How do you think your upbringing and where you grew up has shaped your outlook on life? and has this been translated to your musical career?
I guess living in London, you are a bit narrow-minded in the sense that it’s so multicultural you kind of forget that in other places people aren’t so open-minded to different cultures. That’s something that I’ve massively taken for granted growing up. I mean at school if you were racist you’d just get beaten up, it wasn’t a tolerated type vibe. When I went to Uni and met minorities who lived in a lot more remote parts of the country where they were the only minority, I was really made aware of the reality that London is definitely its own bubble. I feel extremely blessed at the same time because it’s opened me up to so many different perspectives and cultures that I embrace that massively inspire me and what I do today.
Do you think most of your earliest musical memories are defined by your dad being the manager of Plastic People?
My early musical experiences, truth be known, were probably from my late grandma. When I was about 10-14, just before you start getting naughty at school, I was quite into rock music in general, a lot of old school stuff. Most of my interest in music came from that era, but when I started discovering what my dad was doing, and understood that there was nightlife culture when I was around 15. It completely changed it for me. I just became obsessed with what my dad and Ade [Fakile, the founder] were doing with Plastic People.
Having a dad that worked at Plastics meant I was very blessed in the sense that I was able to [book] Loefah, Hatcha, Cookie Monsta, just a load of these names that got us so gassed when we were 16. I couldn’t believe it, I was just like fuck me my old man’s actually kinda lit. It’s actually a really funny story, you know, typical West African sort of dad is always like “I want you to be this and I don’t want you in the nightlife industry at all!” So I was instantly like, well I know exactly what I want to do then! When we did a party – Midnight Drop – I fucked up because I accidentally called the lady whose house we were using from my dad’s phone. So the next day he asked me “What were you up to last night” and I said “i was just chilling with my boys”, and he instantly said I was lying. That was how my dad found out that I was trying to follow in his footsteps.
From then I’ve just been obsessed with music and it just felt like a journey to find what my particular path is within music. I never thought I would actually be a DJ. I love music and stuff and picked up drums for a bit, but I kind of wrote myself off cause I couldn’t play guitar or anything like that. I think that’s why the nightlife industry sparked my interest in music from a career perspective because I never knew there was a culture where people would go to a place and listen to music that DJ was playing until I really got into what my old man and Ade were doing.
