BEA Interview #9: Lethalnezzle

[Saoirse]

When I first joined there was one member who was returning after a long hiatus that I instantly admired. He had an amazing chart and was becoming very active on the forums, so I quickly got to know the one called "Lethalnezzle". And now more than one year later, he has become an absolutely integral part of the BEA experience, bringing a strong voice to many often under-represented genres here as well as a fearless voice never afraid to enter a contentious argument and always display an extremely well-thought out opinion, even if it may push us outside our comfort zone. He's never the type to be liked by everybody, nor do I think that's ever been a concern, but he's easily among the most exciting and respected voices here on BEA and has been vital in helping the site move forward, and there's that equal sense of lots of knowledge to share as well as insatiable curiousity to find all that's out there that just makes up, well, the one-and-only grandmaster-of-the-young-emcess, the Lethal

But enough from me, let's here what this glorios BAMF (and BAWP) has to say:


Well hello lethalnezzle, thank you so much for taking time to interview today. I guess just to start off, if you wouldn't mind just letting us all know a little about yourself, where you're from, where you are now and some of the most memorable experiences in between.

Well, I’m from Birmingham, which is smack bang in the middle of England. It’s the second biggest city in the country, and probably my favourite place in the world. My mum and dad met there, despite neither of them being from Birmingham, and stayed there. I was an accident apparently, though a happy one (I think). I went to school at a pretty shit primary school in the south of Birmingham. There was one non-white kid in the entire school. It seems crazy to think that was the case given how multicultural Birmingham is as a city, but West Heath was a real white, working class factory town. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Rover cars, but I grew up right around the corner from where they were made. When the factory got shut down it tore the community apart. Luckily my parents both got promotions when I was about ten and we moved a couple of miles up the road into a nice semi-detached. It’s still in a very white, working class area, but our road has trees on and stuff and we have a driveway and a massive garden. My best memories of those early years largely involve playing and watching football, things like scoring my first goal for my school team, or watching West Brom win away at Port Vale, hearing the whole away support berate the home fans for the size of their ground, “my garden shed is bigger than this” type of thing, the camaraderie that was later replaced by going to gigs. Anyway, I got into a grammar school, one of the best in the country supposedly, and despite not wanting to go because all of my friends were going to the comprehensive around the corner, I went there. I got below average grades for the school because I never did any work, but still really good grades compared to most of the country.

Eventually I did my A-levels and underachieved and ended up in Kingston Polytechnic, a pretty poor (but extremely fun) university in south west London. I found out the other day that Aphex Twin went there, which is pretty dope. I studied Sociology, but never really enjoyed it, other than one module on rave culture. I think my antipathy towards the course and a rather, erm, wayward lifestyle led me to drop out after a year and a half, but not after a load of great experiences. Warehouse raves and forest raves, hugging random strangers whilst listening to Charles & Eddie, a bottle of Prosecco in each hand, seeing people totally off their tits, just wandering around with both hands straight up in the air, thinking that iTunes was the sea and the mouse wheel the surfboard and randomly picking songs upon hitting a wave, crazy drug experiences are what really stick with me. The great house parties and the great house post-parties, sitting around letting the glow come over me, playing table tennis and cooking stupidly elaborate risottos. Meeting my girlfriend in a dingy little upstairs club to the sounds of some cheesy house music. Spending days on end watching episodes of Spaced. Doing a pub crawl across the whole of London, dressed in a blue tracksuit with my face painted as a sad clown. Stupid shit that society only really lets you get away with when you’re young. I’m going to miss that stuff the most as I get older. I know this is all a bit rambling and whatever, but hopefully that gives some sort of idea as to my life up to this point without being overly tl;dr.

Well I guess to ask what would be my second most obvious question, What's your favorite song?

‘International Player’s Anthem’ by UGK and Outkast. Four great rappers at the top of their respective games and a lovely Willie Hutch sample = the closest popular music has ever gotten to perfection. I want it played at my funeral, and I’ve informed everybody I know on several occasions.

What is your favorite album and who is your favorite artist making music as of right now?

As of right now? It’s difficult to say because at any one time there are probably eight or nine albums that I am absolutely rinsing. Right now one of the albums I keep going back to a lot – like, A LOT – is The Soft Bulletin, but then The Lips are never too far from my speakers. The best new discovery – albeit of an older album – that I’ve been caning is Faraquet’s The View From This Tower. Apparently it’s post-hardcore, but I don’t really know what that genre label encompasses. It’s fucking amazing though, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s really wiry and tense, and it has this amazing sense of grown-up angst. It’s a bit like Pinkerton’s cooler older brother. I fux with it. I’ve been listening to a lot of Aphex Twin too. From this year, I can’t get over how great Steve Arrington and Dam-Funk’s new album is, nor Mazzy Star’s. They’re both in heavy rotation.

As for my favourite artist as of right now, that’s much easier. I fuck with everything Roc Marciano touches. As far as I’m concerned, the man can do no wrong. He’s just such a unique rapper – his voice, his flow, the way he puts rhymes together, he’s totally unlike anybody else rapping at the moment. And his beats are awesome, ostensibly gritty nineties New York boom-bap except without the actual ‘boom-bap’ element. He’s released two albums in the last three years and they’re two of my favourite albums of all-time, and the amount of guest verses he’s recorded in that time is ridiculous, and none of them are ever rushed. Every time he spits a verse you can tell he’s put real time and effort into it.

