it arrives!
My feature on the future of black British music is here, and I am rather proud of it.
Also! I applaud new Kanye and excoriate old McCartney. And they both make the Guardian music front page :)
I want to post the unedited copy of the Ny interview here, btw: she's easily the smartest, most on-the-ball and interesting person I've interviewed. I should really get it together and set up a website to post the full versions on...there's strong stuff in all of them which got chopped.
Ny
Nyomi Gray, aka Ny, has always been precocious. Home-schooled until the age of eight by her activist mother, she was some way ahead of the education system. "I knew a lot about the world at a young age, and I was used to being spoken to as an adult. I was taught that the Peters map projection was the correct one, not the Mercator one which showed Africa smaller - so you can imagine this lil' nine-year-old sticking her hand up and saying, 'Miss, you've got the wrong map! I want to speak to the headteacher!' Teachers would shout at me for knowing too much. I found subjects like History and RE difficult, because teachers were reading from books they didn't really understand. And I would say they were wrong, they were just regurgitating information. They hated me."
Now 22, it is fitting that Ny has grown into a prodigiously talented singer and songwriter who cites reggae legend Beres Hammond and perennially underrated R&B artist Teedra Moses as key inspirations. Her 2007 mixtape, Split Endz Vol 2, is full of razor-sharp, emotionally resonant lyricism, startlingly poetic imagery and keenly observed social commentary; her voice is a captivating instrument reminiscent of Aaliyah, clear as ice and possessed of a magnetic poise. Ny also proves herself at ease singing over doomy reggae shuffles, sweet neo-soul, frenetic grime beats or an unexpectedly effective White Stripes interpolation. Having recently returned from a tour of Africa as part of a British Council project - along the way, scoring a top 5 hit in Ethiopia, her father's homeland - Ny is currently working on her debut album proper for release in 2009. She has also found the time to make the best single of this year, a swirling vocal take on garage producer Wookie's glacial Gallium Riddim entitled Fallin' Again.
In person, Ny is utterly charming: fiercely intelligent, opinionated and chatty. She began writing poetry around the same time as, at the age of 13, she was hospitalised after attempting suicide, and freely discusses this episode. "I had a lot of emotional battles with myself. There were family arguments, my parents broke up and people around me had been murdered - at that age you think the whole world is on your shoulders. When you get older, you realise that the real drama starts when you have to pay bills and taxes! I might have reacted by wanting to go out and smash everything up, or retaliating against people, but by writing and performing I used that adrenaline in a positive way. I'd just write down all my thoughts when I was angry, it was like a release. And once it was out of me, I could move on." She says that writing is still an escape for her: "My friends say that when I'm in music mode, they'll leave me alone. I'll sit in the dark and just write for hours, and I'll be in a zone - sometimes I'm not even conscious of what I'm writing at that minute until I stop and read it back, and I'm like...OK, that's where I was."
Despite her own negative experience of the education system, Ny has nevertheless found herself back in school this year - as a music teacher, supplementing her career. Smiling wryly at the irony, she says: "I've been teaching 15-18-year-olds - they're interesting, they definitely give you stuff to write about and they're brutally honest, which I like. I always play them new tracks and ask what they think - cuz they're my target market as well. They always call me Miss and I have to tell them not to. But it's because I hated it that I wanted to do it when the opportunity arose. I know the language the kids use, I can see what their issues are. Teaching nowadays goes beyond just teaching, it's almost like counselling, especially with music cuz it's such a personal thing. When some of the kids sing about death or whatever, they'd have to go into their own situations and be able to open it up and show other people. And young people, especially young guys, are not really encouraged to do that. I think that's one of the big issues in our society that make teenagers go into this mad culture of crime and stuff."
Ny's interest in social issues is the legacy of being repeatedly taken out of school by her mother to demonstrations, whether for the release of the Black Panther activist Mumia Abu-Jamal or a campaign against McDonald's. Later, as a teenager, Ny found herself in a position to pick and choose her own issues, and joined the Sickle Cell Society along with animal rights and anti-fur protests. Music, though, was her priority - even though she had to start her career from scratch. "I had no money, so I took odd jobs cleaning houses - I raised £500 for Split Endz Vol 1. The studio was in a college in Camden which finished at 4pm, but the cleaners didn't come round 'til 7pm, so we had those three hours to literally run in and record. We pressed 1,000 CDs, and I was on Oxford Street selling it every day with my best friend. Rain, snow, we were there."
It's with her own hard graft in mind that Ny surveys the current state of black British music. She wearily sighs when discussing the tendency of politicians to condemn it out of hand - "They don't understand, it's like therapy for these kids" - and is especially scathing about radio playlisters: "They're such little follow-fashions. They'll say they love the track, but they're waiting to see if anyone else picks it up. They're so scared to stand out in case they lose their jobs, but they'd probably have better jobs if they did rebel a bit."
"Black music isn't selling cuz it's unhealthy. It's not selling cuz people are scared to put money into it. And when they do, they try to water it down. It's like, but you put your money into this...so why try to transform it into that? And then it doesn't work, and they don't sign any more...and it's like, you ruined it, and now you decide you don't like it? If it was my way I'd just have investment - get a marketing team of our own and do it the right way. In America they have a better view of what's going on when it comes to music of black origin. They can see selling points and take risks, but UK labels really need a slap in the head."
