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  Rup Interview
interview 0498 added 21.02.07 words:
Louis Soul
technical:
Spoon
Lying somewhere between hip hop and funk
South London’s Rup may not be a household name to many UK hip hop heads. Travelling to and from Brighton and London, he has been slowly building up his reputation with projects such as collaborations with Tru Thoughts’ TM Juke, and a few releases on his own label 27 Beats - including the popular King Cnut E.P. which received support from the likes of Rodney P and Skitz on their 1Xtra show as well as Gilles Peterson and Mr Scruff.
Looking to step up a gear, he is now ready to serve up his first offering on Zebra Traffic entitled Rup On Zebra, released in early February and definitely one to watch out for.
On a chilly January evening in Whitechapel, Louis Soul caught up with Rup for a little discussion…
First off, a little about your musical history…. did you play any musical instruments or were you just always writing and rapping?
At first it was always punk rock and metal sort of stuff. The guy I do a lot of rapping with now, See, we started a band and played in school talent shows and all that stuff…made teachers cry with horrible swearing and general screaming and shouting. But I never really played any instruments I was just always the lead vocalist.
Was it just punk rock you played?
Yeah, it was really basic, shitty punk rock, really horrible sounding stuff...you know, no bass, just guitar, drums and me screaming over it…but yeah it was interesting.
 You have a few tunes out on your own label, 27 Beats how did that come about?
Yeah 27 Beats was the label that me, See and another guy Naim started when we were down at uni’ in Brighton and I was 19, they were 21, and we just wanted to put a tape out. Came up with the name 27 Beats from somewhere and yeah that’s how it started, with two mixtape / CD type things and two 7 inches so far. The first seven only had a 300 press with individually drawn covers…so it was pretty much hand to hand, no proper distributors or anything
So how did you progress from that point to where you are now with Zebra Traffic?
Well, mainly just from being in Brighton its all kind of quite local…Tom Simpson who runs Zebra Traffic, used to be a DJ for The Lost Souls, quite a big Brighton crew and we used to do shows with them…so we always knew each other and after a while, I was approached by Tom and he asked if I wanted to do an album, and yeah…it turned into three albums and that’s what I’m stuck into now.
So Rup On Zebra is the first of the three on Zebra?
Yeah that’s the first one and then there is going to be a couple more…. I signed a three-album deal.
And you also had the Map From The Wilderness tune on the TM Juke album as well?
Yeah that was probably the thing that made it happen. He was at university at the time, in fact everyone was at uni’ together except for me… but we were still interconnected. So yeah, I did that tune with TM Juke and our guide Andy known as Evil Sun who did a bit of the new TM Juke album as well…he plays the bass on a lot of his stuff and they have lived together for ages.
Was he involved with the production of a lot of your new album as well?
Yeah, Andy produced about four tunes from the album and he is doing pretty much the whole of the next one.
Was it important for you to be on a label with a personal feel like Zebra Traffic, especially given your laid back and different rapping style, or was you just looking to get signed to any decent label?
The important thing was that I knew someone at the label as a friend, rather than just a person from the label. So that was one of the main selling points for me actually signing to Zebra. But I think as far as the music Zebra put out, such as the Diggers, I think it is in the same kind of vein to my stuff – not the same style exactly – but just a bit similar, so it all fits in nicely
Is there anyone from the current UK Hip Hop scene who you would like to collaborate with, or more people from Tru Thoughts and Zebra Traffic?
Well, right now, I am working with more people from Zebra, I did a track with the Dirty Diggers on their new album, which is out in March. I am also doing guest spots with TM Juke still and stuff with Hint, who should have something coming out on Tru Thoughts soon. So yeah, as far as the UK Hip Hop in concerned, doing something with the Foreign Beggars would be great…I have always tried to do stuff with them, but it’s never worked…so not happening yet. There are all the usual old people down in Brighton and the people like Manage as well in London – so yeah there are shit loads of people I wanna work with.
What about anybody from overseas, the US for instance?
You’re always offered around on MySpace, you get a little message saying K Solo £500 or something, but is there any point though? Unless you really like the person you’re gonna work with though, I don’t think it is worth chucking the money in. But I think for the people who actually do that, it is a good move for them, but I have just never been overly keen on doing it really.
Earlier you said you used to listen and play punk rock, does this reflect in your rap and the album in any way, or have you totally moved on from those days?
 It’s such a cliché, but there has always been such a lot of music about. The first record I actually bought was Derek B – Bad Young Brother and I got that when I was about 8 or something, but its really just all a big melting pot of influences, it all sticks in there. Even shit albums influence me!
As far as nowadays, to be honest, at the moment I’ve been listening to loads of grime and dubstep…stuff like that, I think it’s the perfect soundtrack for walking around London. It gets you in a certain mind state and I have been listening to that stuff a lot.
Reckon you’ll ever try and branch out?
I don’t know if I would want to, because it would sound a bit swag if you had someone trying to be a grime artist compared to somebody who actually is. But I think there is definitely a cross over now, there are people in grime who are easily influenced by hip hop and there are people in hip hop who are embracing the more grimey sounds…and I think that sooner or later, it is going to disappear because grime has gone so far away from the garage scene and where it used to be.
Yeah, it’s definitely had a big influence in hip hop throughout the UK over the last few years…
Moving onto your album, earlier you said it was a long process what was the most challenging part of the process? People usually tell me that the mastering of the tracks is the hardest, was that the case for you?
