Music Box revisited: Benjamin Zephaniah and Loyle Carner talking art, dyslexia and Shakespeare
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00:00 Yeah, I've read them all, don't worry.
00:01 What? You probably know them better than me.
00:03 They're the only books I ever read from start to finish.
00:06 The first time I heard about you, I was at school
00:22 and I'd just been told I was dyslexic.
00:23 And there was a poster of you up in the headteacher's office.
00:29 And it said, "Benjamin Zipf, dyslexic, talented man."
00:32 And she was like, "You need to be like him."
00:34 "You could be him one day."
00:36 And so, yeah, my mum bought me Gangsta Rap.
00:38 Right.
00:39 And I still remember the poem.
00:40 There's like two poems in it.
00:41 There's a poem at the end.
00:42 Actually, I wanted to ask when you wrote it.
00:44 It's the one that starts like,
00:47 "The twisted irons that men have made
00:49 bring murder to our streets.
00:50 And when the makers have been paid,
00:52 they blame our hip-hop beats."
00:53 Yeah.
00:54 I don't know yet. I can't remember what it's called.
00:55 But I don't know if you wrote it for the...
00:57 No, I wrote it for the book.
00:58 I had...
01:01 See, the thing was, I was doing poetry.
01:03 Yeah.
01:03 And then a editor at this publishing house...
01:10 Actually, she was in Puffin Books,
01:11 and then she went to Bloomsbury.
01:13 Fancy.
01:14 And she said, "Would you write a novel?"
01:16 And I said, "I'm not sure about that."
01:20 And she kind of convinced me.
01:22 And I wrote my first novel, Face.
01:23 I think my second one was Repugee Boy,
01:25 and the third one was Gangsta Rap.
01:27 Yeah, I read them all, don't I?
01:29 What?
01:30 You probably know them better than me.
01:31 They're the only books I ever read
01:33 from start to finish.
01:34 But the thing was that,
01:36 especially when I did Face, when I started Face,
01:38 because I was so well-known for political poetry
01:40 and campaigning and all that stuff,
01:43 everybody was expecting a black,
01:45 Brixton novel kind of thing.
01:46 And I thought, "No, I want to show people that I can write."
01:49 I want to base it on a white guy, 15-year-old.
01:52 And the other thing is, you see,
01:54 I was probably like you.
01:56 When I was at school, I didn't like books.
01:58 I was dyslexic, but I didn't even know
01:59 the word "dyslexic" back then, right?
02:01 So I hated books.
02:04 I say I hated books.
02:05 I just looked at them, and I looked at how big they were,
02:07 and I was like, "That's hard work."
02:08 You know what I mean?
02:09 I've got to read every word, you know?
02:11 And so I know how difficult it is.
02:13 So when I start writing books,
02:15 I always start by thinking,
02:17 "Right, remember the 13, 14, 15-year-old Benjamin.
02:21 What would you have liked to have read?"
02:24 And that's how I start.
02:25 That's why I faced art through joyriding
02:27 and all that kind of thing.
02:28 - But it's something that catches you from the off.
02:31 - Yeah, yeah.
02:31 - I found out with books, I hated, I don't know,
02:34 I still kind of have a weird, I don't know,
02:37 enemy situation going on with books,
02:39 because it's not something that I lend myself to,
02:41 which is strange, because people think,
02:42 because I'm a writer, that books is the first thing I go to,
02:44 but I struggle with it.
02:45 And I guess it comes from, just from
02:48 the words not coming as easy to me,
02:49 especially to read them.
02:50 - You have to understand that learning to read
02:53 and write the way we do is a very artificial thing.
02:56 - How so?
02:57 - Well, there's one language that's a living language
03:01 that you can't be dyslexic in.
03:02 Can you think what it is?
03:05 - What?
03:06 - It's Chinese.
03:07 Why?
03:08 Because it's pictorial.
03:09 All the early languages were pictures.
03:12 It's crazy to have a squiggle that represents a sound.
03:14 - No, no, no.
03:15 - If you're reading Chinese,
03:16 the word for roof looks like a roof.
03:17 - Yeah, yeah.
03:18 - You know, the word for lady looks like a lady.
03:20 - It's ridiculous.
03:21 - You know, and all the early languages
03:23 a lot of them were pictorial.
03:24 I guess, you know, some academic can pick this apart.
03:26 - Yeah, yeah.
