view of the world but then be able to beat The Living
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Daylights out of you at the same time I find that amazing it's a contradiction especially if you don't train martial arts if you do train you start to kind of see it and understand it yeah which is probably why you're drawn to training
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um let's talk about Jamaica you just came back um your father's Jamaican uh um the UK has a long relationship with Jamaica um which I don't know if everyone is even aware of especially in America so tell us about Jamaica well
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the UK's relationship starts in 1655 uh Jamaica was originally a not originally it was originally inhabitation of the tyo and arak Native indigenous American people um it was then became a Spanish colony in 1655 the British took it off
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the Spanish like they did in many other places and America would do later on in the Spanish American war it was a war over colonies Britain took over the island it became in many people's opinion one of if not the most brutal
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slave colony in the history of the world and that's not my interpretation of it that's many scholars who studied slavery in Rome in Greece in Viking slavery in Ireland you know even transatlantic slavery many many people have come to
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the conclusion that Jamaica was particularly brutal why is it this is the economic reasons economic reasons where it was in the Caribbean uh the terrain so it's incredibly hilly as are many other Caribbean but say Barbados for example Barbados is much flatter so
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when there are rebellions in Barbados it's relatively easy to crush those rebellions CU you can see everybody when there's a rebellion in Jamaica as we saw with the Maroons and many others it was very very difficult um and also it was
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very it was the richest British colony so Haiti or Hispanola which was again was originally Spanish and then became French Haiti was the richest colony in the Caribbean full stop but the richest english- speaking colony was Jamaica so
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it was also the fact that it just produced so much wealth for so many people um obviously built on the back of of slave labor is it sugar cane um sugar cane primarily okay and sugar sugar primarily um but coffee is another major
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export on the island and today it's bite which is used to make aluminium and tourism again much of which is not owned by Jamaicans most most of the money generated by tourism and bul site leaves the island this is one of the legacies
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of colonialism and slavery this is why when we talk about these things and people say stop going on about it it's the past the same people who want me to remember Shakespeare who lived a lot a long time before slavery ended in
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Jamaica don't want me to remember the history of Jamaica which I find funny um but what what they really mean is shut up we don't really want to see the correlation between the ending of transatlantic slavery Independence and
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the neocolonial situation of Jamaica today cuz that gives weight to Arguments for things like reparations it's not about complaining about an event 150 years ago it's about understanding how that event led to an island like Jamaica that has tremendous resources that
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generates tremendous wealth still having such massive inequality still being so massively indebted to the IMF and the World Bank still having Astron economical murder rate and all of these other things that are quite distressing to me and sad to me about this place
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that where my family come from but on the other hand has probably Beyond and I say this with total bias but I think people can recognize what I'm saying Beyond any other place of comparable size has also culturally influenced the entire planet
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not just through reg music and through sports but through even if we go earlier through Marcus Garvey who unified more people of African origin than any other movement before or since who influenced every subsequent uh movement in in
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Africa Independence Movement from the Mau in Kenya to uh the even the flag of Ghana is Garvey symbol that black star is garvey's Black Star the flag of Malawi Etc so this is a man who left beyond the island of Jamaica and had
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this massive massive influence and is a product of Jamaica's particularly brutal but its particular history and when I was there last time someone said to me a woman who ran the festival I was I was playing a lady called Justine henzel she
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said something to me actually that stuck with me and it made me look a little differently and a bit more wisely Jamaica today and she said you know what when you look at our history you look at everything Jamaica's been through you
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look how recent this overt brutality Etc was and a lot of people will say oh we have poverty we have violence we have these problems as if this tiny little island of Less Than 3 million people should have been able to solve all of
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these human challenges that the US hasn't even been able to solve there are plenty of neighborhoods in Chicago and Los Angeles and elsewhere they're just as violent as West Kingston right so her point is actually as a Jamaican she's
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astronomically proud of what Jamaica's become of his influence of its Heritage of where it's moving as a society and I suppose that was an interesting and unique and different way to look at it and I would say I'm sort of between the
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two cuz I'm not cuz you're naturally compared Kingston to London and you're like what this is so different well yeah no I mean I understand enough of Jamaican History to kind of not make that comparison but at the same time I'm
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accustomed whether I like it or not even with even with my Anti-Imperialist kind of proerd world politics I'm still accustomed to live in a particular way yes I saw violence growing up yes I saw many many people get stabbed and things
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that nature and people I knew who got shot and I've been in clubs when guns have gone off CT that's still not the same as living in West Kingston you know in in trench toown in re or jungle or
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tiv or one of those places that I visited when I was last day I've not experienced that kind of poverty I've not experienced that kind of violence I've not lived in a society where the police shoot pregnant women now that
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doesn't mean the police in this country don't kill people because they have and they do but the way in which it is permissible and can happen in a country like Jamaica for all of these neocolonial reasons is not something
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I've lived for and it would be very fake for me just because I'm of Jamaican origin to pretend that I've had that exact experience does that make sense so I interact with it and try and uh articulate it but I don't also kind of
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step on the toes and pretend that I'm the voice of it you know no Jamaicans are the voice of Jamaica I am a member of the African Jamaican diaspora who has my particular take on it but I have also
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lived a different life than I probably would have lived if my grandmother stayed in St Marys in fact I would never have been born but you understand what I'm saying so I I love so many things about Jamaica and about the Caribbean
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and even given all its crazy history and I am too amazed actually when when you study the history of the Revolutions in the Caribbean I am too amazed that societies that you know my grandmother's great grandmother would have been
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enslaved you know we're not talking about million years ago so when I look at how quickly the Caribbean has turned from that to St Lucia has the highest Nobel amount of Nobel Prize wiers per capita of any country in the world now
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I'm not saying a Nobel Prize is a culturally Universal way of measuring intelligence what I am saying is the Caribbean even given all of these uh constrictions if you like and these limitations has massively punched above its weight without colonizing other
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people see Britain we talk about punching above our weight and for sure Britain has had a massive influence on the world but much of that influence has come at the expense of military might at the expense of colonizing and
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brutalizing other groups of people that doesn't mean that Isaac Newton or Shakespeare or these guys were any less intelligent but it also means that it's kind of Tainted because the cultural influence is mixed with brutality right Jamaica's cultural influence is just
