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The day of the interview was really sunny,
which I didn't appreciate as I was feeling fragile from the mother of all champagne binges at The Planets show in Bournemouth the night before, and I had no sunglasses. I somehow located the Big Dada offices and the lovely Wendy K set me up with a cuppa, choccie biscuits and the ‘Stick and Move' video playing. Toastie Taylor and Part 2 turn up just as I realise I'd eaten enough biscuits for a small family, but would you leave a UKHH journalist alone with your biscuit stash?
Lady Cook
© ukhh.com 2002
interview 110 added
20.06.02 words Lady Cook
Introductions over with, and mutual lack of sleep grimaces; I hit them with the questions, as ever in no particular order:
Lady Cook: Describe your album in 3 words
Part2: Very Good, Innovative.
Toastie Taylor: Inspiring, Genuine, that's enough.
LC: How do you feel about all the media attention on this album?
P2: It makes a change, it's good, it's good that people are noticing us because it's not like we started yesterday.
LC: So how long have New Flesh been going as a group?
P2: First record came out in '95, started putting it together in 1992. We were like a cipher, we weren't taking it that seriously; I was doing my art, it was my kind of side project to that really, then it started developing, getting more serious, putting records out and next thing you know you're involved in the industry side of things.
LC: Yes, I wanted to ask you, especially because you used to do graffiti art, what colour is the album?
P2: It's got to be this purple….points to ‘Stick and Move' CD cover
LC: Okay, a kind of magentaey purple
P2: Mmm, more a kind of reddish violet
LC: Toastie, I saw you on stage at Scratch with Rammelzee last year, then I saw an article with all the amazing models he made, what is he like?
TT: I understand the level he's on, he was on this mythology thing, and he liked what we were doing so it sort of fitted together. We did a show in Marseille and he wore a different costume (Rammelzee wears huge intricate self-crafted costumes) and nearly got into an accident with the smoke machine, it was mad, we were cracking up laughing. He's got lots of them, all different, have a look at his website.
LC: I read an article the other day and it showed his apartment and it was wicked, everything was covered in paint
P2: He's got one costume that's covered in missiles it's huge, he'll need a stadium to shoot the missiles off it.
LC: So you like all that showmanship?
P2: It's something interesting, it's different, a change, something you can look at and say Oh my God this guys got hammers coming out of his costume, fire coming out. He properly designs them with an astro physics mentality, like how many degrees, everything's perfect angles, all the equations, it's all balanced.
LC: Who else would you like to collaborate with?
P2: I always say the same names; let me think of some different ones… George Clinton might be interesting, and Mariah Carey on crack...
LC: I can name a few people on crack but I dunno how we'll get Mariah hooked.
P2: It'd just be interesting, what with all her problems, it'd all come out, there'd be no pouting and all that, the real Mariah would have to come out That'd be wicked, over a George Clinton Atomic Dog groove yeah it'd be interesting, and Kylie Minogue on...
LC: Ketamine ha ha ha
This degenerates into a filthy libellous abstract tangent of gruesome scenarios involving Ms Minogue and Ms Carey pranging out, not for your eyes UKHH kids.
Toastie steers us back to the questions with a firm 'Nah, you're dealing with reality now, this is new Flesh trust me...'
LC: Okay, you reference a lot of different sources on your album; do you think it is possible to convey an effective political message in music?
TT: It's like I put in little messages but you can't just listen to it one time, you have to seek them out. Like Child Soldier it's the issues of Sierra Leone, kids getting kidnapped and stuff. I address issues but not too hard so it's like you're overpreaching at people.
LC: That balance between saying something yet not pushing it into preaching, is it hard to achieve or did it come naturally?
TT: When you start writing stories you think of what you like, and me I don't like people to preach at me too much, so then you get the emotion and sense of being there but not a sense of 'you must listen to this and send money to Africa.'
LC: Have you found not being in London has affected how your sound has developed?
TT: In a way yes, but I think wherever we were we would've sounded the same. We're all from different places, I've lived in Germany and Grenada. I think I could've lived in the middle of nowhere, some little desert, and found them two, the vibes we're on the music would still have come out the same. It isn't hindering us is it?
LC: No! I really like this album, really impressed I have to say. Okay, what is your favorite British hip hop tune ever?
This at first provokes the usual anguished faces but Part 2 decisively opts for Roots Manuva's ‘Witness' and Toastie for ‘Nanotek Pilot' by Part 2.
'New Flesh, at the end of it people start asking themselves questions.'
LC: What was the first record you bought?
P2: I can't even remember, I used to nick them off my Dad. The first hip hop record I bought was Dougie Fresh ‘The Show', I had it on tapes before that but then I got it on 7”, about 84 - 85 and before then I used to have tapes, I didn't have a record player before that.
LC: I'm not hugely up on your earlier stuff but I do remember a tune of yours from a Disorda tape a few years ago. Toastie I think it was you on your own.