03:27 - But the idea of seeing something that represents it,
03:30 that looks like it, is what human beings do naturally.
03:33 - Right.
03:34 - The idea of having a squiggle that represents a sound
03:37 is kind of something you have to learn.
03:39 - Yeah, yeah.
03:40 - So, which is why, you know,
03:43 what you have to realize is that,
03:45 and this is really important,
03:47 rap, poetry, even storytelling,
03:52 and even poets, like I'm not sure if you're aware
03:54 of people like Leonard Cohen.
03:57 - Mm-hmm.
03:57 - Yeah.
03:58 These people come from the oral tradition.
04:00 - Yeah.
04:01 - That's what we are part of.
04:02 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
04:03 - The written tradition is a modern thing.
04:04 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
04:05 - We've been telling stories to each other
04:06 and reading poems to each other for thousands of years,
04:09 at the dawn of mankind.
04:11 You know, so you should not feel we're inferior
04:14 or anything like that.
04:15 I think we're kind of superior.
04:16 And I mean, most dyslexic people are really sexy,
04:20 that's a start anyway.
04:20 (laughing)
04:23 You know, I mean, most of them are really creative.
04:26 Do they see the world in other ways?
04:28 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
04:29 It is, it's outside the box, completely.
04:31 It's like my mom, my mom is a teacher for kids.
04:33 I think my mom is really thankful
04:35 for me being introduced to you.
04:36 And I guess, and probably in what I do now,
04:39 because she teaches kids with special educational needs.
04:41 And so I was lucky 'cause when I was at school,
04:44 as much as the teachers didn't really understand it,
04:46 'cause it was quite a new thing still,
04:47 you know, the idea of being dyslexic or having ADHD.
04:49 And she understood it a lot deeper than most.
04:51 And so I had this kind of self-understanding from young.
04:54 But it still didn't help me.
04:55 It's crazy, I've never ever thought about that,
04:57 the idea of writing and that, you know,
05:00 that is something that's been man-made.
05:02 That doesn't necessarily make complete sense.
05:04 Obviously it makes sense, but I would love it
05:06 if every word looked like it,
05:07 if a house, a roof looked like a roof.
05:09 - Look at all the cave paintings.
05:10 - Yeah, it's true.
05:11 - They're all telling stories.
05:12 - Yeah, but they are, it's interesting.
05:14 - The education system is, you know,
05:18 teachers, a lot of them try their best.
05:20 But a lot of the time,
05:23 especially when it comes to dyslexia and other,
05:26 I was gonna say disorders,
05:27 but other conditions that young people have,
05:29 sometimes they're catching up.
05:31 And sometimes things just don't happen that way.
05:33 You know?
05:34 I mean, when I discovered I was dyslexic,
05:36 look, I wrote a book called Pen Rhythm.
05:38 I'd come from, I was in Birmingham,
05:43 come down to London, pump was big and everything.
05:45 I wrote this book, I didn't even know how to write it properly.
05:47 My girlfriend kind of wrote it out for me.
05:49 And people were talking about it.
05:51 And then they'd talk about it on television.
05:53 And I remember they called me a writer.
05:54 I went, "Shit, they called me a writer.
05:56 "I can't write."
05:57 And I went, a guy called Ken Livingston
06:01 used to have adult education classes.
06:03 He used to run the GLC, the Greater London Authority.
06:07 And he had adult education classes.
06:09 In these education classes, you just pay a pound.
06:12 - Just one pound?
06:14 - Yeah, for your lesson.
06:16 And I went to one.
06:17 And I was the only guy there.
06:20 They were all girls that got pregnant
06:22 when they were 13 or 14.
06:24 I'd missed their education and then gone back to it.
06:26 And I was there kind of studying.
06:30 And they were going, I remember one day,
06:31 somebody went, "Can I just see you on top of the pubs?"
06:35 (laughs)
06:37 But I just felt that I had to catch up on my education.
06:40 And I'll never forget that a woman said to me,
06:42 sorry, I beg your pardon, the teacher said to me,
06:44 she said, "I think you're dyslexic."
06:46 And I was like, "You wanna fight?"
06:48 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
06:49 - Calling me names.
06:50 - Yeah, exactly what I said.
06:52 - 'Cause it sounds weird.
06:53 - It still feels offensive to me.
06:55 I guess the social connotations of it are different now.
