“I’m trying to be that source of release,” he says. RO, “In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey / Butane in my veins so I'm out to cut the junkie.” “Man I’m the worst rapper in the world – I’m a loser,” Beck is reported to have said upon listening back to an early demo of his break-out hit (before it had acquired its iconic chorus) . EP, “At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet/ And a freight train running through the/ Middle of my head /Only you can cool my desire.” Written down, Springsteen lyrics can – stops to ensure reinforced steel helmet is strapped on – read like a fever-dream Bud Light commercial. EP, “It's alright to say things can only get better/ You haven't lost your brand new sweater/ Pure new wool, and perfect stitches/ Not the type of jumper that makes you itches.” Received as a novelty ditty on its debut in – pauses to feel old – January 1992, the Sultans’ lament for a missing item of woollen-wear has, with time, been revealed as something deeper. I like women’, “I wish I was like you / Easily amused / Find my nest of salt / Everything's my fault.” As headbangers with bleeding poets’ hearts, Nirvana were singular. EP, “Why is the bedroom so cold turned away on your side? The uncanny last will and testament that was the entirety of Blackstar – a ticking clock of a record that shape-shifted into something else entirely when Bowie passed away three days after its release? Tiago Silva, performed by Dave and AJ Tracey. Get to know AJ Tracey. Tracey says he isn’t so bothered about courting the US music industry – his focus is on his home turf. He’s gushing all right, but like lava from a volcano, about to burn all before it. EP, "War, children, it's just a shot away/ It's just a shot away." “My friend and his whole family died in that fire,” he says, “so that’s very close to my heart. Are We There. Today, the credit for its uncanny power largely goes to Merry Clayton’s gale-force backing vocals. Tracey, who was born Ché Wolton Grant (his mother named him after the revolutionary), seems much happier here than in his previous flat, where he was more isolated from his friends and family back in Ladbroke Grove. “People used to always tell me to stop gloating but I have the right to gloat, I deserve to talk about my achievements. That’s really the attitude they have. “That’s, like, power numbers! No other composition more movingly articulates the despair that was set to devour him whole and the chest bursting love he felt for his family. He honed his speedy rapping skills over his mother’s drum’n’bass records, which are far faster than your average rap or grime tune. But all of that ache, torrid lyricism and terrible beauty is already present and correct in Reznor’s original. The #grime4corbyn campaign he says was “very cheesy”, but even though it helped to mobilise a generation, he is disappointed about its outcome. EP, "I'm the mild, money-getting style, rolling foul/ The versatile, honey-sticking wild golden child/ Dwelling in the Rotten Apple, you get tackled/ Or caught by the devil's lasso, s*** is a hassle" Nas addresses both himself and his future progeny on one of the best tracks from his faultless debut Illmatic. While there are what critics might indulgently describe as “cheeky” lyrics on his debut, self-titled album, Tracey is determined to treat everyone equally: “I give everyone the same length of rope to hang themselves by,” he says, crediting his flatmate with passing on the quote. But, as Murphy desperately reels off all his cutting-edge influences, it’s the seam of genuine pain running through the lyrics that give it its universality. Words and interview by. AJ Tracey has gifted us with a new single titled “Anxious” and visuals to match. And now that I am, they’re like, ‘Oh! People ask me, how was university; I say it was boring and it wasn’t for me. It’s also the area that has, above anywhere else, defined Tracey as the artist he is today. In contrast, watch this interview during the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme from February, when a presenter interviewed the hip-hop artist AJ Tracey – behind the very same track that Alex rapped along to. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Shortly afterwards, Doherty’s spiralling chemical habit would see him booted out of the group and he would become a national mascot for druggy excess – a sort of Danny Dyer with track-marks along his arm. “I’m going minus [figures] for these shows,” he says. His album cover, which pictured him dejectedly cradling a goat, may have seemed like an oddball choice, except “GOAT” is an internet acronym for Greatest of All Time. He was never more searing than on this early confessional – a rumination on his poverty-wracked childhood and the addictions that ripped like wildfire through his extended family in Compton and Chicago. “I felt like he was the best of a bad bunch.” He thought that voting for Labour was “the only way” to shift the government “over to the fair side a bit”. The return of AJ Tracey is upon us. As the lyrics attest, they ultimately passed like ships in a long, sad night. What he does have behind him is virtually every other young MC ready to have his back and support his work, from legends of the grime scene like Skepta and Jme, to younger blood including his friend and frequent collaborator, the 20-year-old rapper Dave. There's a standard misconception amongst the musically ignorant that rap and grime are encased in the same box. There’s the seductive syncopation of UK Afrobeats, which amalgamates dancehall, African pop melodies and R&B, or the adjacent sound, Afro-swing, spearheaded by Mercury-nominated rapper J-Hus. AJ Tracey debuted at number three on the UK Albums Chart and is certified Silver by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). “I was the outsider. Co-written with Pharrell and Tyler, the Creator, “Pink + White” stands out even on an album like Frank Ocean’s Blonde. During Stormzy’s Saturday headline gig, Tracey’s was the first name to be mentioned in the rapper’s celebratory roll-call of British MCs. These are the little-shown downsides of being a modern-day independent artist, but Tracey remains philosophical. I’ve got a painting of Fidel Castro on my wall and I play Fortnite every day. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? “I draw from past experiences with my music, because my life is quite boring,” he explains over lunch in a London restaurant. He sold drugs for a while, nothing heavy. But the Satanic majesty also flows from the lyrics – which spoke to the pandemonium of the era and the sense that civilisation could come crashing in at any moment. I just did what I had to do because we didn’t have enough money. “I don’t think it’s my job to be telling people how to conduct their lives: ‘Youth, you should put your knives down’; ‘Youth, you should do this, do that’’… I understand the complexities of all the struggles the youth go through and I don’t have the right to tell them, ‘Don’t roll with a weapon’, because [then] they might not roll with a weapon, and they might meet someone who doesn’t like them, and they might lose their life because they didn’t have a weapon on them. The ostentatiousness of the lyrics owes as much to poets Arthur Rimbaud and Baudelaire as it does to Jim Morrison. But far from a ghoulish dispatch from the brink “Love Will Tear Us Apart” unfurls like a jangling guitar sonnet – sad and searing. It’s that rare dance track which reveals hidden depths when you sit down with the lyrics. Same with men, I talk about guys running away from me... that’s what they do. He references the Book of Ecclesiastes but also Elvis Presley, and offers up the grim perspective of a man whose views do not fit in with the world around him. EP, “You had chemicals boy/ I've grown so close to you/ Boy and you just groan boy.” The ironic “lager, lager, lager” chant somehow became one the most bittersweet moments in Nineties pop. Versace ’s idea was the obvious answer to the makeshift digital show format: a music video, the way we know and love it from MTV in the 1990s and early ’00s. A deluxe version of his album, AJ Tracey, featuring five new tracks, is out now. CityLife’s interview with acclaimed British hip-hop star AJ Tracey takes place just two days after last weekend’s Champions League final between … “My music, it’s escapism.” He says he used to be very angry (“at life, at society, at... just everything”) but doesn’t feel that any more, not least because he’s upgraded to a nice apartment in Chelsea “with glass all around it – there’s flowers in my house, I read cook books. He deserved all that ages ago. “The government should be putting things in place to help young people of colour,” he says, “like youth clubs.” He is passionate on this subject; his mother, a youth worker, ran the club on his estate but spaces like those are in steep decline. The result was a feverish