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cultural influence Jamaica doesn't have a military base in any of the countries where regga music is popular and reg music has spread in spite of not having the billions of dollars that are spent on popular forms of American music
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precisely because it's revolutionary anti imperialist love centered music which is ironic because Jamaica is promoted to the world as the most or at least Jamaican culture and Jamaican music culture is sort of seen in these kind of stereotypical terms but it's the
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love and the peace and the and the almost kind of buddhis is philosophy within rasa that particularly that directs reg music that gives Jamaica this cultural power so I've I feel that that's legitimately people can be proud of that whilst recognizing the
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the sometimes horrific uh ongoings so I was introduced to rastafarianism by the recent Bob Marley documentary which I'm sure you have some opinions about but you know uh as as and I I like to think I'm pretty well read and know a
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lot of things about the world but I had no idea of the tenants of rastafarianism I had no idea any of the the history I actually didn't know that much about Bob Marley you know because I it missed my
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generation didn't it and so uh I didn't even know how big that music was I didn't know all the those issues so um how did you find the movie what did you like about it what didn't you like about
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it um well even even when we talk about rusta farian ISM reran would call it RAR okay they don't like isms just little things that for example us don't know they would refer to it as R the far
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right but um I wasn't a huge fan of the movie um I felt that the movie was more aimed at selling Bob Marley right in a kind of sanitized acceptable but still revolutionary enough to be called was trying to be a major motion picture
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right it was shot beautifully I mean from what I understand I've seen interviews and read his own mother doesn't believe the version of events around his death for example how you can make a movie about a guy and not comment on the fact that
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many people Ian he was shot not long before it's not you know remotely controversial to suggest that someone was trying to have this guy killed right then he dies of toe cancer fine maybe that is true but maybe it isn't and if
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his own mother has her suspicions that would be worth entertaining I would have thought did they address that at all in the movie no it was just cancer died in Switzerland and then this kind of attempt to present him as this kind of
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sort slightly confused mix r guy who suffered racism from black people in Jamaica anyone who's been to Jamaica knows one of the sad legacies of neocolonialism is that actually people of M and Bob Marley's color are are are
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elevated in a majority of black society we're not oppressed yeah I'm sure some people said to Bob gr up you look a yellow boy you're red boy I'm sure they that he was mildly but there is not discrimination it's reversed in fact
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being black even in Jamaica works against you that's the irony of it right so the the someone who looks like me is automatically assumed to be educated aut assume to come from money Etc and that's one of the legacies because that is what
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happened the the former Planters gave property and privilege to their IL illegitimate children sometimes they remain to be slaves but often they created a buffer class and then at the end of a period that we call um so
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slavery ended and you had a period called apprenticeship where basically people were were told you got to carry them working for 5 or 10 years right Africans were like no no we've been enslaved for whole long we're going to
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the hills they thought it was a way to re-enslave them so Chinese and uh people from India were brought in and they did the apprenticeship at the end of their apprenticeship they were given land and tools to move forward something Africans
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in Jamaica have never been given yet people ask why are black people still at the bottom of this majority black society but this leg up the other groups of people the Lebanese the syrians ETC not taking anything away from their hard
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work because they were not the enslavers the Lebanese the syrians the Chinese and the Indians right but they were also given that leg up com in with a different history and in at a different time Africans in Jamaica have never been
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given that to this day um and so I felt the movie lacked that political Clarity it lacked an honest analysis of Bob Marley's politics and his music his music was panafrican music rusta farai comes directly I mean I don't even know if the
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film mentioned Marcus Garvey at all no I'm trying to remember no because I would have know I don't I mean imagine doing a film about Rosa faran and not mentioning Marcus Garvey it is literally like doing a film about Islam and not
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mentioning Muhammad or let's let's go one step further maybe not Muhammad because he's at the center but if we take Christianity and you don't you don't mention Moses you don't mention Abraham you don't mention any of the other
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prophets you only mention Jesus I think salassi might have been his visit was mentioned in that film but Marcus Garvey after salassi is the most important person in the rust of farai belief system so it had holes in the movie for
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me did it do a good job of at least introducing Rastafari to to you know the world if you had to just do one broad SW swipe um well again I I don't I don't think so cuz I think it avoided so many
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things it gave people a polite introduction I would recommend if people want to learn about Bob M there's a very good autobiography called catch a fire you know that was the original uh um that was the original book you know the
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main book written on him it's a good book it's got a good analysis or if you want to learn about rastafar I read R and resistance you know there's a book called the rust ofans there's many ways you can learn a deeper Insight is what
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people want to learn and what they don't want to learn but like anything this isn't specific to this culture a lot of people just want surface information they want the polite easy to digest kind of again back to humans We crave a
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simple narrative We crave the uh end of the Civil War it was Lincoln in four years and they fixed everything which when we you anyone who dives into American history realizes that it was there was a lot of things going on there
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and it had a lot to do with money and a lot of other things but yeah I do think as humans we like to come comp compartmentalize these little narratives and sometimes they're very oversimplify yeah for sure and especially when
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there's I mean the Bob Mary estate is worth how many you know I don't a couple hundred million I I don't even know what the number is but when there's so much money attached to this man's image but
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when he was very clear in his own lifetime what did he use his money to do go to Jamaica and ask anybody he was like I'm don't really care about money and I as a guy who was rich he was not
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poor he bought a massive house which I visited when I was there 56 and he said anyone who wants to eat drink have some fish come right there was footage of that he dedicated his life to helping people even though he had become unlike
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many many many poor people who become rich who become just especially in a society like Jamaica might move up to Beverly Hills or Long Mountain and be like y I'm forgetting where I came from B was like nah his exact words my life
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is not important unless I can help plenty of people there's a great quote from the movie where he says money make a man rich and I mean it really resonated with me you know he just it's it's a question whether or not the the
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the massive economic wealth generated by Bob mali's estate and by his image for Jamaica is being used to help the communities that produced Bob Marley is another question I went to trench toown trench toown is not developed the only
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part of trench toown that has even had a liqu of paint put on it is the culture yard the place where Bob Marley grew up where him and R conceived Ziggy where he got his first guitar lessons where he
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wrote Three Little Birds you know there's been a little bit of renovation that's been turned into a museum the rest of trench toown hasn't improved one iota in 30 years so this man's music generates enough wealth to renovate the