06:57 But I remember when I was told I was dyslexic,
06:59 I was like, "No, I'm not stupid.
07:01 "I understand words I like."
07:02 'Cause I used to hate, I don't know,
07:03 I don't know how you ever felt about Shakespeare.
07:06 When I was at school, I used to hate Shakespeare.
07:08 I used to think it was the worst thing,
07:09 the worst thing that I learned at school.
07:12 And then it was only until,
07:13 it wasn't until I saw "Roman and Juliet" on in a production.
07:16 I think it was on, I think it maybe was on in Brixton
07:19 or maybe in Peckham.
07:20 But it was just in a little theater.
07:23 And it was because I was experiencing it
07:24 the way it was meant to be experienced.
07:25 And I think it's the same with poetry.
07:26 - It's interesting that,
07:27 it's funny when you said, "I hate Shakespeare."
07:28 I was gonna say, you know, he was an all right man.
07:31 - Yeah.
07:32 - But I know you mean that.
07:33 - Yeah.
07:33 - It's not personal.
07:35 - It wasn't.
07:36 - I hate Shakespeare.
07:36 - It definitely wasn't personal.
07:37 - But, no, the same thing for me.
07:40 When I was growing up, there's a whole lot of names
07:42 who were dead white men poets.
07:44 - Yeah.
07:45 - That wrote things that had nothing to do with our lives.
07:47 - Yeah, yeah.
07:48 - We were getting beat up by the police.
07:49 We were getting, you know, the National Front and all that.
07:51 We were struggling against apartheid.
07:52 You know, I was like, "What do they write about us?
07:54 "What's that got to do with us?"
07:56 And a friend of mine in Wales,
07:58 used to organize poetry readings called Bob Mole,
08:00 strange name.
08:01 - Yeah.
08:02 - Sat me down and played me Macbeth.
08:04 And as he was, on a video,
08:06 and as he was playing it, he explained to me
08:09 what was going on in the country at the time.
08:10 - Okay, okay.
08:11 - Put it into context.
08:12 I'm like, "Wow, this brother's bad."
08:14 - Yeah, yeah.
08:15 - You know what I mean?
08:16 - For real.
08:17 - And how he's using the language.
08:18 - Yeah.
08:19 - And, you know.
08:19 - And making up his own language.
08:20 - Yeah, yeah.
08:21 - And pushing about his own language.
08:22 - He's doing what, I was gonna say what we do,
08:24 but, you know, if there's an emotion or something,
08:27 and he hasn't got a word for it, it makes one sound.
08:29 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely.
08:30 - And the accent, the rhythm,
08:32 with the rhythm of the time, you know?
08:33 It's like if I, if you wrote something now that says,
08:36 you know, yeah, Zeph and I are dread went into the,
08:39 to dance and the beats were kicking.
08:41 - Yeah.
08:42 - In a hundred years time, they're gonna say,
08:43 "Zeph and I are dread went into a dance."
08:45 How did you go into a dance?
08:46 A dance is what you do.
08:47 - Yeah.
08:48 - And the beats were kicking.
08:49 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
08:50 - What does it mean, the beats were kicking?
08:50 - Yeah.
08:51 - You know?
08:52 We know what that means now.
08:53 - Mm-hmm.
08:54 - And the same thing when Shakespeare was around,
08:55 people didn't have to sit there working hard
08:58 and deciphering it, you know what I mean?
08:59 - Yeah.
09:00 But I think that's the thing that's always
09:01 frustrated me about it is, when I used to study it at school
09:03 is that, you know, it was being dissected in a way
09:05 it was unnecessary.
09:06 And I even find that when we were studying poetry.
09:07 I know we studied some of your poetry at school
09:09 and other poets like Langston Hughes, et cetera.
09:12 And it was a whole idea of reading something
09:14 and looking, I don't wanna say looking too far into it,
09:16 but you know, sometimes it's not meant to be dissected,
09:19 it's just meant to be experienced and enjoyed.
09:20 I don't know how you feel about that.
09:21 - Sometimes you get a meaning from a poem
09:24 and it's not the meaning what the writer meant.
09:28 - Yeah.
09:28 - But it's--
09:29 - It is though.
09:30 - It gives nobody the right to come and tell you
09:31 that you're wrong.
09:32 - Yeah, yeah.
09:33 - This is what you take away from it.
09:34 - Completely, completely.
