"...I try to speak frankly"
- The Funk

Yoshi interview-part 2

LK: Do you think that outcast mentality is quite common with artists?

YM: It depends who the artist is. Look at the ones on the album, I mean Rahma Ali is quite… she's an artist in her own way, and when I hear her music I can't imagine what her mind-state must be in when she made it, because when I speak to her socially, she's not that same person, she's just very normal, down to earth. But then with David, well, it's never black or white really, I mean David listens to a lot of different music, he's got interesting tastes, he's not a boring person, but at the same time, he's normal too. It's never black or white. Anyway, I don't like this idea of the artist as being some tortured soul. I mean I am an awkward person socially and I have a tonne of problems and yeah generally, I do feel more at ease when I'm alone making my tunes, but I don't like the idea that all artists need to fit into that. If I'm a bit of a loner by nature, then I'm more interested in how I react when I have to be social and interact, that's when you see how deep you are, when you don't live according to the rules which you think 'make you'. When you don't make a caricature out of yourself as in "Oh, I'm an ARTIST! I like to spend long periods alone and I'm really intense." No, that's boring. Even if it's true, it's boring because it limits you.

LK: So how do you make your music?

YM: Well it starts with the beat; the music I make. Actually no I'm lying, it starts with the concept. Nearly always the concept. These days anyway, it all varies.. But after the concept, when I have this mental image of where I want to go, that's when the gift comes in, because then you have to actualise, as well as you can anyway, what's in your head. That's when you feel so blessed and realise sometimes, 'not many people can do what I'm doing'. I'm turning an idea into reality. A thought. After that it's writing to the beat -if it's a lyrical track I mean- then if you're feeling it a lot, you just sit there and write to it. Just like 'Scepter and I are saying in that skit, on track 5!! And it comes quickly, really quickly. For that one, long verse I wrote on 'Flowers & Trees', man I just wrote it. Took me 5 - 10 minutes. Same with 'Dream' I wrote that half unconscious, and it just streamed out of me like water. That's how I know that this is something that's linked to the Creator. Because it's so fluid and deep.

LK: So how do you feel about sampling?

YM: Ummm. I sample a lot. I like sampling, it's good! [laughter] I mean, I could do without it, I could live without it, because I have amazing ideas that are not reliant on samples, they're just reliant on these sounds and melodies that I have in my mind… which are not something you can then look for and sample, you've got to create that yourself. So I could definitely survive without sampling, but to me, it just seems like if you took away sampling… it's like saying to a painter, "Paint me something, but you're not allowed to use red. Or black." Because sampling is like just another tool, it's another part of the palette. It makes the song more rich, the more different types of sound that you have the more interesting the music is. I like to have different textures.

There's a track on my first record called 'Sunline' which is really tight and electronic [beat-boxing the drums] but then I put lots of noise and dirtiness on the keyboards that I played to make them sound grimey. And with the live piano in it too, I left the hiss which you can hear on the crappy mixer, you can even hear the bangles on Julia's hands as she's playing the piano, and I left my voice in at the end talking to her, saying "That's beautiful". So it's mixing the clean with the dirty, the live with the electronic with the organic, you know. So the more textures you have the better, and sampling is another texture.

LK: So what would you say to those who say 'When you sample other peoples music you're not being original'

YM: Yeah. [pause] it's interesting. On the way over here just now in the train I was thinking about someone, she's a painter from the Middle East and all of a sudden I thought, it's quite a nasty thought actually. I thought "She's not that original, because she takes ideas from other people". I mean, to explain here, I had sent her a Bjork song like 6 months ago, and she ended up coming up with an idea that was directly related to Bjorks' lyrics on that track. And so she had her idea from those words and she wanted to make a painting of it because she liked the words. And I thought to myself on the train just now, "that's not very original." But then I stopped and looked at myself like a second later, and I realised that I do exactly the same thing with sampling. Because you might take a sample from a song, but it's not about just 'taking someone else's music', just like for her it's not really about taking a lyric from a Bjork song, it was taking what that lyric meant to you, and internalising it, and then puking it up again in your own way. Making it your own. Having all your different ideas, reactions, colours, subtleties come into it. So it's the same. It's not stealing, if you've internalised the idea, then you're just recycling, which is what we're all doing anyway. So there's nothing wrong with that!

LK: So do you have any limits to the samples you use, do you worry about it?

YM: No I don't. Because I'm doing this all myself, so I don't really think about the legal stuff. I don't care who says what, because I'm not signed, so I have that freedom. On this album I sampled some fairly big people. I'm not gonna mention them, but you know, some big guys from the 80's amongst a few others. And even from the 90's. You know I learnt from DJ Shadow when he sampled this song, actually it was a Bjork song strangely enough! 'Possibly Maybe', which he sampled on his amazing song 'Mutual Slump' and this was only a few years after the Bjork song had come out. So he said if I remember rightly, in an interview, "it's not about how old the sample is, but whether or not it fits"… Something like that. So it's like, he blew apart that whole thing that I was fed when I was growing up in hip-hop that it had to be some 70's soul or funk sample. Which is rubbish, it doesn't have to be anything, if you're truly free you're not going to be limiting yourself to a certain genre.

LK: Yeah there is kind of a code of conduct isn't there?

YM: Yeah and it's crap!

LK: So would you say your music fits into the genre of hip-hop as we know it in the UK today?

YM: Umm. I don't know. Hopefully it doesn't.