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neighborhood he grew up in to do massive amounts of things for his community and we know were he alive that's the work he would be doing so I I see the contradiction right you know of selling Bob Marley's image but
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not doing what Bob Marley would have wanted people to do with that image right so earlier I told you I had never been to Jamaica and you said um you said something like it's it's that's a shame for you yes for sure so tell me why
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cariban arrogance is that is that a cariban AR why go there why do you get why are you going back why are you looking into it I was I was I was asked to go to a this gives you an example of
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how much people want to go to the Caribbean right I was asked to go to a literature Festival Calabash literature Festival run by some people I know do my first performance in Jamaica this literature Festival doesn't pay people
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the way it has to run it's a free Festival obviously it covers your expenses it takes you out there but it's quite Unapologetic in that it lets everyone know it's a free festival yet it's been able to draw
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literally Nobel prize winning offers I mean just this year alone uh Andi wongo one of the biggest writers in Kenya was there Salon rushley was there did you interview Salon rushy I did indeed um Zade Smith was there you know this is
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the level of writers they're able to attract year in year out year in year out if it was set in somewhere that isn't Jamaica I don't want to diss anyone's country but if it was set somewhere that didn't have that son that
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didn't have that culture attached to it they didn't have that lifestyle people wouldn't come all across the world for free so the Caribbean still has this massively attractive pool that you can assemble a literature Festival like that and have 3,000 and all of the audience
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pretty much is Jamaican that's another part of Jamaican culture you don't get to see the intellectual side 3,000 people turning up 3 days in a row for 6 hours to hear people read books is not something we are led to associate with
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what goes on on the island um and so the Caribbean for obvious reasons because of its weather because of its history because of the good food some of which has been eroded by import export policies but for all of these reasons is
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a very attractive place for people to to visit but again I the tourism has its shortcomings okay and I would I I would uh what would I notice most he said it was a shame that I'm not there what
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would I notice most about Jamaica is it the people is it a cultural is it a Vibe about like we talk about Thailand is it something about the it depends where you went and what you did just like in
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Thailand right if you go to a resort one of these plush resorts in kosui and you don't interact with any Thai people you'll have one experience right whereas if you're a mu thai student you go to Bangkok and you go to different places
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around and you you interact with the local culture you'll get much Fuller experience Jamaica is the same if you stay in the grill or Montego Bay and you stay within the little kind of tourist Resort Jamaica is dangerous I'm not
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going to lie you know there is violence and there our problems there but tourists are certainly safer in the country than the locals in anyway right it's very unlikely and and and very slim chance of something happening to person
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that perceived to be a foreigner you might get problems generally foreigners don't get killed because the people in the ghetto understand that when that happens usually the government in the Army comes and flattens the neighborhood right um so there is a certain amount of
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safety even within it and I've been all over Kingston I've been to parties and Raves and things in dangerous parts of Kingston blah blah blah you know I'm not telling anyone else what to do I'm just saying for for me you get a much Fuller
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experience if you're actually into interact with the culture and you don't even have to go to Kingston you could go to somewhere like St Elizabeth which is very quiet very sunny very idyllic part of the island but again interacting with
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local people gives you a much Fuller sense of what Jamaican is what is specific about that Island what it has produced why reggae music came from there and not somewhere else why Bob Marley and I mean Bob Marley Usain boat
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and Marcus Garvey are all from the same Village which is crazy and and of itself right um and so I think that if you endeavored to have a a full experience you'd get a sense of of just how far
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that place has come in such a short period of time but you'd also get a sense of of some of the shortcomings and the contradiction recently we saw a Snoop Dogg go down there and I watched his documentary he did with Vice and
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Chang his name and did he do Ros the Rastafari any favors not not from my perspective I mean I'm not I'm not a Ruster per se I've been it's the it's the spiritual system and belief system that I've been most influenced by
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because of my proximity to it but there are things within it I've been unable to reconcile myself with like every other uh belief system that exists that said I know that I don't speak for all resters when I say that because there are many
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people who consider themselves rester who do not for example see highly salasi as Divine they see him as just one leader among many but they still consider themselves rasa so even what rasa is and means is going through
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transition at the moment the position of of women in rusta far is going through a transition like any belief system it's updating and there are many different schools of R and what I find most interesting about rer is that the
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different schools have not approached each other with the same kind of antagonism that we see in other uh religious beliefs and the kind of sectarianism the the the the the the banti and the ningi and the 12 tribes
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are not at war with one another they have a council together and they talk together even though they're different interpretations of the same belief system but I mean to me Snoop Dog saying he's a r i mean I don't like to this
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individual artists that are way more successful than I am people call you a hater for that but personally I found it Snoop dogs take on it AIT bit disrespectful as in Jamaican to be honest with you I I did too and I'm not
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yeah I I just I I know that if he were if it were any other belief system you know he went to the so-called mid least and said I'm now a Muslim because you know Jes I've changed my I've changed
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what I wear or I'm now a Hindu you know because I've changed what I wear I'm now a seek because I've got a turban on you know I've put a dot in the middle of my forehead somehow that means I know
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something about seism all of those cultures would have enough self-respect to say no that's disrespectful Snoop don't do that and I feel a little bit like not saying there has not been pushed back there has been push back but
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there hasn't been there hasn't been enough of a that's a bit of a liberan that's a bit of a disrespect of a belief system that had such a role to play in uh Freedom struggles in in Liberation struggles throughout the panafrican
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world um and so I didn't I didn't think it was very tasteful I thought it was very gimmicky I thought he was being a tourist yeah that's exactly what it was it was it was the kind of thing that if
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a white person done there would have got loads more stick for it if I'm honest with you right he got stick but almost not as much stick because it would have been perceived as to be honest with you
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so racist if a white American major artist came and did that um that there would have probably been even more blowback but I find it just as disrespectful when that kind of uh lack of self-respect for black theology comes
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from a person who who is also also black I don't think he would do that with Judaism you know he would have enough respect or at least know that maybe messing with Judaism wouldn't be that bright for his career perhaps you know
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so I I just I Fel I felt it was a bit disrespectful also Snoop can get away with a lot so yeah plus snoop's a great Entertainer listen I'm not trying to I'm not trying to sit here and and cuss