09:36 - And you know, I've got loads of stories about people
09:39 interpreting my poetry strangely or differently
09:42 or something that I don't really like that much.
09:44 I remember once I was filming,
09:46 making a movie with Alexi Sayle and a woman called
09:51 Beryl Reed.
09:52 - Yeah, yeah.
09:53 - Do you remember her?
09:54 - Yeah, yeah.
09:55 - Filming in West London.
09:56 And this great big Nigerian guy comes up to me
09:58 and I can't do a Nigerian accent, but he comes up,
10:00 he says, "Are you Benji Zefnai?"
10:01 I said, "Yeah."
10:03 (laughs)
10:04 And he went away and he came back with a book of mine,
10:07 a book of poetry called The Dread Affair.
10:09 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
10:10 - And he said, "Sign it for me."
10:12 (laughs)
10:13 And as I was signing it, I was like,
10:16 it's not a very good book actually, you know what I mean?
10:17 I've written a better one since that.
10:19 And he just looked at me and went, "How dare you?"
10:22 And he said, "This book brought me back from the dead."
10:25 And I thought, "Wow."
10:27 You know, this book really meant something to him.
10:29 - Wow.
10:30 - I mean, he was really low.
10:32 And who am I to come and tell him, you know?
10:34 - But it's mad, but it's crazy,
10:35 'cause the thing about it is you create and you move on.
10:38 - Yeah.
10:38 - But for some people that might be the only thing
10:39 they've been experienced to,
10:40 and they might not even know who you are
10:42 outside of just that book.
10:44 I mean, you forget that.
10:45 I don't know, it's not the same with me.
10:46 - I've got a latitude every day.
10:48 - Yeah, oh yeah.
10:48 What day were you then?
10:51 Oh yeah, fuck's sake, no, I missed you.
10:52 I definitely missed you.
10:53 - I can't remember.
10:54 - We were there from A to the last time.
10:55 - Actually, I'm not talking about this year,
10:56 I'm talking about two, three years ago.
10:58 - No, no, I'm talking about Womad.
10:59 - Oh right.
11:00 - 'Cause you had Womad this year, weren't you?
11:01 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11:02 I had that latitude as well, but that's another thing.
11:05 - It's another thing.
11:05 - Yeah, it's Womad.
11:06 Your mum was there.
11:07 - Yeah, she saw you.
11:08 - Yeah, I saw her.
11:09 - Ha!
11:10 (laughing)
11:10 - I'm joking.
11:11 (laughing)
11:12 - Steady.
11:13 I tell you, sitting there, if you were quiet,
11:15 I'd have seen you, the same.
11:17 She wouldn't have stopped talking.
11:17 I think, I don't know if I'm,
11:18 I know I'm a big fan, but I know my mum isn't.
11:20 So I'm a big fan, and if you're watching, mum, leave it.
11:24 - I'll tell you what though,
11:25 I'll tell you if you ever wanna go for a drink
11:26 in Croydon with my mum.
11:27 - Croydon.
11:28 - You want a Womad, I'll allow you to take one.
11:30 - Croydon.
11:30 - Mum does have Croydon.
11:31 (laughing)
11:33 - Nah, it's in Croydon.
11:34 My sister lives in Croydon.
11:35 - Okay, cool.
11:36 - But I was at--
11:36 - I'll hang out with her.
11:37 (laughing)
11:39 - I was at Latitude the other day, let's bring it back.
11:44 - Yes, yes.
11:45 - I'm coming out to the performance.
11:46 Some people are taking me to a book signing,
11:48 and this girl's trying to get to me.
11:50 Security are holding her back,
11:51 'cause they don't want her to get to me.
11:53 I think she wants me to sign something.
11:56 And she can't get to me, so she runs in front of me.
11:59 And then she got her back to me,
12:00 and she pulls up her top,
12:02 and she's got one of my poems tattooed on her back.
12:06 I said, "Are you crazy?"
12:07 And she just, she said something like,
12:10 "You give me life," and she kind of
12:12 danced into the distance.
12:14 - Amazing.
12:15 - So when you create stuff,
12:18 and you put it in the public domain,
12:19 you must understand it's the public domain.
12:21 It's there.
12:22 It's gone.
12:23 - It's interesting.
12:24 Kate, girl called Kate Tempest, I don't know if you know.
12:27 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:28 - I was having a chat with her recently,
12:30 and she said the same thing to me.
