Time For: Skepta

Part one of a chat with had with Skepta yesterday, following the release of his ace new single with its 'Dev Hynes and Jessie Ware' lyric. Check the video above to hear the line and watch the brills video.

Here's what Skeppy had to say about finding new influences in music.

Have Dev Hynes and Jessie Ware heard the lyric?

Yeah, he DM’d me today saying he’s loves it. Like, Jessie Ware is following me now. I don’t know what Jessie Ware thinks cos I hope she hasn’t taken it in a rude way, because it isn’t meant that way. I meant it like ‘Pharrell and the Clipse’ type thing. 

How come you know about Dev?

I stopped making music pretty much the whole of 2011, 2012. I stopped and just listened to everything and I listened to a lot of Theophilus London, Solange, Dev Hynes and Jessie Ware. I just felt like the whole Grime scene was so shit. Nothing was going on here. It all became too YouTube based; it became more of a look than about  the music. 

It went away from music and was taken to, like, a fashion show. Not to say I don’t get dressed in mad clothes myself, but it became about what you looked like and what you wore rather than the music. I didn’t do no music for the end of 2011 through 2012. I did a few features but I wanted to look at the music a little bit and that’s when I made [my album] Blacklisted. I took a look at what was going one like ‘Back in the day, no one knew what an MC looked like’. Whatever came out of pirate radio, that was what you loved. That’s why people like D Double E were sick cos he took the microphone away from his mouth and made it sound like an echo, lik, 'This is f*cking beautiful’. People put effort into the sound that was coming out rather than what they looked like. But ot me in 2011, it sounded like a load of noise. I wrote about it in a new song that I’m putting out. Plus there was no adult. See when I was 30 I had a whole midlife crisis. Like ‘Where’s the adult in grime that I can look to, I want to be like him?’ In rap, everyone looks to Jay-Z and  says ‘Yeah, maybe one day I can hang round with Obama one day’. But me, I didn’t see anyone. I can’t be 30 years old prancing round like an idiot. So I thought about the people who I thought looked cool when I was a kid, people who looked like a cool adult. I’d think of cool songs and then I’d ring my dad at like 3am on a random one like ‘Dad, who sang that song’ and he’d be like ‘Cameo’. I’d sit and smoke and listen to Cameo, Michael McDonald, Shabba. That’s how I found Theophilus and Dev Hynes. By going back.

We'll have more words of wisdom from Skepta tomorrow...!