Kateryna Topol: How is it going Brian?

Brian Nasty: What’s Up! I’m good, actually [smiles] it’s been a long year and I been counting my blessings. I got a show later today, so I’m drinking tea right now

KT: Nothing beats a good cup of tea. Congrats on your latest release. How did the collaboration with Lord Apex for “You Thought” come about?

BN: Wow, thank you! I mean Apex and I have been homies for a minute, and I’ve always wanted to make music with him, and so when I was making the mixtape, I guess, the opportunity presented itself, and so I hit him up. I been a huge fan of his since forever, so I’m honoured!

“Apex came through, and we hung out for a few days. We actually worked on a few songs, but I thought this was the one that felt most representative of what I have and the direction I kind of want to go in,” he shared in a press release. “That song is supposed to be an uplifting one with its message, which is ‘you thought we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing now, but hey, look, we’re doing what we’re doing.’”

KT: You two worked on a few songs together, are there more coming?

BN: [Laughs] Well … apparently this has been a collab the fans have been asking for from us, and I feel like there’s more versions of what our music together sounds like so … let’s leave it at that [smiles]

KT: All right, all right [smiles]. Let’s move on to Anywhere But Here With You, which seems like a rather large project with each song accompanied by a short film, performance, and visual storytelling – how long did this body of work take to make?

BN: I mean, it’s been a huge portion of my life put into making the project for sure. I’d say 5 years in total, to be honest with you. Some of the ideas date back to 2019! It took me a year and a half to just to make all the films and put it out

KT: Wow! How would you recommend fans experience this mixtape?

NB: I’d recommend hearing it live actually! Despite the music being soft and sombre, always make sure you feel the emotions and the energy behind the songs. And if it can’t be that, I’d definitely [recommend listening to it] in transit! On a walk, train, plane, bus, or car, or something. I want you to move through the emotions while literally moving.

KT: Love that. This mixtape was a way for you to understand yourself better – were you…. I guess let’s say successful with that goal?

BN: For sure, it was a lot of learning what I didn’t like, didn’t want and I had to learn it the hard way too [laughs]. Learning to make tougher decisions and being okay with those consequences, you know? Growing up, really.

KT: Looking further back into your career and relationship with music – where does this love for music stem from?

BN: I think, escapism. As a kid, I saw musicians as these larger-than-life characters who made you feel something. Whether that be seeing Michael Jackson deciding he wanted to be a dancing zombie or Kanye West wanted to be a giant teddy bear. I kind of started seeing myself as a story, and music was the best way to show the different parts of my personality. Hearing music soundtracks and understanding that if you struggled to convey an emotion, good or bad, there was most likely a song that existed for it already.

I don’t wanna say I have synesthesia, but association too. Music is a pillar in my life cause at every point in my life there’s always something new and feeling of finding a song to go along with it.

KT: Sounds a bit poetic. What else did you listen to growing up?

BN: A lot of Michael Jackson, Kanye West, Outkast, Beyonce, Outkast, Eminem, Corrine Bailey Rae Pop Music, Rap Music, Rock Music too!

KT: Was there music in your house a lot?

BN: I don’t wanna say there was. So every time I was moved by something, I was just fixated on it. Hearing soundtracks too, like Shrek, Men In Black, Toy Story Two, etc … Music is everywhere!

KT: Very true, especially with soundtracks. Did you do any music education, or are you self-taught?

BN: I’ve always been self-taught. But I want to expand my knowledge and take piano AND bass lessons

KT: Anything your fans might not know about you but should?

BN: Hmmmmmm …. I love badminton [laughs]. And I collect stamps too.

KT: Those are both great hobbies, and far enough from music to be a proper distraction, I guess. What’s next for you?

BN: Oh Man! I just did the biggest shows of my life supporting Loyle Carner this month so I can’t wait to tour again in 2026. There’s more music coming too like … I been working on my Debut album, which I’m excited about too. 2025 has been the busiest I’ve ever been musically, and I’m excited to keep that momentum going! But I’m looking forward to some real rest and give myself a reset, and take care of myself.