12:30 She was saying that all the albums,
12:32 all the poetry that she's done, she's put out,
12:33 now she feels like it no longer belongs to her.
12:35 And as soon as she takes it from her book,
12:39 records it, and puts it down, that's it.
12:40 And once it's out, it's not hers.
12:42 And it's for people to do with what they want.
12:43 And it's a weird thing that I'm getting used to,
12:45 I think, and trying to understand it,
12:46 'cause it is, it's not.
12:48 It's nothing to do with me anymore,
12:49 'cause I don't have any control over it.
12:50 It's where it goes, who listens to it,
12:51 what they feel when they listen to it.
12:53 - Even when you're doing music,
12:54 I remember when I did a,
12:56 my track I did with the Wailers, Free South Africa.
13:00 And, you know, the record,
13:05 'cause it was a record at the time,
13:07 before CDs and all that, you know, it made some noise,
13:10 but there was a little bit in it,
13:12 which I didn't quite finish,
13:13 or something that I meant to change,
13:15 and I didn't change.
13:16 So when it started playing on radio,
13:18 that bit would grate me every time I heard it,
13:21 'cause I knew that I wanted to go back and just tweak it.
13:23 But it's gone.
13:24 - Yeah, nothing you can do about it.
13:25 - So I call it quality control,
13:27 and I tell my students that you have to re-read your work
13:30 and re-write it.
13:31 And then the same thing when you're recording
13:32 a piece of music, you've got to,
13:34 don't let it go until you're happy with it,
13:36 because it's going to haunt you for the rest of your life.
13:39 - I have that, there's loads of stuff on this album
13:41 I just put out earlier this year that's different,
13:43 or that's wrong, and I guess--
13:45 - No, no, no, that's perfect.
13:46 It's a perfect album.
13:48 (laughs)
13:49 No, no, I've heard it, man, it's perfect.
13:51 (laughs)
13:52 - That means more than you can imagine.
13:54 But yeah, back to me, it's ridiculous.
13:56 But it's weird, 'cause you think,
13:58 you know, people listen to it,
13:59 and no one has any idea, it's only me who knows it,
14:01 it's only you when you listen back to that tune.
14:02 Everyone else is probably here,
14:03 and it's sitting next to you going,
14:04 "This tune's huge!"
14:05 But all those things don't matter,
14:06 'cause the perfect bits are the perfect bits,
14:08 and that's great, and they're not the bits that concern you,
14:10 it's that one bit that you can change.
14:12 I think that's the way you've got to keep pushing like that.
14:14 - And you know, I had an album once,
14:15 when I was with a rather big record label,
14:19 and they gave me all the money I wanted.
14:21 And on that album, there's some great musicians credited,
14:25 but the album was the biggest flop for me.
14:29 In Britain, anyway, it was all right in America.
14:32 It was just too polished.
14:33 It was too over-propagated. - I feel you, I feel you.
14:36 - There was no rough edges.
14:37 - And that's the most important part.
14:40 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
14:41 - But how do you, okay, so how do you feel
14:43 like you can find rough edges in something
14:45 that's not, 'cause in poetry, I guess, it's a bit looser,
14:47 but say in a novel, 'cause that has to be quite polished.
14:50 - I don't think you find them.
14:51 I think they happen naturally, and then you just leave them.
14:54 - Yeah.
14:55 - You know, I mean, we've done something in the studio,
14:56 and you wouldn't expect people, "Oh, that works."
14:57 - Yeah, and just leave it be.
14:59 - Yeah, yeah, leave it.
15:00 - Which is the hardest thing to do.
15:02 - Sometimes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:03 - I'm just gonna leave that alone.
15:05 - With a novel, I mean, a lot of novelists won't admit this,
15:09 but the most important, I was gonna say thing,
15:12 but person when it comes to writing a novel is your editor.
15:16 - Okay.
15:17 - 'Cause you've got the story out.
15:19 You know how it is in your head,
15:20 but an editor should be able to read it
15:23 as if they're just neutral, as if they don't know you.
15:25 - Yeah.
15:26 - They don't know the backstory.
15:27 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:28 - And even my editor who reads my stuff,
15:31 six and seven and eight-year-olds and 14-year-olds
15:34 can put their mind into the place of--
15:35 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, and be unbiased.
15:38 - Yes, yeah, and come back and give you
15:40 really good, intelligent feedback.