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Snoop I'm just saying I thought that particular thing was was was was not healthy Point M let's talk about Brazil really quick cuz uh you went there in 2010 was that the first time I've been there a few times I went in 08 2010 and
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again in 2013 okay I've been to Rio like my first time was in ' 05 I did some jiujitsu training and some uh training in boxing uh in a fabulous place I was talking earlier um but I remember um
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when I went to my first time in a flla and I went to Hina flla which is you've been there and and it's huge I mean there's got to be 100,000 people there and and I I took uh a bus up to the top
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and uh I went into someone's house and I walked out on the Terrace and it's one of these images I'll never ever be able to get out of my head and I I didn't re fathom the size of it and I looked over
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everything down into that Valley next to that mountain and I was just it was just hard to conceive you know and and and in Brazil such poverty lives right next to such wealth and it's it's this it's it's
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hard to conceive what goes on down there and then at the very base of the FLL was the whole SWAT team and the full guns and I got guns pulled on on me by that same SWAT team coming out of R and and I
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no one explained to me what was going on but for me I was like something's going on here it looked like they were just trying to plug a leak that's what it looked like in such a a horrible way
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what were your first impressions um well I knew a little bit about Brazil before I went I'd read a very good book called bra also it's massively Multicultural like in a way that it's just hard to conceive of in America cuz we have a
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very big black divide Mexican divide white divide but there it seems to mix but maybe I was being naive well that's I think that's one of the Beauties and the contradictions of Brazil right that there is this Multicultural mix but then
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if you look at who's at the bottom of Brazilian Society you look at who's being killed by the police and who's dying most frequently you're still going to find that same color gradation the Pres the presidents are light and Brazil
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is not going to have an African looking president anytime soon even though the majority of the population is of African origin Brazil has more black people than any country in the world except Nigeria so more than any African country other
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than Nigeria right but yet the image of Brazil is not that the image of Brazil is not people that look like Pelle is he is an individual image of Brazil so he's the outlier but Brazil's face right the more people in Brazil
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look like H they look like jaelle bunin right right I forgot jaelle was res but pelle's face is not the projected face of Brazil is what I'm saying and so I'm saying that the the yeah there is a a
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fantastic and beautiful and inspiring amount of crosscultural pollination you go go to somewhere like Salvador DEA where the main religion is an African religion the most visible religious practice and people who are not of African origin practice this religion
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that's a beautiful thing and that's in some ways unique I know there are other parts places that haven't been like Cuba where I'm told similar things occur right but that's that's fantastic and beautiful but there are still uh there is still a legacy of racism and
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slavery and fascism we forget that Brazil was an ally of salaris Portugal we forget that in 1888 Brazil was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery the government had an open policy of what they called getting
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rid of the black stain you know and this is how the FAS and other things came to exist where they were like we're creating we're about to newly create an industrial economy the last thing we want to do is give a foot up to these
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people that we've been enslaving for the last few centuries so let's pay for people to come from anywhere in Europe that are lighter skinned with the express purpose of whiten in the country nobody in Brazil likes to talk about
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this today well I won't say nobody but Scholars who know their stuff are talking about but this is the Legacy that has led us to a flla like Rosina where yeah it is Multicultural but the majority of people that live in those
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places and Fa and and rash is in the South zone so it's one of the more as poor as it was from your perspective the that's one of the posher FAS you go to the north Zone where I've been or parts
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of Salvador if you go to vigario Jal in the north zone or the West zone of Rio and you visibly see it gets blacker and Blacker and poorer and poorer and so there is there is that contradiction in
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Brazil um which which I find hard to reconcile you know geopolitically I see that Brazil's trying to make some moves I I read recently that they they cut the debts that many or all of the African countries owed to them don't quote me on
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that cuz I can't remember the exact figures in that right now they had a big boom economic they're part of this bricks initiative trying to promote South South trade cool but I also believe charity begins at home and if
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you are for charity and Justice and things like I'm not saying you can wave a magic one and solve it but the internal contradictions within the country are are are so humongous um and so gaping obvious to me
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that I love Brazil but I I can't uh I can't ignore you know we talk so much about the racial history America the racial history of Brazil is just as if not more horrific right right yet it's not spoken
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about for what reason I don't know maybe it's cuz it's in the non-english-speaking world maybe because there's a whole different philosophy maybe because there's so much more gradations of mix um but I think it's one of the dialogues that needs to be
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had and I know AFR Brazilians would be the first to say so many other groups of people would say no um and the World Cup is about to start in that Nation protests I couldn't believe it I'm say
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they had like a a 34% approval rate football in Brazil I mean when I was there football in Brazil always has a 90% approval rating but everyone actually seems to be fairly outraged because people are not stupid right they
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love football yes and football is a national religion but when billions of pounds come into a country or generated in a country by this National religion stadiums are built in the middle of the Amazon that not going to be used
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afterwards and and I was there like I said in 2010 they were beginning to pacify the FAS from then which means basically go in kill a bunch of people that you deem to be drug traff without of course offering them any alternative
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economic possibility ignoring the fact of how drugs get in and out of Brazil cuz it's certainly not people from rashina or any other F in Brazil they sell them flying around the world importing these millions of tons of
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drugs so ignoring all of that ignoring where all the guns come from ignoring how an Israeli Uzi submachine gun I saw so many of them when I was in rash and other places ignoring how all of that manages to magically work its way into a
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flla let's go in and kill the drug traffickers right right and I'm not saying that there are not people in their faas that do bad things but again they're doing bad things on behalf of who and in relation to what economic
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relationship to the state and who's buying the drugs right so let's go in kill a bunch of people build a police station pacify that favilla so that when tourists come the country is safe for tourists let's not redesign the society
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so that there's not such a massive divide between rich and poor so that people are not as pissed off and not potentially as much of a danger to to the stability of the country so there is a a legitimate frustration that even
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though people love football they can see they're they're being mugged off again before their very eyes and poor people are being forgotten while stadiums are being built and and and many of these people we told they're not going to be
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able to afford to go to the World Cup you know and these are the communities from which most of the Brazilian football team come which makes it even more ironic I went to Ronaldinho's Hood I went to where Adriano comes from these
