Loyle Carner stopped by the Genius studio to break down his hit song “Ottolenghi,” which has been streamed over 77 million times on Spotify to date! The song features and is produced by Jordan Rakei off Carner’s sophomore album Not Waving, But Drowning. The song title pays homage to Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi who the British rapper is major fan of and has even cooked with. On today’s episode of Verified, find out the sources of inspiration behind the hit song and why it’s important to the rapper.
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MusicTranscript
00:00 This song has stayed with me because it's been like a guiding light of a little nugget
00:04 of hope at times when it's felt hopeless.
00:06 It helped me through a time in my life where I needed it, and I've seen it do that for
00:10 others.
00:10 I was on the train going to see Jordan Mackay.
00:19 He was on the chorus.
00:20 He produced it.
00:21 Usually when I'm on the way to the studio, I'm picking up any piece of inspiration to
00:24 talk about.
00:25 When I got to the studio, it just kind of like fell out, I guess.
00:28 I was sat up on the train, staring out the window at the rain.
00:34 I heard this little lady must have felt the pain.
00:36 Asked her mom if the blazing sun will ever shine again.
00:39 There's a little girl sat in front of me and she was talking to her mom, just saying like,
00:43 "Where's the sun gone?"
00:44 You know?
00:45 Kids are so immediate and present in their life that they don't see yesterday or tomorrow,
00:49 right?
00:50 So she kind of couldn't believe that the sun would ever come back because it's so rainy
00:53 in the UK.
00:54 In the next line, I'm saying, "I feel exactly the same way."
00:56 You know, we have completely different perspectives on the same thing.
00:58 Hers is like a beautiful innocence and mine is kind of like a weighted skepticism, you
01:03 know?
01:04 And those two things are existing two seats apart.
01:06 It was like the mom was speaking to me.
01:18 In the moment, I was looking out the window thinking, "Fuck."
01:20 Do you know what I mean?
01:21 It's raining again and I'm tired and I'm sad a little bit.
01:25 You know, like, when is it going to get easier?
01:28 Kind of felt like, yes, she was saying it to her daughter, but she was also saying to
01:30 me like, "We need this."
01:32 You know?
01:33 Like, without rain, shit doesn't grow.
01:36 I was listening to a lot of Roots maneuver when I was making this album.
01:51 And this song, "Dreamy Days," he has some lyrics which is, "We're walking down the primrose
01:56 road to everything and nothing.
01:58 So can you picture past the honeymoon where you beat me with the wooden spoon?
02:02 Now I'm sleeping on the couch.
02:03 Got me thinking, 'Whose house is this?'"
02:04 It goes off and off.
02:05 I'm kind of paying homage to, like, "You can see me, but the Roots is Roots maneuver."
02:20 I love the bus, man.
02:21 It takes ages.
02:22 It smells bad.
02:23 A lot of kids was getting robbed on the bus.
02:24 I love the train.
02:25 The train's quick, efficient.
02:26 I love the train.
02:27 One day my friend Mikey bought me this book of his called "Jerusalem."
02:42 And I loved it.
02:43 And I was just, yeah, reading this book on the train.
02:46 And these guys sat next to me, were kind of looking at me funny, trying to talk to me
02:49 about religion and asking me, "I should go back to where I'm from?"
02:52 And I was trying to explain, "This isn't a Bible."
02:54 So yeah, it was kind of funny.
02:55 I had these two polar opposite interactions at the same time on the same train.
02:59 All of us are sat there on this train.
03:14 You know, this douchebag guy here, this beautiful girl, and myself.
03:17 And then all of us just stopped talking.
03:18 All of us stopped worrying.
03:20 Because the thing that we're worried about never coming back, comes back.
03:22 Yeah, that's it.
03:23 It's just a thank you.
03:24 That section is a thank you to the son.
03:25 When I wrote this, my girlfriend wasn't pregnant.
03:47 There was no kids on the horizon.
03:48 I was just a young man.
03:50 Free and easy.
03:51 So this is kind of like a re-imagining of the original lyrics, right?
03:55 That changed because of touring.
03:57 Things changed.
03:58 He is strong.
04:00 He is telling me to run.
04:01 But not run away.
04:03 Run alongside.
04:04 And yeah, I'm trying to find a sum of money to keep my family together like everybody
04:10 is.
04:11 Everybody who's trying to provide.
04:12 I'm proud to say, and scared to say, that my son is as intelligent as my girlfriend
04:16 is.
04:17 I'm in trouble.
04:18 I think with friends of mine, artists that I know and ones that I love that I don't know,
04:24 always talk about their big songs, like the ones that have done the best for them.
04:27 They hate them, you know?
04:28 And so I feel very lucky that maybe my biggest song, or one of my biggest songs, is one that
04:33 I still really love and I'm proud of.