15:43 And sometimes, one or two times when I challenge it,
15:46 I think, well, now I know better.
15:47 This is what it was like for me or whatever.
15:49 But a lot of the time, they're right.
15:51 That's their skill.
15:53 And I get a lot of people come to me and they go,
15:56 hey, man, I've got this book, right,
15:57 I've got this novel and I've written it
15:59 and I wanna get it published,
16:00 but I don't want anybody to change it.
16:01 I wanna keep it perfect just as it is.
16:04 I say, how do you know it's any good?
16:05 They say, well, my girlfriend said it's good.
16:06 (laughing)
16:07 - She's lying.
16:08 - Yeah, and my mom said it's good, you know?
16:10 When somebody that doesn't like you says it's good,
16:12 then you know it's good, you know what I mean?
16:14 And you need what academics call peer review.
16:17 You need people who don't know you to read it
16:19 and look at it and say,
16:20 actually, this is a good piece of work.
16:22 So with a novel, it's different.
16:26 You can get rough-edged, but you can,
16:28 I mean, this is gonna sound like really Radio 4,
16:31 'cause I've heard people say this on Radio 4.
16:33 I was working on my novel, and there I was.
16:36 I was creating this room, and there was this character
16:39 and that character in the room.
16:40 And then this other character came in.
16:42 I don't know where she came from.
16:43 She just came, you know?
16:45 And it sounds really wishy-washy, but it does happen.
16:49 And I've been writing, and I think,
16:52 yeah, so-and-so said that, so-and-so said that,
16:54 and somebody comes in and says that,
16:56 and they go, where did they come from?
16:58 And I've just created them.
17:00 But they just kind of walk in, and it's--
17:02 - Maybe that's the rough edge, I guess.
17:03 - Yeah, exactly, that's the point I'm making.
17:05 That's the rough edge.
17:06 I don't then go back and say,
17:07 well, this wasn't in my earlier draft,
17:09 or, you know, this happened naturally.
17:12 And then I let my editor tell me if it's working or not.
17:15 And sometimes the editor comes back and goes,
17:17 that was a surprise.
17:18 And I go, and it's just like, you know,
17:20 you have a strange sound or echo
17:22 or something you've ad-libbed on your record,
17:24 and somebody says, I like that bit.
17:25 And you go, well, that wasn't scripted.
17:28 Those are the rough edges that you keep, you know?
17:30 - Yeah, it's, yeah, it blows my mind.
17:32 I think the idea of, I don't know,
17:34 kind of, I guess it's on the same vein,
17:35 but the idea of, from the way you're talking about it,
17:37 it makes me think about the patience
17:38 that you need to write something like a novel, though.
17:40 'Cause I think that's why I always, I don't know,
17:42 went to writing poetry or writing songs
17:45 or writing verses or raps,
17:46 because, you know, a 16-bar verse
17:47 is something that is possible for me.
17:49 I have to apply myself for 10 minutes,
17:53 and I can get it done, and then that's it.
17:55 But with the idea of it having something
17:56 that's like having to sustain your attention
17:58 over a long period of time on the same story
18:01 is something that I don't know, I wanna write a play,
18:03 but I don't know if I could do it,
18:04 'cause it's about the time and the patience of it.
18:07 - Since we're in 2017, remember this,
18:09 I'm telling you that you're going to do it.
18:12 'Cause what will happen is you'll wanna push yourself
18:14 more in the future.
18:15 Trust me, trust me, you're going to want to stretch yourself
18:20 when you've done all you can do in what you're doing now,
18:24 unless you just drop out of it completely
18:26 and turn into a milkman.
18:27 - It's possible, possibly, yeah.
18:30 (laughing)
18:32 - You're going to want to stretch yourself,
18:34 and it may be somebody that comes along
18:36 and sees it in you and says,
18:38 "Have you ever thought of doing a play?"
18:41 Or there's a character in one of your raps.
18:43 So if you want longevity, I'm telling you,
18:47 you have to stretch yourself and go in different areas.
18:50 It's really beautiful, because you can be working on,
18:58 well, let me tell you about myself.
19:00 I can be working on a novel,
19:03 get to what some people would call a writer's block.
19:07 I don't call it that, I just need space.
19:09 I'll go and work on an album.
19:11 - Yeah. - Yeah?
19:12 - Yeah. - Yeah?
19:12 I'll work on the album for a bit, that's not work.
19:14 I'll go and work on a play.