delving into familial angst, framed by a prism of nightmarish hallucination. “There are all these other goats on the farm, and mine are the smallest, but apparently they terrorise everyone,” he says proudly. “Some things you never really fully understand unless you are actually black and you experience how it feels when someone treats you differently based on your skin colour.” But he encountered prejudice of another kind too. EP, “I got a letter from the government/ The other day/I opened and read it/It said they were suckers/ They wanted me for their army or whatever/ Picture me given' a damn, I said never.” Decades before Black Lives Matter, Chuck D and Public Enemy were articulating the under siege reality of daily existence for millions of African-Americans. Tracey is celebrated for the rapid-fire displays of his vocals and his versatility, flipping between the various styles that are defining UK music right now: grime, trap, drill, anything lightly syncopated – no genre has gone unturned. All of that and Bowie makes the line “it’s not the side effects of the cocaine…” feel like a proclamation of ancient wisdom. “I’m proud of myself, man,” he says. EP, “On days like this/ In times like these/I feel an animal deep inside/ Heel to haunch on bended knees.” Andrew Eldritch is the great forgotten lyricist of his generation. “I’m really into guitars,” he agrees, observing that “even the one with Giggs on it” (“Nothing But Net”) has a guitar sample. “Every single aspect,” he says. AJ Tracey has released his first new single of the year, ‘Anxious’. Why is it that I have to pay this much for school uniform when my mum can’t afford it? Produced by Remedee, “Anxious” is a bouncy bop from AJ and his jumpy flow and braggadocious lyrics add to the lively feel of the tune. I used to go on to radio sets and be spraying so fast, people would be like, ‘How are you doing that?’”, His Trinidadian father, meanwhile, who moved out when Tracey was six, had been in a UK hip-hop group in the 90s, which Tracey has always refused to identify. With Ladbroke Grove, too, Tracey was keen to do something with undeniable crossover appeal. It’s adorable, full of whimsy, and just the right amount of silly. Bet You Didn't Think AJ Tracey Was A Linkin Park Fan... Voting For MTV Brand New For 2017 Is Now LIVE! But how he lands his blows here in this soul-baring recounting of a violent disagreement with his father. Why is it that the government doesn’t help? After his self-titled debut album was met by huge critical acclaim, AJ Tracey has gone on to have an incredible 2019 and it's only August! Loudon III, a cult folkie in his own right walked out on the family when Rufus was a child and the simmering resentments had lingered on. I don’t think he cares about any of that.”, Tracey’s go-to references in music are anime and football (“if at least one isn’t on the track, it’s probably not by me”) which add a further cohesiveness to the record. But this track from Sgt. RO, “If I want to see the tears in your eyes/ Then I know it had to be/ Long ago, actually in the drifting white snow/You loved me.” Piano-man Wainwright can be too ornate for his own good. “You might just be a black Bill Gates in the making,” she muses, but then decides, actually: “I might just be a black Bill Gates in the making.” RO, “Lover, please do not / Fall to your knees / It’s not Like I believe in / Everlasting love.” Haunted folkie Marling was 16 when she wrote her break-out ballad – a divination of teenage heartache with a streak of flinty maturity that punches the listener in the gut. EP, “Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine/ Meltin’ in a pot of thieves/ Wild card up my sleeve/ Thick heart of stone/ My sins my own/ They belong to me” The song that launched a thousand punk bands. When he first started rapping, Tracey says many of his lyrics reflected his frustration at his social situation. Wait your turn.” It’s also why he still visits the site of the Grenfell fire, where one of his friends died. AJ Tracey interview: 'I’m the most versatile rapper in London — I believe it with my heart and soul' Living the dream: AJ Tracey released his debut album in February . Has Kurt Cobain even more movingly articulated his angst and his anger than on the best song from their swan-song album, 1993’s In Utero? AJ Tracey: ‘If the media ever tries to say anything cheeky about me, I just laugh about it. The project will feature 16 tracks and guest vocals from