* * *

Stay tuned for Brian Nasty’s 2026 tour announcement.

The post Moving through emotions with Brian Nasty appeared first on Quip Magazine.

The trio have been on the road for some time now, first with Massive Attack through Europe and now North America with solo shows and through major festivals. Last weekend the Scottish trio played a show at Fortune Sound Club in Vancouver.

Fortune is one of those venues that has an end time for listed shows. If you don’t guestimate your arrival correctly you might actually miss a show, people have done it, for real. The show invite promised Young Father to arrive with guests so to be safe, so as to not miss anything potentially mind-blowing, we arrived quite early. For reasons that will remain a mystery to me none of the guests showed. For what felt like hours the room was slowly packing in to the sounds of the house DJ recycling through old tracks and Tame Impala albums. But just as patience, and personal space, began to wear out Young Fathers took the stage.

With the first beats of the drum intro the energy began to rise in the room. Bankole opened the set with “No Way” and went straight into “Feasting” after. The track opens quite gently, but as soon as the chorus hits things get real – electric, magnifying. Seeing “Feasting” live was what I imagine like learning how to walk is – shockingly surprising and gratifying. The rest of the set was equally powerful. Young Fathers worked through their repertoire like a roller-coaster up and down towards “Old Rock N Roll” and “Shame.”

Without any encore, possibly due to the venue’s time restrictions, Young Fathers wrapped up their set shortly after 10 p.m. The crowd stuck around a little longer hoping for more and likely coming off of the high that the show was. Having now seen them live I understand why Kate Tempest called them “fucking brilliant” – I concur.

The post Young Fathers sans guests live in Vancouver appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Independent hip-hop label, Big Dada, have recently released a new collaborative project to help warm our souls this coming winter – the Maskya EP. In a nutshell, the Maskya EP is a short remix project with reggae/electronic sound, a hard-hitting base and Caribbean riddim that combines the skills of three talented musicians: SK Simeon, Yaw Faso, and the producer Machinedrum (real name Travis Stewart).

Machinedrum is the true star of the project, which seems to serve more as a showcase of the producer’s talents than that of a cohesive album. Machinedrum has produced and remixed many songs over this past year and is emerging as a premier instrumentalist on the Ninja Tune roster. Stewart contributes to the EP with his inventive future bass sound: a heavy dose of fast-paced, often erratic percussion within intricate electronic instrumentals, with a touch of hip-hop flavor, and incorporates the reggae stylings of his contemporaries to create an impressive set of dancehall-type tracks.

SK Simeon and Yaw Faso are Melbourne based MC’s with strong Afro-reggae-hip-hop influence, not to insinuate that their music is in anyway similar. Their interpretations on this EP are exponentially different to the other thanks to Machinedrum’s individualistic approach that I believe adds a well-needed element to each song. SK Simeon’s “Doper Than Dope” and “Ram Dancehall” are stylized purely as dancehall bangers, raunchy tunes with repetitive lyrics and insanely hard base that you would imagine hearing in a nightclub.

Yaw Faso’s tracks “All of Mi Life” and “Memories,” on the other hand, are both bombastic, upbeat reggae melodies centered on his rhythm and prominent lyrics that Machinedrum highlights with considerably less base and a slower tempo, night and day in comparison to the tracks of his counterpart. Stewart does an excellent job on these remixes by successfully integrating his trademark sound to the theme of reggae/dancehall all while demonstrating his tremendous ability and range. 

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Produced in collaboration with Fred (a newcomer on the British scene), Four Tet, Adrian Sherwood and With You (a new team founded by Switch), Bleeds makes use of an intense soundscape that draws heavily on strings, piano, and voices in the mid and high registers, along with drums and synths in the lower frequencies. Smith said of this album, “limitation of language is the reason I feel the bleed of emotions and timbral motifs is the most essential part of the process,” and that’s reflected in the work that’s gone into each track.