The mastering was a bit of a nightmare…yeah that did add a bit of extra time onto it…When working with a label, it means everything takes longer as they need time to promote it, say two months. So once you hand something in, you might get the CD back but then you might be waiting two months for it to be sent out to the press and then another two months for it to be released. I think with the music…it’s not the easy part but the simple part because all you have to do is make the music and then after that it’s putting it out there that takes the time.
So were you pleased with the final outcome of the album?
Yeah, defiantly pleased with it. A lot of the tunes on it are really old though…
Yeah, from what I was reading on the sleeve, is it more like a collection of songs…
Yeah, because there is stuff that when you make it, it just sits there…and especially when you haven’t got an avenue to put it out or the money to press up a 12 inch or you are just relying on other people to put it out there. So the music just sits around, rough versions of it, and it actually took this album to finish five of the tunes, properly done and recorded so yeah there are about five tunes on it that are about five years old. It’s crazy.
So when you plan the next couple of album, will you try and make it more conceptual?
I don’t know about concepts, but the next album I hope will be a proper album with tunes from beginning to end with all the tunes being made with the intention of going on the album. That’s what didn’t happen this time and it turned out being a compilation of old tunes.
The album isn’t strictly hip hop; did you aim to appeal to people outside of the hip hop scene?
I don’t know about aiming, I just felt like it would naturally happen…if I write how I write and spit about what I wanna spit about then it will naturally appeal to people outside of hip hop. But it wasn’t anything planned though, it was just a nice little bonus…I don’t want to play at shows where it is just straight up UK hip hop fans, but I want to play to different crowds of people, so it was just a happy accident.
Do you have a tour planned?
There are a few shows that are slowly building up in momentum. I think there are four in the next month in London, Brighton and Bristol and so hopefully I can just figure out a few more contacts and promoters who will be willing to put something on, and they will probably lose their money, but yeah! So there is a tour plan, but it isn’t a tour as such, but hopefully it will turn into one though if the dates keep building up.
Just through the UK?
 Yeah, just the UK, but it would be nice to get abroad as well at some point.
I was going to ask you about your thoughts on the current UK Hip Hop scene, but since you are more interested in grime and dubstep I guess you don’t listen to much of it?
I do still listen to a lot of UK hip hop and the people I rate are generally the people that I know these days…like Stig and Dr. Syntax, as that’s what I am exposed to. I think there is a lot of good stuff out there though; people like Dubbledge can really take it to another level. There is a lot of boring stuff too, but I’m not going to comment on that, it gets discussed enough on the forums of websites!!
Yeah true, do you ever read what’s written about you on the forums?
Yeah I do, I try to stay away but always get dragged back into it!
What has the response been like in regards to your new album?
So far it has been overwhelmingly good. It’s been bubbling under the radar so it’s not exactly getting major radio play; the single didn’t exactly blow up on 1Xtra or anything,
The main single off the E.P. was Rollin’ right?
Yeah Rollin’ from the EP, which ad four tunes one it including the King Cnut remix on it…I’m glad I did that one actually because that was a really old tune and we just tried to push it further and get some other rappers on it and just start writing
Yeah, I think Dr. Syntax and Koaste were a good choice for that.
Yeah that was a real convenience too, because I was in Brighton and was like…’who can we call at two days notice?’ but they came down and wrote the lyrics on the day and spat them on the day. I think I fell asleep before I had to do my bit, so yeah it was all chaos!
Being an artist on an independent label, what do you think of download culture that has recently arisen throughout music?
It’s a tough one, I’m guilty of that too, I download shit as well…there’s no way I would pay for the stuff I do download though…the stuff I would pay for, I go out and pay for…
It’s a good way of finding music you may not of necessarily heard otherwise and opening up a few more avenues for yourself, but because of the accessibility, people only seem to see it as just a way of getting something for free, but everyone has their own opinion I guess…
 Yeah, and I’m sure the label has a very different opinion than me, but I personally think music is free and by downloading it, your not really losing sales you were gonna get…
So would you be pissed off if loads of people downloaded your new album?
Well, diplomatically, the label would, but me personally…I wouldn’t be pissed off if people downloaded it…if someone burns the CD for his mate and their friend goes and buys it or just listens and passes it on to another mate, that’s good enough for me, I’m still getting promoted…there’s not that much money to be made from UK hip hop as it is because when it comes down to it, there aren’t that many people actually buying records and CD’s, it can be quite hard to get hold of in some cases as well.
Lastly, you have already mentioned you have another two albums to come out but do you have any other plans ahead of you?
I have a group Born Again Heads which is me, See - who is on my album and Naim who also did a lot of the production on my album and who also sings and makes her/his own music. So we have a pretty much finished album that we are trying to put out, but Naim is in Denmark and See and I are in London, so it’s all a bit hard to get it all together. But hopefully this summer we might be able to get an album out together, which is quite a big thing for us.
Are you hoping to put that out on Zebra Traffic as well?
 No, just trying to put it out ourselves. We have a box of cash from the last releases, which are there to be put into new stuff. See and I have kept 27 Beats alive while Naim went back to Denmark and I’ve been doing lots of solo stuff…so it’s been on the back burner…but yeah, there is another 7 inch coming out soon with Dr. Syntax on it. So yeah there is lots of stuff to come in 2007, watch this space!
Big shout to Jen and Jo for helping put this together whilst I’ve been so busy, and Orifice for letting me use the Beggars studio. 'Rup On Zebra' is out now on Zebra Traffic
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Louis Soul
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