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Devlin Interview
RnB/Hip Hop | Tuesday 22nd January 2013 | Osh
We caught up with Dagenham’s finest and a man who’s mentioned amongst the who’s who in UK rappers and grime MC’s and chatted about his forthcoming album.
What actually inspires you write lyrics?
I don’t know. I just get angry and I pick up a pen and pad and just try and do my thing. I just love grime and rap. Thats where I thrive and that’s just my thing. Everyone’s got their niche and everyone’s their hobby and I just love going in. It’s nice when you’re not doing the albums and stuff to just run up and spit dirty bars with no concepts of songs, just pure word play, just enjoying myself.
One of the first CD’s you got was ‘Illmatic’ by Nas. Is that one of the reasons why storytelling seems to form such a core part of what you do?
I always loved Nas, I had all his old albums. Then I fell in love with grime, Roll Deep and that. I always love the more lyrical rappers and the ones with the skippy flows, the ones that are trying to bring a message with the more emotional beats, the strings and that orchestral sound. I can’t stand that new hip hop, the crunk stuff. I just love that old east coast, New York Hip Hop.
So you won’t be collaborating with David Guetta any time soon then?
Well I suppose that’s dance music but yeah that’s what I’m saying. Not my cup of tea. But that East Coast rap, that was me.
At what point did you decide you want to be an MC?
I flicked on the radio one night back when I loved garage. I like the tempo that garage has. And I heard Sharkie and it was on a dark beat and his lyrics were more in depth. He had a message I could relate to and I thought, let me give this a try. English was one of the only things I really liked at school. I like the word play so I started putting my own hand to it. It wasn’t that good but obviously just kept chipping away and over the years I got better and got a little buzz.
You’ve got the album coming out soon ‘A Moving Picture’. You also have a documentary in January and a new single ‘Rewind’ coming out as well. It’s kind of popping off right now.
Yeah it’s good to be busy again. We took some time out after ‘Bud Sweat and Beers’ and to finally come back and start popping off, have songs in the charts, I’ve had my first top 10. It’s good to see that we can still climb. When the album’s out we’ll go and bang it in, bang the work in for 2013. We’re gonna graft and see what we can do.
Obviously you’ve collaborated with Labrinth on ‘Let it go’ as well. One of the things I like about you is you don’t seem to just address cliched subjects. In ‘Let it go’ it’s a violent relationship or a relationship defined by violence as you say in the tune. Is it purposeful that you decide to tackle issues that other rappers aren't really tackling?
I’m always trying to relate to people. Obviously, if you’re gonna spit lyrics you always want to be able to relate to people, to bring them in, to draw them in. But I can only draw on things from my own experiences and everyone has mad ones with a bird and you end up thinking if I don’t walk out I’m gonna shoot myself and it’s just a tricky situation and I try to capture that in a record that everyone can relate to. Capture that emotion, that spark, that people can relate to. I’m always trying to come up with different concepts. Some of them come off nice, some of them get put to the side but that was a nice collaboration with Labs there.
Now you mentioned ‘Watchtower’ as well. That’s another tune, which again musically is different to everything else out there at the moment and the video for that is very cinematic. You worked with Ed Sheeran and Labrinth on that as well. What was the creative vision behind the track and the video?
With that track, Ed and Labs were having something to eat in Labs restaurant and I think the old version of ‘All Along the Watchtower’, the Jimi Hendrix cover came on. Labrinth just gets a spark of genius sometimes and I think he just ran upstairs and said Devs will sound good on that. He left Ed at the table eating and just went and started making the beat and got a demo over. I liked it. That beat just made me reflect on the last years; what I’ve lost, what I’ve gained, what I’ve got. Like looking at a watchtower from my life. I’ve come a long way.
So ‘Off With Their Heads’. What’s the creative vision behind that track and the collaboration with Wretch 32?
That was just a no brainer. I used to roll with Wretch and we came out the other side together. He’s on my first mixtape. I’ve known him a very long time so it’s nice to get back in and just hit a track like that with so much venom and its dramatic that track.
The two of you spit like you even go tag team on some of the verses. He spits a part then you spit a part. Is that something that just clicked together on the day when you were making the tune. How did that happen?
When we were making the tune. I was gonna do it 16’s and then Wretch just ran up and did 32 so that makes the back to back thing hard. So I did a 32 as well and then we broke the verses down in to 16 each to get the dynamics back a bit. It worked out really well. Wretch smashed it and I enjoyed that track. It’s dark.
The album gets released February 4th but you’ve moved the date a couple of times now haven’t you?
Yeah we moved the date back cause I just didn’t think we had enough promotion. We have Watchtower out and that’s a big track and we wanted to put the Wretch track out, give them something nasty and then we got Rewind out so we’ve got three singles out to give the album a chance. Not everything goes to plan sometimes.
Ok so bringing us back to the track ‘Rewind’ that features Diane Burch. So the creative vision behind that. How did that come about and the video itself as well?
Just getting in touch with my boys TMS, who i worked with on the last album and they just had this track there, that Diane Burch had done. She had her own song that she’d come over and sung the chorus on a rap tune and I just felt it. It was something different. A different concept and I just wanted to attack the beat in a way that I would love a few people to still be around and witness what I’m doing; see me as a professional young man and successful so that’s where I came from and the lyrics ended up falling nice on the track.
So the album itself, you’ve got the documentary and you’ve got the album. What can we expect from both?
On the album, we’ve got Katy B on there, we’ve got the Wretch tune, we’ve got Ed Sheeran and Labrinth obviously and with the documentary you’ve got an insight into the creative process a bit more. What goes on behind the scenes when making an album. We wanted to to give the fans a visual, let them know what was going on a bit more. There’s some footage of the collaborations and some of the things you don’t see really.
Nice. So if your people wanna find out what’s happening in the crazy world of Devlin, how can they link with you?
We’ve got devlin official, the twitter, we’ve got the Facebook where you can always check what’s going on and where I’m going to be. It’s gonna be a busy 2013.
So you’ve got some live dates coming up as well?
We’ve just done a little mini tour. We’ve got the festivals coming up over the summer so I just can’t wait to get back in really.
Thanks very much for passing through.