LK: So you don't want it to?

YM: No I don't want to fit into anything. I want to cross over. Those are the artists I admire. I mean Miles Davis was coming from a Jazz background, and there was the same kind of unspoken code of conduct in Jazz, whereby people expected you to do a certain thing. And Miles starts putting electric guitars on his tracks in the late 60's, and then putting all kinds of effects on the sounds, I mean he had a wah-wah paddle on his trumpet! He was nuts, he did crazy things, but it works. I was listening to this classic he made called 'A Tribute to Jack Johnson' just yesterday on the beach, and it just frees your mind when you listen to it. It makes you feel so free when you listen to that kind of stuff because it's got that attitude, just in the soul of the music, whereby they're saying "I don't care about anyone or any genres, I'm just gonna do it!" So even in ugliness it is liberating. It's like when you jam with live musicians, you get that same freedom sometimes. So I just try and do that.

Although I am hip-hop! I will always consider myself hip-hop, because that's where I come from. But hip-hop by its nature should be something that gets broken and smashed, and then rebuilt into something else, because that's what it was from the beginning.

LK: So why did you decide to adopt the D.I.Y method to making your music?

YM: "D.I.Y." hehe, that's what they call it isn't it? Well, I don't know I guess that's the only way of doing it for me. Because I don't have confidence in anyone else, in terms of them taking care of me, I don't want anyone to take care of me. I mean, it would be nice actually to be honest with you, but I don't have the confidence that anyone is going to care about my music, as good as it is, as ready for mainstream consumption as it is, but I just don't trust that anyone else would do the things that I do. I basically just want control when it comes to my music. But I think everyone should be like that though, because it's your music, it's your art. Why would I just give it up to someone else to decide to have some cool photo shoot, with me on the front cover looking like Craig David. Much as I love Craig David man, haha, but I just want to do it on my own terms.

It's painful though. I've done it with my raw fingers. I've had to fold every single inlay sheet, which I also printed up. Every single sticker, every single CD I burnt, all the flowers that I've hand picked to go with the first 100 releases of the album. And it drives you crazy at times. When I was really getting busy a few weeks ago, I tried to sleep at night time, and my mind was just continuously going through the motions of folding and snapping things into place and putting CD's in again and again. So I couldn't sleep! It literally drives you crazy, 'cos it's one person doing the work of a record label; hand making hundreds of CD's in his bedroom. It's got its drawbacks then, but I still wouldn't do it any other way.

LK: I'm sure for your fans that will mean more, to know that you've put in that effort.

YM: Yeah exactly. And that I've touched every one that they're going to have in their hands. It will have touched my hands. That's something. And they're all stamped and numbered too.

LK So how do you feel about the music industry in this country?

YM: I don't know. I guess it's good. It seems good. I haven't really tried to do any of those things like go out and get the attention of any of these labels yet, so I can't really say. I think there's possibilities for anyone who's hard working enough. There's two things, first you have to be hard working, then second you have to have the assurance that there's people out there who are going to meet you half way, which I think there is. I've decided to do it all myself personally, because that's my thing. But I think there are people out there to lend a helping hand. I think it's a lot better here than it is in America. I mean you have to be good first of all.

LK: So what's the plan for the future?

YM: Well, as it always goes… I mean I started working on 'Flowers & Trees' just after my first one came out, so same thing, I've started working on something new now. It's something really crazy that I've got cooking in my head, I've got a few tracks out in the real world. And it's just going to be some really artful, really intense and serious music. Very deep, but not in a worded, obvious way.

LK: So you just haven't stopped? [laughter]

YM: I can't stop man! The thing is, and I was saying this to my friend Nadia the other day, she's an artist and she'd just had her first show, like a gallery of her work. And I was saying to her afterwards when she seemed really happy still, 'you have to take advantage of the fact that you get inspired after doing something' in her case, it was having a show of her own artwork. 'Cos I got inspiration last year from knowing that my album was out there, like 'I've done it! And it's mine! And people can get it if they want, but it's there!' So the inspiration said, 'Do more.' So I did. And 'Flowers and Trees was maybe 60 per cent finished within a few weeks of the first album coming out in terms of the basic song-structures. So you have to take advantage of those moments where you feel inspired, and that's what keeps the circle going round and round. It breeds itself. You just can't stop. And you don't stop, because you want to keep on doing it. It's like a drug… Everyone says that, [laughter] I don't even know what drugs are like to be honest. But being inspired, and doing more… it's like… something that you want to do!

LK: An obsession.

YM: exactly.

LK: So have you got any live dates?

YM: Yeah I had one live show a week or two ago, that was in Brighton for Slip jam: B at the Freebutt. That went great. And I got a great crowd response even though I messed up on my first song. The day after that I got an invitation from Yam Boy, up in London, he's a nutter who makes some really good experimental hip-hop too, and he's a mate, so out of the blue he asked me to perform at his show in London, that's going to be on May 17th at the Catch Bar somewhere near Old St. in London I believe. June 8th I'll be in Brighton at the Pavillion Tavern, the 'Pav Tav!' and.. oh yeah a show at this concert on May 28th, that's a saturday, that's proper organised!

LK: Okay great, well I think that's all unless you have anything else you want to add?

YM: That was a good interview wasn't it?

LK: Yeah.

YM: It went well didn't it?

LK: Yeah I think so.

YM: Yesssssssss!

Thanks to Loubna Khamlichi, who is wonderful and who shines.