Still, I can’t ignore the forefront of this music: Smith has been writing consistently strong verses for two decades, and on Bleeds it’s made obvious he’s not going to let up. The subject matter bends toward the personal, even when politics are at play (such as in “Hard Bastards”’ examination of the psychology of power), and the delivery is rich and musical as hell. Spirituality runs as a theme throughout the whole album, as well as an undercurrent of paranoia (made most clearly visible in “Crying”).

The only major misstep is the placement of “Stepping Hard” and “Me Up!” right next to each other. Both songs play at similar speeds in the same key, and after so much variation, it causes the album to lag momentarily before changing paces again for “One Thing.”

Album highlights: “Hard Bastards” is a great opener. The strings in the first bars are so beautiful, but when Smith comes in, his delivery can easily rival the lushness of the production. “Crying” shows off this album’s paranoid streak, and its samples of babies crying turn the sentiment into a visceral experience. “Don’t Breathe Out” is probably the closest to pop that this album strays, but blending the conviction of the verses with a cheery string sample adds up to a delicious groove.

The post Working through Roots Manuva’s “Bleeds” appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Kateryna Topol: Let’s start with the basics – how did you first get into hip hop?

Kate Tempest: I loved it the minute I heard it. The first rappers I fell for were Gza, Ghostface, Nas, Guru, Mos Def, Biggie, OutKast, Big L, Too Poetic from Gravediggaz, Pharoe Monch and Prince Po, obviously Lauryn Hill… Eminem. All the lyrical MCs. I lived and breathed hip hop.

I got into more left flield stuff as I grew with it, found company flow and all the def jux releases. I was blown away by hip hop culture, by the dexterity and truth telling of good rappers, the beats, the community I found in London. I worked in a hip hop record store from 14, and loved talking lyrics with the customers and finding out what people wanted me to order in or finding old classics that had passed me by, being the age I was, like Rakim or Pete Rock and CL Smooth.  I can’t remember when I first heard it, I mean it’s a dominant cultural and musical force. All my friends were into Wu-Tang. It was just a part of life. But it felt underground enough for it to feel yours if you put the time in. Like, the more you investigated, the more you listened, the more you were rewarded. You’d find gems, things spoke to me in lyrics when I was 13 that are still with me today. Little lines from Rza that come into my head like mantras in times of stress.

The scene in London was really important for my growth as a rapper and as a fan. There was a bunch of nights and cyphers that I used to go to, lots of them free entry and you didn’t have to be 18 to get in. Or you could rap at the bouncers and they’d let you in. I came up around serious rappers who had something to say, hip hop was more than just music, it was everything. It was how to express dissent, complaint, how to learn, how to teach, how to dance, how to walk into a room, how to carry yourself with dignity.

KTQ: You made your debut at 16 in a record shop, do you remember what that experience was like? 

KT: The cyphers at this record shop were amazing. Packed wall-to-wall with guys who wanted to get on the mic, everyone had so much to say, but to be honest, a lot of them were talking shit. You know how it is, when an MC looks the part, and he’s got all the swagger and posturing, but his lyrics are weak? I watched a bunch of men like that, and then you’d get like four or five unbelievable rappers and it would turn your blood to gold for a second to hear them. I stood and observed for a while. I wanted to get on the mic really bad, I wanted so much to prove myself. People looked at me funny all my life, but there especially people looked at me funny. And then, my friend Budgie took me up to the front and I got on the mic and I had my one little rhyme that I wanted to spit, and I closed my eyes, and threw it out of me and the whole room just went nuts.

I remember the feeling afterwards, people showing respect, I felt I’d found my place or something. It was the beginning of this whole journey. Rapping was how I made myself more than what I was perceived to be, I had a lot to say, and being a girl, people didn’t expect me to be talking sense, or wanting to come at it from a position of knowledge. They assumed I was going to be shit, talking about my boyfriend troubles or just unable to rhyme. Me getting on the mic made people confront their own prejudices. And they were more likely to remember that experience because it was challenging to them.