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guys are from real poverty Romario Etc these Brazilian football legends come from the slums and um maybe I don't know what the footballers are saying I don't know whether there's people that are outspoken I don't I don't know enough I
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don't read catch up enough with the Portuguese newspapers to know if the if the football players are being outspoken but there is that contradiction and and and it is as yet unresolved we're going it's going to be interesting to Watch
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What Happens out the next few weeks and I'm guessing once the fever catches up in Brazil with the football it will get quickly brushed against under the rug but we but there will be violence let's be clear I mean I mean even if it when
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we say brush on the there is daily police brutality in Brazil and that will continue and be worse so it won't make the news if it's just poor overwhelming black and brown people dying it didn't make the news when you know the massacre
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at candelera happened and children were shot dead by the police you know it didn't make the news when people were thrown in the sea it didn't make that bus 147 didn't make the news here there's a documentary made about very
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brilliant brilliant documentary int but that guy's life isn't newsworthy outside of Brazil right and it barely is newsworthy in Brazil of course if tourists become affected then it will become newsworthy right so so these things as the the the the the brutality
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is still going to go on but it's just depending on who it affects depends how much International attention it will be given right can we talk about language really quick you wrote an article in The Huffington Post talking about the
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language we use and you are what you read which is a great uh title we on this show have actually done a few episodes um about psychedelics and we talk a lot about uh the use of language and whether something is a drug and what
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a drug means and you know alcohol in this country compared to tobacco and other things just a little bit more and um and uh we're always talking about language and then this whole thing like you're said about yourself whether
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you're self deceiving Yourself by calling yourself something or by calling something something um and even you your past where at one point uh you were using the NW and you decided not to use the NW and what are your thoughts I I
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know it's a big language top yeah language language is very powerful a lot of I mean there's some people that would disagree with me and say that language is not that powerful and that we can reclaim this word or that word and we
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can change the meanings of things to some degree that's true but language also retains its power there are things I could say say to you which I'm not going to right now that would offend you yeah why is that as if I were to talk
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about your mom or your sister or someone in your family that's dead there would only be words but they would offend you for sure and maybe provoke you to use some of jiujitsu that you know right so I think because words have energy I
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believe it's I believe it's physics you know if if it's like radio frequencies right the more and more something gets played on the radio the more and more that frequency that sound is being Amplified and words are used in a
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particular context with a particular energy uh attached to them we might not be able to quantify that yet in terms of physics but repeat it over and over again in a certain context a word begins to take on power if your parents tell
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you the whole time you're a child when you're growing up you're an idiot you're stupid you're never going to be anything you're going to internalize that belief if consequently or or or or or additionally if they say to you you're
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wonderful you're amazing you're intelligent you're beautiful you're probably going to internalize that there are many people who've never been physically abused but they feel that even just the way they were spoken to right growing up as a young person is a
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form of mental abuse so language has massive power and I think to tell ourselves that it doesn't is just deceiving ourselves and this is one of the reasons let me be clear I'm not against people using the nword I'm
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against people pretending that it's become a term of endearment the conditions that the n-word was used to create uh to justify creating still exist in many parts of the world and certainly still exist in parts of America with the prison industrial
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complex and police brutality and things of that nature what I'm saying is I don't believe that it's wise to kid ourselves to believe that it now means brother it now means I love you it now means because the behavior of people
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that use this word towards one another doesn't reflect that I know when I was growing up when we wanted to compliment someone that's a word we use we we might pretend all that but if we look at even
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in London the young boys in Hackney and Tottenham or brickton and pekham that are Waring each other over nothing sometimes even over inherited uh americanisms blue flag red flag we have that over here too you know something we've the LA yeah I mean that that let's
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be clear if they weren't fighting over that they'd be fighting over something else because that's a product of their socioeconomic circumstance and many other things right the the point is we're not treating each other like brothers so this argu this this argument
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that this word we're using when they want to go and kill someone which word is it young boys are using they're not saying when I see this brother I'm going to kill him you know when I see my
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cousin I'm going to kill him when I see this some of a complimentary word I'm going to shank him or I'm going to no it's this particular word that we're using um so to say that it's been turned on its
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head it just doesn't seem to be reflected in the real people that still use it are trying to tell you no no it means this and you're saying no no it doesn't actually mean absolutely it doesn't because the behavior of young
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black men towards one another for what for a whole bunch of complicated historical reasons for sure but isn't reflective of that to me if we want to call each other brother the word brother is perfectly adequate Family Blood I
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mean at Best by reclaiming this word you can have one other way to refer to people like you at worst you can be regurgitating this negative energy so I just why do it if you're going to use it
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so people have proper reverence and respect for the Painis attached to it I would only use it in its real context which is a Unapologetic product of some of the most brutal racism in human history and that's the context in which
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I believe it should continue to be used you know if people want a history of the word they can you know have some photographs of lynchin they can understand what the k clam was and how popular they were they can understand uh
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how racism was used to create a group of people to be wealth producers for another group of people and all of these things and I think usually when I give people that history properly they don't want to use it but
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the best example I give to people is is my mother's white as people know my dad's black when I work with young people surprised when you tell them that sometimes sometimes yeah yeah sometimes they feel I gravitate more towards the
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African Caribbean side of my family which is which is true that's the side of the family I grew up around that doesn't mean I don't have respect for both of my family it means I grew up around one side I didn't grow up so much
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around another side in fact my mom's dad was kind of unpleased about to to put it mildly about my dad's presence you know so it meant that I didn't have as much interaction with that side of my culture
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that is what it is but um when I go into prisons uh or schools or elsewhere and young boys write their raps in the workshops I'm doing and they say I say okay cool no problem I'm not going to
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criticize you I used to do the same thing but let me ask you this right my mom's white my dad's black my mom's the white side of my family from Scotland Scotland is one of the most violent places in Western Europe you know a lot
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of violence in Scotland gun violence knife violence Etc if now even though the words like honky or Cracker don't have any of the kind of racial domination uh history attached to them if I start saying you know I'm going to