MoStack, Digga D, Mabel, Nav, Kehlani, T-Pain, Sahbabii and Go Lightly. “It’s not me casting a judgment on someone, it’s something that has happened. EP, "Candy came from out on the island/ In the backroom she was everybody's darling/ But she never lost her head/ Even when she was giving head/ She says, hey baby, take a walk on the wild side." EP, “Guess who just got back today/ Them wild-eyed boys that had been away/ Haven't changed that much to say/But man, I still think them cats are crazy.” A strut of swaggering confidence captured in musical form – and a celebration of going back to your roots and reconnecting with the people who matter. AJ Tracey on stage at Leeds festival, August 2019. “No one paid me any attention,” he says. “I’ve got to invest in myself, you know what I’m saying?”. This gave him an idea for the hook and he never looked back. EP, “A skinny man died of a big disease with a little name/ By chance his girlfriend came across a needle and soon she did the same.” Prince’s lyrics had always felt like an extension of his dreamily pervy persona and, even as the African-American community bore the brunt of Reagan-era reactionary politics, Prince was living in his own world. There’s a photo of AJ taken by the lads at wotdoyoucall.it which could well pass into grime folklore, where he’s scratching out the name “new wave” on the set list at Eskimo Dance. Even as an independent artist, he managed to score the 13th spot on the albums chart with Secure the Bag!, along with three top 40 singles. ‘AJ put strippers in his last video, why is he in a strip club?’ Because I am, bruv. By . “If I’m voting for anyone now it’s the Green party. “I’d just have to talk about Fortnite and sitting in my house in my boxers playing it.” © Ciesay - Places + Faces He was a smart kid, and briefly studied criminology at London Metropolitan University before dropping out to focus on music. Its circumstances are tragic yet its message – that loves lingers after we have gone – is uplifting. It’s not as straightforward as people think it is.” Instead, he’d rather lead by example. There’s a pygmy goat on his lap – one of two that Tracey owns – who is also called Tracey (the other one is AJ). AJ Tracey has revealed that his new album is “almost done”.. READ MORE: AJ Tracey – ‘Secure The Bag! Six months later, Cobain would take his own life. We can see Grenfell from my mum’s front room window.” He says he doesn’t feel the need to refer to it in his music. – AJ Tracey. Harriet Verney . Before that, there is poetry. AJ Tracey: ‘I had to do everything on my own’, AJ Tracey: ‘I never felt like I was in the grime scene.’. “I dunno, man,” he says. “Can’t tell,” he says, swinging a keyring round his finger and slipping it in his pocket before I can get a glimpse. The way Peter’s father is compared to such a vivid childhood memory is a perfect, haunting testimony to the ways we are affected by loss as adults. There’s already a massive queue outside the venue of fans eager to catch a glimpse of two of grime’s fastest rising names. RO, “She comes back to tell me she's gone/ As if I didn't know that/ As if I didn't know my own bed.” With contributions from Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the Boyoyo Boys, Simon’s 1986 masterpiece album is regarded nowadays as a landmark interweaving of world music and pop. Tracey’s track, with its pitched-up sample from soul singer Jorja Smith, cut through all the season’s Latin-flavoured pop, functional house and endless Ed Sheeran singles and still sits, unbudged, in the charts, a feelgood summer hit that refuses to accept that autumn is here. A forthcoming UK tour, which includes a headline show at Brixton Academy in London, is pretty much sold out. Last time we spoke, ahead of the release of his top 20 EP Secure the Bag! He’s at a party, looking bored. She takes no prisoner on the closing track – a tale of domesticity rent asunder that lands its punches precisely because of Van Etten’s eye for a mundane, even grubby, detail. “I would never generalise about women,” he continues. The day is over now and it’s almost time for the after party, headlined by AJ Tracey and Santan Dave. There are hundreds of great songs about epic, romantic love, and there are hundreds of other Beatles songs that could have made this list. Now all the countries are looking at us like we’re just scared. Corbyn is a great guy and his morals are in the right place but I don’t think he’s strong enough to