Besides the obvious, I ask, what are the lyrics of “We Run The Block” about? “English Lit was my favourite subject in school,” Bonkaz explains. It was just word of mouth and radio shows.”Ĭreative freedom is a concept that comes up regularly during our conversation. “I feel like grime was at its biggest at a point when there was no internet - it wasn't YouTube and Soundcloud and all that. His next move was risky but baller - he decided that he would perform the track live and eventually drip-feed it to some select radio stations, but it would be kept away from the internet entirely. With “We Run The Block” already written, they hooked him up with the perfect beat. He was still working a fulltime job to pay the bills when he was introduced to grime’s go-to producers, Heavytrackerz, the guys behind "German Whip", by a friend.
When we meet he’s flanked by at least five industry heavies, but this time last year he was a lone soldier, just doing his thing. Within a week it would be all over South London - you’d hear it in school or on the bus.” And he seems to have a natural knack for creating his own hype.
“We’d record a song and then send it to our whole MSN list. “The tracks just started spreading,” he explains. One of grime’s defining features is that it exists without the need for mainstream musical endorsements. Bonkaz always got the intros and choruses - “because everyone knew that music was my thing.” I used to get in trouble for talking and then I realised that I could actually get praise for talking - for lyrics.” He spent hours with his mates in bedroom studios - they’d load up a beat and take turns to spit bars. “I used to have a huge problem with answering back. “I got into it when I was about 10 or 11,” he explains. It wasn’t long before music stole the top spot. But he’s from the home of dubstep his neighbours were Stormzy, Krept & Konan and Section Boyz. Growing up, he explains, his first love was football. “This is my favourite t-shirt.”īonkaz - 23 years old - is a Croydon boy, born and bred. “Do you like it?” he whispers, eyes glued to the ground.
#GROUP 1 CREW FORGIVE ME LYYRICS PATCH#
I’m used to watching him online in standard streetwear uniform - like the vintage Boston Celtics hoodie in his latest video - but today he sports a Guns n’ Roses t-shirt and a black leather biker complete with studs, House of Pain patch and licks of primary coloured paint. When we meet in the plastic-punk hyper colour of Sony’s headquarters I don’t yet know about his listening habits, but there’s a clue from the get-go that he’s not afraid of inter-genre dalliances.
0 kommentar(er)