KTQ: So clearly being a woman in the hip hop world comes with a few prejudices. How has it been working with Big Dada?

KT: Big Dada have been great. Will Ashon heard the record and was the only person of all the record labels we played it to that said: “I get this, I’m into it. I wanna put it out.” Others were like: “I like it, but it’s too crazy. Too many words. Too much going on.” Will just got it, straight up. Hannah T-W who runs the label is amazing, she’s been completely cool with Dan Carey and I, everything’s gone like clockwork really. And to be on a label with Young Fathers and Roots Manuva feels so cool. I think Big Dada made a really important signing with Young Fathers. they’re fucking brilliant.

KTQ: You carry a few titles with you – poet, playwright, rapper – is it something you have to separate or do they all kind of blend in and make sense together? 

KT: I wrote a play because I was offered the work. It was challenging and it helped me improve my writing, but I don’t think of myself as a playwright. I write poetry, but it took me years to think of myself as a poet. There’s a lot of baggage that comes with that term. Any pigeonhole feels too narrow.

I’m a rapper but I usually have to qualify that with saying I’m a story teller or something. I don’t think of my work that way, I don’t define it, I’m growing, hopefully my work is growing, my skills as a writer and as a performer are growing. It’s all I’ve ever known so it’s no big deal to me that I write lots of things and want to try new forms. When I’m making music, I feel like a musician, in my blood and bones that’s where it lives. I have to work much harder at the other forms, which I find rewarding in different ways.

KTQ: Everybody Down is a concept album, a 12-chapter story rhyme, how long did it take to put it together? 

KT: Dan Carey was really busy and I couldn’t get much time with him, I used to go in his studio on his down time and we’d get demos together in a few hours. I was so desperate to get in with him and record properly, but I didn’t have a manager, a record deal, any money behind me. I was working as a playwright and a poet. But the good part of that situation is it leant a sense of urgency to every hour we spent together. We have crazy chemistry, I feel very blessed to have found him.

The first demo we made was “Lonely Daze,” but it wasn’t Pete and Becky, it was Him and Her, and it was long, and they didn’t meet. After we made the demo, Dan was really excited about the storytelling aspect, and I went away and started thinking about this Him and Her and who they were. All the work I’d been doing as a narrative writer definitely informed what I thought was possible with making a narrative that unfolded over the course of an album. I was living with the story and the characters for ages, like the best part of a year went past before I could get in with Dan again, but it was cool because it was enough time to let the characters and the plot come to life. When I went back in with Dan I had it all planned. We drew a map in the pub, stuck it on the studio wall and made the whole record in two weeks.

KTQ: You’ve been touring for a bit now, how is it going so far? We heard you’ve pretty much won Sasquatch…

KT: It’s been amazing. Playing live is something I love. Sasquatch was fucking immense, I think there is a lot to be said for reaching out to new people that have never heard of you before. Festivals are perfect for that. I was blown away, the band were blown away, the punters were blown away. It was something else. The landscape was unlike anything I’d ever seen, we drove after that to Denver, and then from Colorado to Texas and I saw the sun rise over New Mexico and fucking hell I lost my mind. It was beautiful. I’m from a tiny green and grey Island. I’d never seen red rocks, snow capped mountains, lakes, canyons, plains. I’ve been in a permanent state of disbelief.

Another amazing thing about Sasquatch was that everyone in the audience was a music fan: It can be frustrating looking out at a crowd when you’re about to play some hardcore electronic rap music and wondering if the people have come for poetry. At some of our shows I’ve felt that in the room, so it was fucking cool to just play music for people who love music. Cant wait to do the same thing at NXNE. It’s cool to start from scratch again here.

