Guestlist

Issue 80

Monthly newspaper and online publication targeting 18 to 35 year olds. The ultimate guide to the hottest parties, going out and having fun. Music, fashion, film, travel, festivals, technology, comedy, and parties! London, Barcelona, Miami and Ibiza.

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So where are we right now? Right now we're in my barbershop in Woolwich, this guy's barbershop, I've been cutting my hair with Danny since before I had a beard man, so yeah always come here to get niced up, feel good and it's my local. This is Woolwich, it's where I grew up, where I started making music, where I wrote my famous song 'One Day I Went To Lidl', which is about the Lidl in Woolwich. So yeah, you're in my hood man, welcome! How's life at the moment? It's a lovely day out there right now. Yeah I mean life is good, it's busy right now, we're twelve months into my album release so we're planning different videos and promos and doing loads of shows. As well as that there's a lot of youth work that I do, so it's a busy period, just gotta keep going. What are the things you're doing? What's the youth work? My work with young people started a couple of years ago when I started as a senior mentor working for Greenwich, this borough, as well as the NCS Challenge. From there we founded a drama workshop company called PGS Creative and we go to secondary schools, primary schools and run drama workshops for like six to eight weeks. It allows the young people to explore certain issues that they won't be able to access in the curriculum but it's very much related to their wellbeing. And as well I use the Afrikan Boy persona to engage the young people and get them interested. What kind of issues do you deal with? Well this particular flagship project True Stories, it's about five main characters. So one character's story is on family bereavement, young boy loses one of his primary carers, his mum, and then we explore how friends try to support him, try to keep him from doing silly things like shoplifting because he feels like he can because his mum's not there. Then we look at domestic abuse in teen relationships with Kelly's story. It's very, very powerful, especially when the young girls act it out and they reach the point where Kelly confronts Jason, and also has an epiphany that "I'm acting like my mum right now, I can't let my younger sisters continue this cycle". And then there's peer pressure, yeah so many other things, that's just a few. What's the feedback been like? The feedback from the young people has been great. We're gonna release a video that actually shows the workshops being run. The feedback includes young people saying they've been touched and many of them can identify with the stories, which is what makes it really powerful, you get tears. And just for their development as well, being on this six to eight week programme helps further integrate them within their class because some students they don't talk to and things like that, so it actually helps them to become more of a closer unit going through this drama for six to eight weeks leading up to a big performance. As you would know you would bond with the group you're working with, one way or another, so the feedback's been exceptional and that's what keeps us going because we know there's a need for it, there's a gap in the curriculum that we're able to fill. How did you come up with the idea? Were you inspired by any other projects? My best friend wrote this play True Stories, which was inspired by events that happened during our teenage years growing up. He guised some of the stories, characters so it's a bit more open and less personal, and because of the youth work that I do on the ground, one night we just came up with the idea. He would love to take this play to other schools, this is after he ran it for the first time with a group of kids that he works with, so he just thought we should take it to other schools and I was like "yeah I would love to do that" because I always wanted to continue working with young people, whether it's through other organisations or within my own. We just put our minds together and used both of our different talents to make it work. That was about two years ago, since we had that thought, and it's gonna be a year since the company was registered and operational. Musically Afrikan Boy's got a single popping right now that people need to go and see right? Yeah that's 'Sunshine'. And actually just to go back, one of the other things I guess that I actively try to inspire young people by is my own story of how I started off doing music. I was one of the highest scoring GCSE pupils within my school, damn right, and I went to uni, got my degree. I'm not saying all young people have to do that because degrees cost too much now but I started my story by telling my story, which is about going to Lidl and stealing chicken. I told my story and ten years on I've been able to set up my own record label, drama company, so I try and tell young people stick at what you're doing. Bare people laughed at me when I