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I'm going to kill honkies I'm going to kill crackers what what would you guys think and without exception every single black boy has said to me no you can't do that that's racist now my white mother raised me right yet me using that kind
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of language in relation to white people people would offend the same black boys who have no issue using it in relation to thems so what does that say about how they feel about themselves and the value of their life and the value of offending
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them and their own sensibilities and their history so when people try to convince me that this language means nothing or that is a positive term now I just I I can't I can't I just can't I can't agree and I had a similar
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conversation uh with one of my elders a guy called toan I did a radio show around the world when I was 2006 and he just gave me this similar Spiel on it and I just stopped and that was it I I
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just I thought yeah's he's right and that was 2006 20086 2007 so from my second album which came out in 2007 you won't hear the word in there so frequently or not not at all actually let's talk about aala in 2007 and the
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one today yeah like for the obvious stuff you're not using that word but other stuff when you're telling me certain points of view you're like and this is just my opinion and I am not saying this would you not use those 7 years ago
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how have you changed well as you qu without sounding like an old fogy as you get older how old are you 30 31 just 30 yeah the the when you're young you think you know everything when you get a little bit
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older you still think you know everything but you don't really know everything and The more I've traveled The more I've studied The more I've realized I don't know so I think I went for a period in my mid 20s where I first
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started really reading a lot a lot lot start first started traveling a lot and really thought I was wise and I knew so much about the world and then as I've traveled more and read a bit more I
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realized I don't really know that much and that's not to say I don't offer my opinions and and I don't usually offer opinions on stuff that I haven't at least researched a little bit which is why for example when you spoke about
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Russia earlier I didn't know enough to contradict you or disagree with you or agree with you because I don't know enough about Russian history I need to do my research there but I would never offer an opinion publicly on something I
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don't haven't studied relatively thoroughly because I believe that's my responsibility and that's always been the case with you you've always done your I'm sure when I was younger I spoke about stuff I didn't really know about even when I was in the public but I
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think that mainly you just you become less aggressive as you get older I think especially coming from the kind of background I came from up until about 25 there's this energy particularly among young African Caribbean men in this
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society and in the states that exists which doesn't exist say in Africa it does exist in the Caribbean to a degree but not so much even in the Caribbean there's not this I see another young black boy and there's this immediate
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aggression um which you feel in parts of America and you certainly feel here you won't feel it in West Africa for all the problems in say a country like Nigeria you'll see grown black men walking down the street holding hands swinging hands
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like little kids which you will never see here no all right um and so again that that that's a that's a puse to reflection but I around about 25 26 that energy starts to dissipate you either don't notice it anymore or people the
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the young youths are just not looking at you like that anymore you're an old fogy now you're not part of this rivalry between unless you put yourself in it between hne and Tottenham and Brixton and pekham and this ends and that ends
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and so you can sort of breathe and reflect on it and see how intense it felt and how real it felt and how much you really felt like you could lose your life walking out of your house which may
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have caused you to behave a particular way but how much it was also in another sense stupid and then you try and offer those Reflections to people younger than you just like when I was 21 or 19 and I
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was aggressive and I was behaving a certain way older people would offer me those Reflections but it didn't mean anything it didn't stop me from getting into certain trouble and making certain mistakes because that felt like my reality at that at point and that's the
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main way in which you change it I think it would be very fake for someone like me whose passport has to get replaced every 3 years cuz I go to so many places to then pretend I'm exactly the same as I
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was when I was 19 and I spent most of my time in the ends kind of thing like I just I think one of the reasons rappers get a bit as they get older is cuz they try and I don't see anything wrong
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with evolving but trying to pretend you're still on the Block surrounded by people selling drugs and block when you're in Monaco or san or but I mean that's equally in my view dull if all you do is rap about that too but you you
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should evolve as an artist and I've tried to evolve while still staying true to my background and your fan base is comfortable with you evolving yeah I think they've grown I think they've grown with me and I think one of the
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reasons actually why my message has resonated with people from the backgrounds I come from is because I started off that way I think if I started off the kind of artist I am now I'd be seen as a bit more of an
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alternative political conscious I started off my main Inspirations were like mob deepen DMX right if you listen to my first mixtape you can hear that all right there was a bit of the wuang influence in there there was some level
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of Consciousness but overwhelmingly my first mixtape is just about violence and I think one of the reasons that my message carries weight is because people say ra kind of he was kind of like us we know his friends and his cousins and his
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uncles we know that they they've been involved in just as much unsavory as anyone else's yet he chooses not to rap about those guys he chooses not to imitate and uh big up the the organized criminals he knew grown up to make
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himself look cool I don't do that a lot of rappers do cool that's good for them I don't have a need to do that because actually many of those same people were the people who said to me no but you're
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bright don't be like us which I said in my friend they literally this is real life that's what happened to me people and these were people who had money you know these were guys who were doing well in the street but they'd spent so much
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of their life in and out of prison Etc so they were like you don't want to be like us you know you're clever in fact if you drop out of school we're going to give you a hiding so one the first
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people to say to me well guys we you other people would call gangsters right and they were I don't want to do that cuz they actually were gangsters right so I don't try and make myself look cool by begging it with that lifestyle I had
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certain opportunities that made me fortunate enough to actually not go in a particular direction as much as some of my other friends or other people did and I believe that's something to be celebrated and something to be Amplified
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there's this idea that this community that the community worships that not really I get respect in every Hood in this country precisely because I talk sense that's the irony of it if I was around saying I'm a Gangster I'm so
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tough I got so much money people when they saw me would would want to rob me like happens to many gangster rappers from America that come to this country they get robbed people attack them I'm not saying nothing can happen to me I'm
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Invincible I'm not Superman but I go to the same neighborhoods and in the same places and people like bro I respect what you're doing you know the same guys who were in the street doing Madness are like no but I respect you so that's the
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iron is people know wrong from right and when you walk a certain path I don't attract nowhere near the level of negative attention now that I did when the warmix tape came out the first war mix tape came out and I was I was not