I believe in struggling. It should be hard work, you should be exhausted, you should have to build your fanbase one person at a time. I believe in playing live and putting everything into it, and making a real connection with the audience in the room. It’s the only thing you can trust really. Much more trustworthy than reading an interview with someone or something like that.

KTQ: Speaking of winning, you’ve never really sought out fame but it has found you on many levels, as a poet and as a musician, have you become more comfortable with the attention now or is it still a bit strange? 

KT: I don’t really notice it. I know things are different than how they were two or three years ago because I can get gigs on actual stages at festivals now, rather than busking round the back of the burger vans. But it’s hardly paparazzi at the door. I don’t think I’m ever going to have to deal with that kind of thing. I’m making my work. I’m on my path. I’ve got a lot I’m trying to do, this has been 15 years in the making and it’s STILL just the beginning. I think that it should always feel that way.

KTQ: Are you working on the next album yet?

KT: Yes I’m working on the next album. It’s tough because we’ve been on the road for a year. But yes, it’s coming together. I’m more excited about it than I’ve been about anything before. I can’t wait to get in the studio and finish it.

Come out see Tempest at the Adelaide Hall on June 17 at 11pm as part of NXNE. The rest of the tour dates can be found here.

The post Interview with Kate Tempest: it’s just a beginning appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Imagine a young Virginia Woolf rapping – you now have a fairly good idea of who Kate Tempest is.  Like Mrs. Woolf, Tempest doesn’t only know her way around the English language, she also has an acute social consciousness, and she uses her talents with language to signal people into existence.

Born Kate Esther Tempest, the performance poet’s second album, Everybody Down, paints the story of three Londoners going through their everyday lives. For a taste of the plot, here’s a line from the song “Chicken”: “When all you have is a hammer/and everything looks like nails,” the line describes the frustration of one guy whose girlfriend is a prostitute.

The album has been met with glowing reviews since its release May 19. The voice is definitely the focal point. Sometimes the music fades into being ornamental, but overall, Everybody Down is an insightful record with catchy choruses and meaning that deepens with each new listen. And Tempest only gets better live.

Tempest started performing poetry at 16. Now 27, she has a bucket load of accolades. Her epic poem “Brand New Ancients” won a Herald Angel Award, she has taught creative writing at Yale, and last year she became the youngest person to win the Ted Hughes Prize for Innovation in Poetry.

Critics loved her 2011 debut collection, Balance, with Sound of Rum, as well as her first play Hopelessly Devoted. She also has a novel, The Bricks That Built The Houses due out next year.

She worked with producer Dan Carey (Chairlift, Bat for Lashes, and Lily Allen) and the collaboration has helped make some of the album’s catchier titles, including the first single,  “The Beigeness”. Thanks to Carey, “The Beigeness” and  “Lonely Daze” run at the same frequency as some top 40 songs (though the trenchant messages in Everybody Down are rarely, if ever, heard on mainstream radio). Although it’s number five on the track, “The Beigeness” is a dancy song that captures Tempest’s modus operandi. During the chorus she chants, “Them things you don’t show I can see/them things you don’t say speak to me”. Like all great poets, she wants us to look at the ordinary intently enough to recognize it’s something far more than ordinary. One memorable bridge in this song is:

“See the kid with the memory he can’t shake/see the man with the lover on his mind/see the lady with the guilt and the heartache/see the woman trying to battle with time/see the man with the blood on his hands/see the girl with the hands on her hips/Everybody say nothing stay blind/If you don’t show it then it don’t exist (right?)”

Tempest’s flow is admirably natural. Her accent refuses to be commercialized (a fate Iggy Azalea has gleefully chosen). She is the benchmark of what rap can do; it’s mind-boggling to consider that the same form was also used by rapper Riskay, who rhymes “that” with “that” with “that”….with “that” (2:23) in her love ballad, “Smell Yo Dick.”