started, bare people didn't know I was a serious artist, but you can do it. Look at me now, I'm about to go on TV after this to promote my single. So I really try to use that and give that back to young people because if I was that age and someone like that was coming to me, I might go home and decide not to play PlayStation and do my thing. Look at KSI, he got rich from playing PlayStation! So it's like there's so many different ways, it's not just about getting rich, but to pursue what you love doing it's worth it, you just gotta stick at it and keep your head straight. What do you think that says about keeping it real and being yourself? That's the only way you'll really be able to realise who you are, it's the only way to really be able to realise what your passion is. If I was afraid to be who I am I wouldn't be Afrikan Boy, I'd try to be every other young teenage grime MC talking about shank, shank, bang, bang, all of that. I was the only brother from this area that said "hey I'll munch you like pounded yam". I don't have a shower at home, we use the bucket and butter container bruv, that's what I used to bath. I was the only person doing that, it's no shame that I shopped at Lidl, yeah I see your mum there, cool, you get me. That was me embracing my identity and who I am, that's what made me a success, and if you don't do that you'll never be a true success. This man always tell me, "when you get up there don't forget who you are", ain't that right D? So for me that's the number one thing. Your track's called 'Sunshine'… Yes, 'Sunshine' I wrote as a lullaby actually to my son. It's just about happiness and not being afraid to make mistakes and just carrying on. It's like a metaphor; my son is shining as well. It's just a feel-good track. I didn't record it trying to sound commercial or try and make it fit into a jam advert or something, I just wrote it out of that feeling and the feeling was happiness. How did it come about working with Shingai? Shingai man, me and Shingai have always wanted to work together. We first played a show together, one of my first shows, back on the motherland, it was in Malawi, the Lake of Stars Festival. We always bump into each other at shows and events. I already laid down the main demo of the track, we decided that we needed a great female vocalist to reach the notes that my throat couldn't reach, and Shingai was one of the first people that came to mind. She happened to be in town, which is very rare, and she came down and just smashed it. She loves the track as well, so very, very happy to have that collaboration done. Tell me about this show in Malawi. Lake of Stars Festival, which happens every year or every other year in Malawi, it's on Mangochi Beach, that was my first time back in Africa after a long hiatus, probably when I went to primary school there when I was kid. It was my first time back in Africa as an adult, it was my first time in East Africa period, and it's a beautiful festival, it's right on the beach, you've got the locals all around, very, very friendly. Yeah just an amazing experience to be performing my music as Afrikan Boy out on the continent to a new crowd, a new audience. Yeah it was wonderful man, a wonderful experience. How many times have you been back since? To Lake of Stars that's the only time. I'd love to go back. It is a charity organisation, artists self- fund themselves to go out there and perform. It's got a real good community feel to it as well, and I'd love to go back. What about to Africa? To Africa, this year I'll go back to Nigeria, I may do a show in Egypt as well coming up, which will be special if that comes through. Recently I was in Algeria, in Sudan, the north parts of the continent, they were really, really amazing shows, to be able to go out there and know that my music has made a little wave out in these parts of the world that certain people are afraid to fly to. My mum's like "why are you going to Sudan? Can you not do a show in Shoreditch?", like Sudan is where I need to go, it's where I need to be. It's just a blessing for music to be my visa really and to be the reason I discover more of Africa. And I heard that your tune 'One Day I Went To Lidl' is now the inspiration for a play in Germany, is that correct? That's correct man. So about a month and a half ago, One Day I Went To Lidl was premiered in the Ballhaus Theatre in Kreuzberg in Berlin, and the premise of the play was to work with the community within that town. Some of the actors were "refugees", some of them would hate me calling them that, some of them came in via the boats that we see, came via Italy, so the aim of the play was to take their stories and for them to actually have a platform to tell their stories, the same way I told the Lidl story. We kinda used it as a metaphor because I talk about immigration in Lidl as well, so we had three sold out nights of a play, not everyone who participated in the play was a "refugee" or something like that, so you had interesting stories from people about life in Berlin and some Londoners who had moved to Berlin as well. It just