19:15 And then if I make an appointment, I have sex.
19:18 Right? (laughing)
19:21 And then after, okay.
19:23 You've never tried that, man?
19:24 (laughing)
19:25 - I might need to do it, no, if that's the right box,
19:27 I'll probably make it. - He's actually changing.
19:29 - You've changed my heart.
19:31 Right, I've never been so happy about it,
19:32 I wanna get writer's block now.
19:34 I could do a writer's block today, actually.
19:36 (laughing)
19:38 - But you know, when you've got lots of things to do,
19:41 you're never bored.
19:42 - Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true.
19:43 - And it doesn't become that difficult,
19:45 it just becomes, you come to a stopping point,
19:47 and later on, you're gonna come back to it.
19:49 Sometimes I forget it all and go and play football.
19:51 You know, that's what I do.
19:55 Don't force it, just let it come.
19:57 And one of the things,
20:00 I realise I'm pretty privileged in this,
20:03 but it's a nice position to be in,
20:04 when you can look at your,
20:06 I don't know if I should say this,
20:10 but I'm talking in the kitchen, me and you.
20:11 - Yeah, do, please be.
20:12 - You can look at your label or your publisher and say,
20:15 look, I'm not a machine,
20:17 can't just churn this stuff out.
20:19 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:20 - I've gotta really feel it.
20:22 And for this reason, I've turned down
20:24 kind of six book contracts and stuff like this.
20:26 I said, I'll do the six books.
20:27 - Yeah, but in my own time, when I wanna do it, yeah.
20:30 It's gonna happen.
20:31 Because when you're just writing for a contract,
20:34 it's not good.
20:39 It's soul destroying.
20:41 - I couldn't agree more.
20:42 I completely agree.
20:45 - So yeah, spread yourself out.
20:48 Trust me, if you can create characters and scenarios
20:52 in music, in the, I was gonna say formula,
20:57 but in the format that you do,
21:00 there's no reason why you can't,
21:02 I mean, I think Kate Tempest has done it really well.
21:04 She's a storyteller.
21:05 - Yeah, yeah, completely.
21:05 - So she's learned herself to the novel really well.
21:08 - It just weaves through everything, what she does.
21:09 - Yeah, yeah, you can do it, you know.
21:12 Trust me, I'm a doctor.
21:14 - Yeah, I do wanna do it, it's daunting.
21:19 But I think you're right, 'cause I do find that I've got
21:22 this cooking school for kids with ADHD.
21:25 And so it's me teaching with a friend of mine,
21:27 a guy called Mikey.
21:28 It's called Chilli Concarna, actually.
21:30 It's awful, man.
21:31 It's awful, man.
21:32 But I guess it was kind of birthed out of,
21:35 partly it's something I do, like playing football,
21:38 to relax, 'cause I never think football and cooking
21:40 are the two things I can go and do
21:41 that have nothing to do with music,
21:42 that get you back into the idea of doing it.
21:44 But also, it was just to stay busy.
21:45 It's the same thing.
21:46 'Cause if I'm trying to write something and I can't do it,
21:48 I need something else to do.
21:49 'Cause otherwise, if you're doing one thing,
21:50 all the time you get bored.
21:51 Like I was studying, I was at drama school, actually.
21:54 I went to drama centre in King's Cross.
21:56 And I loved, there was parts of it
21:58 that we studied political speeches,
22:00 and I got to study Malcolm X for a whole term.
22:03 And it was the first time I'd ever been given the freedom
22:05 to study whatever I want.
22:06 And so obviously I went straight to, I don't know,
22:09 for me, a hero of mine, or at least a strong,
22:12 black, positive-ish figure, who was powerful.
22:16 And it was something special for me.
22:19 But yeah, I don't know.
22:21 I can't remember where I was going with it.
22:22 - No, no, it's about keeping busy
22:24 and keeping your mind up.
22:25 - Yeah, yeah, of course.
22:26 - And having something outside music.
22:27 - That was the excitement.
22:28 - Having something outside music.
22:28 - But it was that going and finding something like that
22:30 and then bringing that back into the work,
22:31 I think, was also important.
22:33 'Cause if you're sat at a book,
22:34 you don't find anything new to want to write.
22:36 - I'm not saying this because you're sitting in front of me,
22:38 but when I heard your album,
22:41 it was a real breath of fresh air.
22:46 I'm going to tell you why.