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constantly in Conflict but people was like I want to test him I want to see where his heads at is he really about blah blah blah and as I evolve people actually my's cool and I respect what he's doing I know he's not an idiot and
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that's why we listen to him but at the same time we respect what he's doing and we support him what does America think of aala well we'll see I'm going in October I haven't been since 2007 I performed at South by Southwest and in
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LA and in New York and I'm seven years since you've been there years yeah just because I mean I'm not one of these rappers who's like oh I have to be big in America otherwise what I'm doing is
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not valid you know just like when the West Coast guys came out they weren't like oh we have to be big in New York I don't see hip hopers having one definitive location absolutely no one's taken away from the fact that the
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pioneering MCS and the main influences on me came from partly actually from the states but actually also from Jamaica as people of Jamaican origin we have a different relationship to hip-hop it was like a triangular thing some of our
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cousins went to New York and influenced hip hop other our cousins stayed in Jamaica and made dance other of our cousins came here to London and created jungle garage Etc right and consequently Grime so we have a different view we
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didn't learn hip-hop on MTV I learned hip-hop because I grew up on a sound system orbe it hip-hop with a Jamaican accent um that said obviously there are some of my favorite MC's and some of the most influential people on me come from
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particularly New York so going back to New York and doing shows does have its attraction but I don't Define Myself by it so we'll see so you're going to New York yeah I'm going to Philly and to New
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York but I mean 15 to 20% of my online fan base is in the states I think that's partly reflected of the fact that American people have so much access to Internet but also a reflection of reality right and it's a big country as
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well and it's a massive country um one more thing before we go I have to ask you I got here in 2002 and there was a video that was playing on MTV base of the time and it just really caught my
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attention and uh I don't know for some reason I just I would wait around hours just trying to watch it and it was won by someone you probably know uh the song was called it takes more by Miss
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Dynamite which is your sister and uh I watched it a couple days ago in preparing for this interview and um that video holds up it's probably holds up more now than it did then and it's super deep and it's saying so many
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different things um obviously the the video and the song are all about questioning a lot of like behaviors of people in the city or people you know from the neighborhood but also there's a lot of love layers there and it was a
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successful pop song it went to number six or seven in the charts the album sold well she won these prizes again it shows you music can have a message as long as it's good music and be successful was that and did that where
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were you at that time were I was in the video you probably don't spot me I was in it very briefly um I was on I was on the shoot the whole day in fact it was friends of mine who helped the director
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come up with the the concept for the video two friends of like a short film really yeah it was and it was just trying to show some of what she'd come from trying to show some of the things
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she wanted to provoke people to think about Etc um and I think she succeeded in in doing that and I think as a young artist at the time she was 19 20 and she had so much strength and determination
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to not be what the label necess NE wanted her to be but to be who she wanted to be and I have to give some of the people at her label credit to be fair unlike many labels they were kind
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of like you've come to us as an artist who's already hot artist who's already had boo who's mashed up the underground who's got a fan base you are a garage artist you now want to make an R&B record cool let's do it like so they did
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kind of support her making that transition um there was resistance but not the level of resistance that there might have been on a different um record label and it was just it was a a crazy time for me you know I was 17 I went to
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the MTV Awards in Barcelona I was at all these big After parties and blah blah blah and you know I'm not going to name names but this pop artist and that pop artist and this person was there and
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then very early I got exposed to a lifestyle that on the one hand for 17-year-old was kind of impressive on the other hand I thought I don't know if this is for me also you know a lot of
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drugs lot of things of that nature not saying my sister took drugs cuz she didn't I'm saying that in that environment there was there was a lot of that going on that that that never really appealed to me um and so it was
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it was also a lesson in in the music industry very early but it was it was it was it was it was a great time and that video was great many of that were video Dynamite was a great video even though
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it was a stylistic video I still think visually uh Jake did a really good job on that one as well yeah you never seem to have your Justin Bieber moment even though you were exposed that early to all that craziness what regardless of
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your own career even you know being you know brother to miss Dynamite why why I don't know or did you and I don't know about it I don't know well if I did it certainly didn't make the Press I
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mean I'm nowhere near as famous as someone like him so I don't think people care that much what I do in my private life hopefully but I mean you had a lot of success early on yeah yeah yeah I
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made mistakes just not all of them got into the Press which is which is probably lucky for me and not the big ones yeah but but that said I mean it's not like listen I haven't got I didn't
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kill four people do you know I mean it's not like I've got some huge secret in the closet but at the same time yeah I think we all make mistakes depending where you're at in your career depends how much they get Amplified and depend
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where you're at in your age but I was I was lucky a to be forced to grow up very early but B to see my sister go through many of the Cycles in the music industry and know what I'd have to come up
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against even though I TR a very different path by being independent right last part of the show we always ask a couple questions at the end if you had to make a phone call to the 20-year-old aala and give that young man
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a bit of advice what would you tell him calm down bro relax um would be yeah I mean it would be mainly that the aggression that I had at that age nearly landed me in big big trouble many many
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times really well in a confrontational way oh yeah you you could most people who knew me then there are people who knew me then who who think I'm a complete fraud now they're just like this guy is Ching he's he's not a
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nice guy like not saying I was some gangster cuz I wasn't evil I don't want to act like I'm trying to give that impression but I I was on to confrontation if there was confrontation I was up for it and I wasn't the guy
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that would really fizzle it out either I was I was just rude I was aggressive I was I didn't I didn't want my manhood or what I perceive to be my manhood to be challenged and I would react if it was
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challenged verbally confronting most mostly verbally sometimes things got out of hand but generally it was verbally but you know occasionally there were physical confrontations but again at that age violence becomes such a part of daily living even if you're not directly
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doing it you know like I said the first like I've told people the first time I saw someone get stabbed I was 12 and it was a little poke it was a meat cleaver in the back of a guy's head you know
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four times in a barber and it it it was my best friend's older brother um so it was someone I knew well as well it so it was and then throughout your teenage years you get used to seeing people get