explored different people's lives in this setting, and I learned so much about the journey of a person, for example coming from Libya crossing the Sahara Desert, going to Italy, learning the language, getting their document, keeping their African document, renouncing their refugee title because you can't really go nowhere if you're labelled as a refugee, you have no rights, you can't even really work, so there's different levels. Not everyone who comes into a new country is thinking the same, not everybody is trying to get somebody pregnant so they can get papers. There's many different levels and I learned so much, through 'One Day I Went To Lidl', through me telling my story I'm able to understand even a bit deeper other people's stories. It was a really, really great play and well received, and we hope to do another run this winter. Do you have a motto? Y.A.M. It stands for Young, Ambitious and Motivated, and that's my motto. With all the groups of young people that I work with, they know that motto, and it's one of the singles that I released as well. It's just about informing young people to get out there, if you wanna achieve your dream, it ain't easy, not a lot of people are gonna help you so you need to have that drive, that ambition, that motivation to go out there and do what you wanna do. Even at my level right now, as a 26 year old starting off when I was 16, I've learned a lot and there's more things I wish I learned sooner, but that's what I try to push out to the young people through my music. Go out and get it and be smart about it. What kind of things do you wish you learned earlier? In relation to music I wish I learned about the music industry a lot earlier. I was smart not to sign no contracts with nobody when I was being offered contracts by record labels, A&R's at 16, 17. I always went under the motto "if I can't afford the lawyer, and I know my mum ain't gonna give me £750, I ain't signing the contract bruv", it's as simple as that. That was my maths, I always noticed the con before the track, so like I wished I learned more about publishing and little things, but then again I might not have been ready to learn them at that time. I just feel like there are some things that will be useful to young artists coming out knowing the avenues to get your music out, thinking about different segments of the business and where they wanna be. But at the same time I wouldn't have learned these things if I wasn't already on my journey and meeting people and things like that because they've shaped my perception of it. Some of it would be good to learn before hand but some of it as well you learn with age and life. Is there anyone that's been particularly good at teaching you? I think collectively the universe has a way of putting messages through people to me. So this morning the first thing I woke up and as thinking about was my next music video and the concept, and before I left the house I told myself, or the universe told me, "don't stress about it, it's on your mind, I'm gonna give you the idea through a person", and this man gave me the sickest idea for the video I could imagine! So a lot of people give me messages and sometimes they know they're doing it, sometimes they don't, that's why I always try to give words of encouragement to as much people as I can because you don't know what those words mean for that person. I couldn't really say one particular person, my manager I'm learning a lot from him, Danny. I'm not afraid to learn from nobody, kids, young people that I work with. If a teacher is not willing to learn then he's not a teacher no more. You gotta always be open eared and be willing to learn. So with the Spending Money Challenge we're gonna ask you to give a little bit of money away to a good cause, what good cause were you thinking about? The charity that I will be donating my Spending Money Challenge money to will be Staying Up Late. They are an organisation that helps people with learning disabilities and people who have to be escorted to events to be able to stay up late. I chose this charity because of personal issues, close relatives of mine have not been able to come to my gigs, or they've been able to come but they've had to leave at nine o'clock and the opener's just finished at nine o'clock. For me, for a person to not have access to expressive arts, that is real confinement. You need that freedom of being able to go to a gig and feel release, so that's one of the main reasons why I want to donate money and raise awareness for the Staying Up Late charity. 7 37 Issue 80 / 2015 HIPHOP / RNB guestlist.net Fusing rap, grime and Afrobeat, Olushola Ajose aka Afrikan Boy, is carving out a musical niche for himself. He's collaborated with the likes of M.I.A, founded his own drama company and fashion collective WeGoYAM. We caught up with him while he was having his hair cut to talk inspiring the youth, 'Sunshine' and the Spending Money Challenge " It's just a blessing for music to be my visa really and to be the reason I discover more of Africa "

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