Also! I applaud new Kanye and excoriate old McCartney. And they both make the Guardian music front page :)
I want to post the unedited copy of the Ny interview here, btw: she's easily the smartest, most on-the-ball and interesting person I've interviewed. I should really get it together and set up a website to post the full versions on...there's strong stuff in all of them which got chopped.
Ny
Nyomi Gray, aka Ny, has always been precocious. Home-schooled until the age of eight by her activist mother, she was some way ahead of the education system. "I knew a lot about the world at a young age, and I was used to being spoken to as an adult. I was taught that the Peters map projection was the correct one, not the Mercator one which showed Africa smaller - so you can imagine this lil' nine-year-old sticking her hand up and saying, 'Miss, you've got the wrong map! I want to speak to the headteacher!' Teachers would shout at me for knowing too much. I found subjects like History and RE difficult, because teachers were reading from books they didn't really understand. And I would say they were wrong, they were just regurgitating information. They hated me."
Now 22, it is fitting that Ny has grown into a prodigiously talented singer and songwriter who cites reggae legend Beres Hammond and perennially underrated R&B artist Teedra Moses as key inspirations. Her 2007 mixtape, Split Endz Vol 2, is full of razor-sharp, emotionally resonant lyricism, startlingly poetic imagery and keenly observed social commentary; her voice is a captivating instrument reminiscent of Aaliyah, clear as ice and possessed of a magnetic poise. Ny also proves herself at ease singing over doomy reggae shuffles, sweet neo-soul, frenetic grime beats or an unexpectedly effective White Stripes interpolation. Having recently returned from a tour of Africa as part of a British Council project - along the way, scoring a top 5 hit in Ethiopia, her father's homeland - Ny is currently working on her debut album proper for release in 2009. She has also found the time to make the best single of this year, a swirling vocal take on garage producer Wookie's glacial Gallium Riddim entitled Fallin' Again.
In person, Ny is utterly charming: fiercely intelligent, opinionated and chatty. She began writing poetry around the same time as, at the age of 13, she was hospitalised after attempting suicide, and freely discusses this episode. "I had a lot of emotional battles with myself. There were family arguments, my parents broke up and people around me had been murdered - at that age you think the whole world is on your shoulders. When you get older, you realise that the real drama starts when you have to pay bills and taxes! I might have reacted by wanting to go out and smash everything up, or retaliating against people, but by writing and performing I used that adrenaline in a positive way. I'd just write down all my thoughts when I was angry, it was like a release. And once it was out of me, I could move on." She says that writing is still an escape for her: "My friends say that when I'm in music mode, they'll leave me alone. I'll sit in the dark and just write for hours, and I'll be in a zone - sometimes I'm not even conscious of what I'm writing at that minute until I stop and read it back, and I'm like...OK, that's where I was."
Despite her own negative experience of the education system, Ny has nevertheless found herself back in school this year - as a music teacher, supplementing her career. Smiling wryly at the irony, she says: "I've been teaching 15-18-year-olds - they're interesting, they definitely give you stuff to write about and they're brutally honest, which I like. I always play them new tracks and ask what they think - cuz they're my target market as well. They always call me Miss and I have to tell them not to. But it's because I hated it that I wanted to do it when the opportunity arose. I know the language the kids use, I can see what their issues are. Teaching nowadays goes beyond just teaching, it's almost like counselling, especially with music cuz it's such a personal thing. When some of the kids sing about death or whatever, they'd have to go into their own situations and be able to open it up and show other people. And young people, especially young guys, are not really encouraged to do that. I think that's one of the big issues in our society that make teenagers go into this mad culture of crime and stuff."
Ny's interest in social issues is the legacy of being repeatedly taken out of school by her mother to demonstrations, whether for the release of the Black Panther activist Mumia Abu-Jamal or a campaign against McDonald's. Later, as a teenager, Ny found herself in a position to pick and choose her own issues, and joined the Sickle Cell Society along with animal rights and anti-fur protests. Music, though, was her priority - even though she had to start her career from scratch. "I had no money, so I took odd jobs cleaning houses - I raised £500 for Split Endz Vol 1. The studio was in a college in Camden which finished at 4pm, but the cleaners didn't come round 'til 7pm, so we had those three hours to literally run in and record. We pressed 1,000 CDs, and I was on Oxford Street selling it every day with my best friend. Rain, snow, we were there."
It's with her own hard graft in mind that Ny surveys the current state of black British music. She wearily sighs when discussing the tendency of politicians to condemn it out of hand - "They don't understand, it's like therapy for these kids" - and is especially scathing about radio playlisters: "They're such little follow-fashions. They'll say they love the track, but they're waiting to see if anyone else picks it up. They're so scared to stand out in case they lose their jobs, but they'd probably have better jobs if they did rebel a bit."
"Black music isn't selling cuz it's unhealthy. It's not selling cuz people are scared to put money into it. And when they do, they try to water it down. It's like, but you put your money into this...so why try to transform it into that? And then it doesn't work, and they don't sign any more...and it's like, you ruined it, and now you decide you don't like it? If it was my way I'd just have investment - get a marketing team of our own and do it the right way. In America they have a better view of what's going on when it comes to music of black origin. They can see selling points and take risks, but UK labels really need a slap in the head."