I go off on one describing the tune and Toastie sits there with a helpful but blank face eventually confessing ‘I can't remember the tune! I'm thinking hard but I can't, What was the track on the Disorda tape?
P2: Was it Variation 14? 'I've been rhyming ever since the Earth was made...'
LC: That's it! That's the song I remember, now what was all that about?
TT: That was a typical Toastie Taylor half dream state, cause I came with some shit like 'I'm the sort of man that'd freestyle in my sleep hand on my heart using that as a beat'
They then kindly tip me off that Big Dada still have stock of another compilation CD featuring the tune, and that I could perhaps get a copy if I ask Will ever so politely. Turns out the whole CD is pretty nice, go and buy it, I expect Disorda stocks it, sorry I can’t recommend it by name as it’s been ‘borrowed’ already.
LC: Do you think that September 11th has affected your worldview?
P2: I wasn’t surprised when it happened. The world we live in things were kind of headed that way, too many things left unsolved on this planet if you know what I mean.
LC: Do you think that it affected music in that it affected the space there is for people to be oppositional, like a lot of U.S artists have got the flag all over their websites? Is there much space for hip-hop to critique America?
P2: I ain’t really noticed but I’ve seen U.S acts coming over, People Under the Stairs were talking about pass the rizla and all British quotes. The British are now seen as their own sort of eye, which you never saw years ago, but as far as September 11th you’re going to see that more in America.
LC: What do you think of hip hop and the Internet. It must be very different from way back when...
TT: I think it’s good
P2: But you’re never going to get the full effect, a guy can write some lyrics but can he perform?
TT: I’m not really big on the Internet
P2: Gets people communicating
P2: Whenever I’ve looked on those things I always find that everyone just disses each other, ‘Oh he’s a so and so’ using the stereotype, really ignorant. People hiding behind a keyboard. It can be good, it gives access to people, but people don’t know who the hell they’re talking to, that’s the problem I’ve got with it.
LC: That’s something we constantly have to reinforce on the Graf Forum.
P2: Theres good and bad, the same with everything
LC: The bling bling thing, do you think teenagers want to hear anything that questions materialism?
P2: I think what’s available to them does manipulate their taste
TT: New Flesh, at the end of it people start asking themselves questions.
LC: But do you think teenagers want to hear that or they’re like ‘Fuck Off you hippy’?
P2: Some people think that. I read some review of Stick and Move saying’ Oh Yeah New Flesh are hanging with the rough boys now, I always thought they were in the squats, underclass or something.
LC: They called you squat dwellers?!
P2: Something like that, I was like yeah okay whatever. Like we’re all criminal in our backgrounds, it ain’t like that at all. Half the kids who are saying that they’re coming up through university and some of them have been into hip hop 2 years and they’re like ‘Oh New Flesh are on some intellectual shit’ I’m like what are you talking about? Intellectual shit, can’t you be a criminal and be intelligent at the same time, what are you talking about.
LC: I think a lot of people are trying too hard, I went Uni so what love, don’t be embarrassed of that. It’s like chill out, admit you never heard that tune in 1984, I don’t fucking remember it, I didn’t breakdance and didn’t ever want to, I just like some music.
P2: Yeah the kind of kids that go university and talk about hardcore bombing and hardcore graf, they don’t even need to do it; they’ve got rich parents. Back in the 80’s, I started bombing, I was a fucking loose cannon. I lived in a working class area, I had an epileptic mother, I was just a troublemaker. I started as a hooligan and then found out I had a talent for art and got into music, if I didn’t I’d be in prison by now definitely. Most of the kids from those areas that’s what they were living, that was what the scene was like back then.
LC: Do you think the old school art establishments, the big galleries, will ever accept graf for example?
P2: I think in ways the art world would want to know what galleries you’ve already exhibited in, who you’ve sold pictures to etc…It’s not accepted yet, it’s still a youth culture. It’ll change when the people in the galleries are from this generation. When those people studying graph at
uni now will be working in galleries, that are when it will change. Graffiti now, you’re going to get stuck with the dingy back street café, the shit gallery. There is a market for it, it’s a shame, graphic designers are always ripping off graffiti font ideas. It’s always the people who make a success out of it that are non-related to it, they commission a few people then take all the credit.
LC: With where you’ve come from in graffiti, what are your opinions on legal walls?
P2: I’m not going to disrespect something someone’s done just because it was done in a vandalistic way, but if I see a tag on a bus the shock value has gone; But that element of doing something completely different like Banksy, but if someone’s going to do a burner and it’s legal good on them.
And so finishes the interview.
I thank them for being so pleasant on my dense day and promise to listen to the CD more than once. I’ll resist the temptation to wax lyrical about just how absolutely blinding the album is (although it is all that and more actually, go and buy it, now!) and just say that they’re nice company to talk about hip hop with over a cup of tea.
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