Tempest is a poet in the ancient sense, not just someone who can string together pretty words as we think of them now, but someone who does that and can tell a pretty damn good story. It’s a rare album where a full listening tells a coherent story that will resonate. It’s the stuff of books – beginning, middle, and end; full of motifs, themes, and one liners that will be circulating in your head for days.

The post Kate Tempest’s “Everybody Down” is a lyrical revolution appeared first on Quip Magazine.

It’s a song that feels comfortable in your worldview even though it was missing up to that point. Young Fathers have done that with every song on their EP Get Up (with the exception of the radio version of the titular track “Get Up”).

“Get Up” begins in a tribal funk and is a suggestion to “Get up and do the right thing.” With two of the members from Africa (Liberia and Nigeria), this plays the part of an anthem for the growing attitude of African cooperation and success. (Other examples of this are K’naan’s contribution to the World Cup so many years ago, and an optimistic view of Uganda taking an interest in the problems of South Sudan.) The track is an energetic jaunt – as an anthem should be. One thing done exceptionally well by Young Fathers is that the voices that contribute to the song (and there are three here: two vocalists and one instrumentalist) never clash, building together instead to create an atmosphere of uniqueness. This track is the party with the social conscience.

“Better” continues the aggressive vocals with near-violent instrumentals. Young Fathers work without evident samples, instead producing discordant sounds that establish the foundation for dark lyrics. “Better” isn’t about being better, it’s a dark passage filled with dark magic, “come come, baby let the lord in/that’s a bad juju” and vicious attacks. Something revolutionary is happening with these two tracks, a call to action, but with a speech ready to show the realities of living. “Better” is violent, but a reflection of life that is not glossed over. “Better” isn’t about rap skill prowess and self-boasting about how great a group Young Fathers is. “Better” is an invocation that, in order to make things better, you have to know what better is and what it isn’t.

“Outlaw” is my favourite track. It summarises my confusion and growing passion for the band. “Outlaw” is a suggestion of greatness, hinting at other bands, the beginning is Pink Floyd, the discordant singing is TV on the Radio, but instead of getting lost in homage, Young Fathers have elevated the sound, as if touching some objective music. “Futures looking good/the past is looking sharper…living in my habitat/I can do better than that.” A military march in the background, subdued vocals telling stories of coming back from war, “Outlaw” is the psychological reality of the revolutionary story we’ve been subject to, ending with “Yeah the tongue travels/When it unravels.” Even a close look at the choice of words gives a suggestion that this is important hip hop, or at the very least, trying to be important.

The EP concludes where we began, but this time with 15 seconds shorn off, as though, even in our optimism of victory, we’ve lost a little something to get there.

Get Up is out on January 27 via Big Dada.

The post EP review: “Get Up” by Young Fathers appeared first on Quip Magazine.

This shit is grimy. Sludgy, stepping, muddy and noisy. Not only does the vast compilation feature Manchester’s MRK1 (who apparently is the originator of “grime”) Grime features Gumnaam from the Netherlands, Major Grave from Ireland, Prettybwoy from Japan, Juzlo from Australia and even some local stuff from Canadian Tre Mission.

If you don’t know who any of these artists are, or if you’re a fan of gnarly-ass electronica music but don’t know where to begin filtering the rad from the fucking terrible, Grime 2.0 is the answers to your fevered prayers; it is an encyclopedic volume of non-pussy electronic crazy tunes to throw on and be a hot mess to.

If you’re a fan of Ninja Tune’s melodic-beautiful-dream stuff like Bonobo, Cinematic Orchestra, Blockhead, or Jagga Jazzist then this grimy epic sage might not be for you. Unless, of course, you have varying tastes in music. Then you’ll explore any sonic craziness with an open mind.

Big Dada has taken the liberty of posting on their website a breakdown of the tracks with the fan-base stats, ability to listen and activity of the song. If you care about this, you can check it out at bigdada.com/grime.

The post Album Review: Big Dada “Grime 2.0” compilation appeared first on Quip Magazine.