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stabbed and violent and violence becomes part of the daily dialogue and so you internalize that and think if I'm not aggressive maybe it's fair but at at 20 you can't admit it's fair right right you have to pretend you I went gym I got
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Hench I had a screw face I had a bald head I did everything I could to make myself look tough right cuz at 20 that's what you you need to do right you're scared basically yeah at this age if someone disrespects me if they
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don't put their hand on me do I really care if they don't trouble my family now I'll still react to certain things I'm not going to lie I'm not I'm not I don't believe in turning the other cheek at
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all okay just to make that clear but that aggression that I used to walk with that held me prisoner um I I don't have in the same way it's dormant in there somewhere but I've got it under control
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now I would say to the 20-year-old Cara getting it under control just chill out a bit I can imagine one of your verbal confrontations Jesus uh yeah yeah um uh second part of that best advice you've ever received could be musical or or or
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life advice that's a good question the best advice I've ever received probably wasn't from a person no disrespect to all the people that gave me advice it's from a book called The Da ching and what the daing talks
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about is is learning to cope with quote unquote loss or perceived loss or disappointment you know taking things as they come and go and not you know when I first began I felt I'm so talented I should be this I should be that I should
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sell this many records I should win these Awards blah blah blah you know I'm the basically as I got older and some of those things didn't materialize at first in the industry there were people that I felt you know quote
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unquote blocking me and this and that and I used to get really angry and then I started becoming cool with you know what people way more talented than you have been killed earlier in life you know becoming philosophical about what you do
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and don't achieve and and not letting success get to your head and not letting disappointments defeat you and for me walking that path uh and using that book among others but that particular book I feel like really changed the way I look
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at the world and the way I the way I treat disappointing news when it comes when anything that isn't related to someone I love being hurt or dying I kind of pretty much fob off okay if I don't sell enough tickets to a gig if my
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album Sals are not you know I've got economic reality I got bills to pay and I got rent to pay and whatever else but I try not to let any of that stuff I'm kind of a bit like whereas if something
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bad happens to someone I love then yeah I will be disappointed I'm not Zen enough to just view that as the part of the universal cycle of creation we'll talk checking in 10 years with you and see if you're there yet I don't think I
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will be probably not last bit uh to the 20-year-old that's listening out there that wants to you know that wants to get into the music business or or or get into to some of the things that you're interested in what advice do you give to
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them um well it depends who if it's the artist that wants to be a successful multi-million selling pop artist I probably can't advise that person cuz that isn't what I've done if it's the artist that wants to be an independent
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artist to create their own career I would advise them to learn to a cope with disappointment life is full of disappointments don't watch that perseverance learn to play an instrument you know I started learning very late in life it limited my understanding of
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Music greatly I would say the younger you are learn to play an instrument try and get very good at one particularly if you're a rapper if you're a rapper and you can play piano very well or guitar or bass or Decor or whatever else it
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just puts you in a different artistic sphere and space um listen to a broad range and array of music but ultimately get out there and gig the way you're going to get good is by performing to people and the way in this day and age
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you're going to make your bread and butter is from putting on a show right and so that's what you should do perform live for the experience all the time any way you can perform if there's two people it's important okay learn to
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perform to two people the way you perform to 2,000 right and if you can do that if you've got the confidence that in front of two people you can give it the same energy as you give 2, you'll be
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neat and anyone ever seen me perform to a small audience well tell you if there's six people in the venue I'm still going to sweat you're bringing it on as long as the audience is cool I'm cool right and and and you got to
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develop that confidence to for the stage to be a place where you have no inhibitions what's next for you next couple years is it is it all about an another album are the other projects you're working on I mean you you know
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you're doing TED Talks you seem to like like doing a lot of different things so I'm working on new EP with the ruins of Empires that'll be out probably August September it's a long historical concept story over music also coming in graphic
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novel format uh tweet me at a Cara music to find out more there be a knowledge's power part two in 2015 um working on a few other projects The Hip Hop Shakespeare thing still evolving we have uh we did Richard II a tour of it last
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year we did a production free uh shows of the production at the pel rooms in March they sold out we're probably going to do that again at some point and try and develop that production a little further there's things in the in the in
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the in the um visual space going on I'm working on some TV writing and things of that nature so not film yet but we've done some short films uh we've done some short films which will release soon for
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hi hop Shakespeare just you know follow me on Twitter aala music and I'll keep you updated awesome thanks so much for coming uh it's been uh you know I I'm really lucky because I get to have these fantastic conversations here and we
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happen to record them but uh um thanks for dropping science and giving us a lot of I'm sure I could ask you questions for another hour but I won't if you're listening to us on iTunes come and see
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our faces on our Channel at YouTube uh as we say on London real it's about the journey I wish you well on yours thanks for coming thank you very much all right be well take care all [Music] right what we call reality is in fact
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nothing more than a culturally sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination this week on London re we have the English actor and rapper Ashley Walters when I got to be a part of Soul solid it wasn't necessarily about music it was about having a family it was
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about having a group of like-minded people that I would felt so protected in that crew no one could touch me I was now a member of a gang if I'm honest I feared for my life so I just thought I'm getting a gun I
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understood that you didn't go to the police and say I'm being threatened as a young black man you know what I mean in those areas you don't with your problem yourself certifi I do the damn thing I send
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I've never understood why we can go into places like Afghanistan Iraq whatever shoot out the place kill Bin Laden do this do that or whatever but we can't stop gun criming in pek I'm sitting in the back of the car
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with 50 Cent they put on the presidential lights on the car woo woo we're driving through traffic cutting through this is like it's like a movie I got angry I cried I called my mom I I got insecure I did I went
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through all these different emotions 26 years old got nothing else to be accept this my temper is that bad I don't seem to have a like a middle gear I get a Red Mist and I become someone else like I
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and the scariest thing is I don't like I don't fear the consequences you really have to be prepared for rejection and understand that that doesn't mean that you're no good and that you to stop it means that you should keep on trying on Sunday
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London real presents Ashley Walters top boy I think a lot of people can relate to my story because I tell it the way it really happened
Topics:AkalaLondon RealHip-Hop ShakespeareBritish identityRastafari movementsocial justicemusic industryeducationactivismcultural identity