22:47 I'm, no, seriously, seriously,
22:51 I'm not saying this 'cause you're in front of me.
22:52 - No, no, but it's a big deal for me.
22:54 Because the thing is, music recently,
22:59 first of all, it has very little politics in it.
23:01 And I don't mean party politics.
23:02 I mean people commenting about the world.
23:05 But I think, especially in what you're doing,
23:09 I find it difficult to call it rap, hip hop,
23:14 'cause there's poetry in there.
23:16 But what really moved me about it is how personal it was.
23:19 It's very difficult for you to be with your hip hop crew
23:23 and say, "Well, yeah, I'm going to write a poem
23:25 "about my dyslexia, or not being able to see my dad."
23:30 It's all about being big and being bad
23:35 and how many girls I got and that kind of stuff.
23:37 You must know Roots Manuver.
23:39 He's one person that does it really well.
23:41 But he's from another generation.
23:44 Kind of reggae hip hop.
23:45 He's in a world of his own as well.
23:46 But that's why I really love that piece of work that you did.
23:53 And to me, it also feels like you decided
23:56 to just make an album and say what you really felt
24:01 rather than thinking of the genre.
24:03 Rather than thinking of this is hip hop.
24:04 'Cause you've got jazz influence there.
24:06 You've got that kind of track at the very last bit.
24:09 Who's that?
24:10 Is that you, Bumbl?
24:11 - That's my dad, yeah.
24:11 So my dad, the story goes is my dad,
24:13 my dad sadly passed away before I really,
24:16 he knew I started making music.
24:17 But he made an album in secret that no one knew about.
24:20 And it wasn't until after he passed away that we found it.
24:22 And so the last, so that tune is a tune from his album.
24:25 So it's just him and a friend singing.
24:27 And I don't know, I kind of wanted to put it out for him
24:29 'cause he was the one who wanted to be a musician
24:31 in the family.
24:32 And so yeah, it kind of made sense.
24:34 The song was called "Yesterday's Gone."
24:35 That's why I called the album "Yesterday's Gone."
24:36 But it was like the final thing.
24:38 I couldn't, after my mom speaks the poem at the end,
24:41 I didn't feel like I could say anything to finish it.
24:42 But I wanted something else.
24:43 And I felt like he was the only person who could.
24:46 - Man, you've got to stay in that track.
24:48 You've got to, because--
24:49 - I promise, I promise.
24:50 There's a lot of people walking around,
24:53 putting up a front, and it's fake and it's false.
24:57 And it's kind of going with the flow,
24:59 going with the gang or whatever.
25:00 And they're not really getting deep.
25:02 And things are touching them deeply,
25:03 but they're not talking about it.
25:05 So if you can reach them through your music,
25:08 you're doing a great service for mankind, trust me.
25:10 And you may not see the benefits of it.
25:12 You know, you may not see the benefits of it.
25:15 But you really are doing it.
25:17 Again, we could talk for hours.
25:18 I can give you examples of my work
25:20 when it touched somebody.
25:21 And especially, you know,
25:25 I'm sorry for bringing race into this,
25:26 but especially of the black man.
25:28 Because, you know, we're supposed to do this,
25:30 we're supposed to be able to take it all,
25:32 as if we don't cry, as if we've got no emotions,
25:33 as if we don't fall out of love and in love, you know.
25:37 So it's, no, what you're doing is really, really important.
25:40 And it was a breath of fresh air, man.
25:41 I really, you know, when I first heard the album,
25:44 I just went, yeah, yeah.
25:46 And I must say that I heard it completely
25:49 without knowing you, without knowing I'm going to meet you
25:51 or anything like that.
25:51 It was just completely,
25:53 when I was told I was going to meet you,
25:55 I'd say it, I'd be like, my people are here.
25:56 I'd say, I just bought that album.
25:58 (laughs)
25:59 - You don't understand, you don't understand
26:01 what it means, I can't, yeah, I'm a bit speechless.
26:03 Which is very rare for me.
26:04 - I thought you were upset because of Aston Villa,
26:07 but there you go.
26:07 - Oh, right.
26:08 (laughs)
26:09 Yeah, I don't, man.
26:12 It's an absolute pleasure.
26:14 - Bro, keep it up, man.
26:18 - It's all.
26:19 (laughs)
26:21 (upbeat music)
26:24 (upbeat music)
26:26 (upbeat music)