be our leader.” And the less said about Boris, the better. “People would never have expected Ladbroke Grove to be in the top five for 10 weeks,” he says. AJ TRACEY TO MABEL. At the end of the day, that’s the way it is.”, Genres such as drill are increasingly popular but they are still demonised in the media and Tracey says that he wanted to present an image of young black youth that was more carefree and fun. And yet, it’s the sheer, triumphant dunder-headedness of Oasis’ biggest hits that makes them so enjoyable. The meta horror movie of Ashes to Ashes? EP, "When I get older losing my hair/ Many years from now/ Will you still be sending me a Valentine/ Birthday greetings bottle of wine?" “He’s the guy that could do it. Ever better, and from the same Floodlands album was “This Corrosion” – a track more epic than watching all three Lord the Rings movies from the top of Mount Everest. “That’s bog-standard. Look over the top 40 songs of the summer and it encompasses a variety of MC-led sounds that grime paved the way for but which, except perhaps for some similar slang, are wildly different. EP, “Once there were mountains on mountains/ And once there were sun birds to soar with/ And once I could never be down/Got to keep searching and searching.” Which Bowie lyrics to single out? “Country Star”, which is kind of a reverse Post Malone, has what he refers to as a country drill beat, and there’s a Caribbean vibe on opener “Plan B” and closing track “Wifey Riddim 3”, in a nod to his Trinidadian heritage. The next album he makes will be more “conscious”, he continues, although he adds that he doesn’t actually enjoy talking about politics, as “everything that’s said can be twisted”. "Ladbroke Grove" became Tracey's highest-charting single peaking at number three on the UK Singles Chart. The titular – and fictional – Hotel California is a metaphor for life in a successful rock band: “You can check-out any time you like / But you can never leave.” The hallucinatory imagery was meanwhile inspired by a late night drive through LA, the streets empty, an eerie hush holding sway. Between 2012 and 2016, 600 youth clubs shut down across the country, and a parliamentary committee in May this year found that more than 100 councils had slashed their budget for youth services by 91%. After teasing the track on Instagram earlier this week the West London rapper dropped the track today (March 5). Father Lucifer was further inspired by visions she had received whilst taking peyote with a South American shaman. I’m telling my truth. Either way, Eldritch paints forceful pictures in the listener’s head, especially during the stream of consciousness outro, unspooling like an excerpt from HP Lovecraft’s The Necronomicon or the Book of Revelations: The Musical. It’s obviously playful and parodying of angst-filled indie lyrics (of which there was no shortage in the shoe-gazy early Nineties). Credit: RELMS. “I have loads of kids who copy what I do. The pain of the separation is laid out nakedly on the title track, where he unflinchingly chronicles the dissolution of the relationship. in 2017, he confirmed he didn’t want to rush anything. Not only has his single ‘Ladbroke Grove’ reached over 500 million streams, it has become a summer soundtrack of 2019. “Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine... Goodbye old friend. Unlike many of his peers, who are at the beck and call of a major label, Tracey is used to calling the shots. It’s hysterically witty, with the narrator painting death by ten-ton truck as the last word in romantic demises. Reed’s most famous song paid tribute to all the colourful characters he knew in New York City. Black Steel, later covered by trip-hopper Tricky, is a pummelling refusal to be co-opted into American’s Land of the Free mythology – a message arguably as pertinent today as when it kicked down the doors 30 years ago. And it cemented Thiago Silva as one of the most memorable duets of the decade. “It’s hard for him,” Tracey says of Skepta, whom he bumped into recently during Paris Fashion Week, “because he’s got all this hype quite late in his career. As part of Digital Milan Fashion Week, the designer presented a so-called ‘flash collection’ starring the British musician AJ Tracey, a cool cast of models, and of course, herself. “I had to do everything on my own.”, Stormzy, however, has been a key mentor: “He’s given me so much good advice. 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