And I guess to rewind a bit, When did you first start really getting interested in exploring all the different types of music out there, and when did you get serious into full-album listening?

I guess when I was twelve or thirteen. I’d always really enjoyed music, but up until then it tended to be songs as opposed to albums. Then, one day, we were at a family friend’s house and their daughter, who was maybe fourteen or fifteen at the time, burned me off a bunch of albums that she thought I’d like, or at least that I should listen to. They included the first Libertines album, the first Coral album, The White Stripes’ White Blood Cells, The Be Good Tanyas’ Chinatown, the first Strokes album, and a few other things that I can’t remember. I already owned a few albums, but that was the first time I really saw the album as an artpiece, I think. I didn’t have the tracklistings for any of those CDs, so it was a case of just listening to them through, knowing absolutely nothing, going into them blind. Of the albums I’d owned prior to those, I knew which tracks I loved and would regularly skip to those, instead of listening to them as albums. So that was really the start of me taking the album seriously as a format.

As for exploring all the types of music out there, that was a much more recent thing. I had no interest in listening to metal up until about three years ago, for example. I met a guy at uni whose tastes weren’t particularly dissimilar to mine, especially when it came to grime and hip-hop and reggae, and he made a real effort to get me into Mastodon. We got drunk and watched Live at The Aragon, which was pretty awe-inspiring. Since then I’ve been much more open to metal. That St. Vitus album that Jasonconfused recommended to me is something I would have turned my nose up at only two years ago, but I love it. I’m even pretty good with all the growls and the shrieks that turn up in some of the more extreme forms of metal, but they’re still outside of my comfort zone. And any type of metal with the suffix ‘core’ still isn’t to my liking at all. Then again, I used to think German rock was wanky, because some guy who owns a record shop in Birmingham (Polar Bear, it’s called) is apparently an expert on it, and he always seemed like a pretty wanky guy. I figured it was wanky music for wanky people. Obviously that’s fucking dumb, but sweeping generalisations are easy and fun and as a kid they make you feel clever. I still have very little interest in happy hardcore or gabba or psytrance, for example, so I don’t think I really am interested in exploring every type of music just yet, but I keep a relatively open mind. My ears are attuned to certain types of music, but as I get older they seem to blend into one, to be honest. I wish I could give a better answer. My apologies.

To what extent did your family influence your musical taste? What was frequently played at the lethal household while you we're growing up?

My dad is the one who really instilled in me a love of music, and he’s pretty responsible for much of my taste in music. He got me into punk and reggae and soul and many of the canonical classics. In the house, or the car as it often was, he played a lot of Bob Dylan, Sam Cooke, Elvis Costello. Those are the three main ones I remember from my childhood, but there was much more than that. I remember listening to The Beatles and The Beach Boys and The Stones and The Who and The Kinks and The Faces and The Band and Love and The Grateful Dead and pretty much everything Rolling Stone magazine tells you to listen to. It’s always funny to me that people talk about using the RS500 as a foundation from which to build upon, because I was familiar with a huge proportion of the records by the time I hit puberty. I think listening to the “classics” stood me in pretty good stead, in that it meant that my tastes could only branch out further as I got older. Soon afterwards he was introducing me to The Pistols and The Clash and The Damned and The Smiths and The Cure and Dexy’s and Television and The Fall, and stuff like the Nuggets boxsets. He took me to all sorts of gigs too. I think he was of the mindset that if I could get the chance to see these “legends” before they died, then I should take it. We went to see The Who, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Ray Davies, Richard Thompson, Nick Cave, The Fall, Arthur Lee and Love, Brian Wilson, Bob Weir, REM, Ralph Stanley, Joan Baez, Elvis Costello, New Order, Ian Brown, The Pogues, Prince, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, U2, even Oasis. Basically, if they were viewed as important or famous within the world of popular music and my dad could get us tickets, we went. I don’t even like many of the artists he took me to see, but I think he was of the opinion that if one day I decided I did like their music, I could say I’d been to see them. It’s a strange attitude, but one I’m extremely grateful he had.

The funny thing is that as I get older I’ve started to notice he’s actually pretty closed minded as a listener. He has very little time for hip-hop or electronic music. That said, I was playing 94diskont in the house recently, and he said he thought it was great, so maybe he just needs a gentle push in the right direction. He introduced me to Music For Airports, so I guess 94diskont isn’t too much of a stretch. It made me laugh when he said that ‘Do While’ was “well played”; I didn’t want to correct him and say that it was mainly done electronically, but I think that really shows his attitude towards music. To him, it’s something done with guitars and drums and singers, in the traditional sense. He probably only listened to Eno because of Roxy Music anyway. But he has a massive collection of CDs and vinyls, and I basically learned much of what I know through those. He would always encourage me getting into my own bands too, I think he wanted to relive his teenage years through me. He would drive me and my friends to gigs, often picking me up at stupid times of night, always asking how it was and whether I enjoyed it. He’d buy me CDs and music magazines, he’d take me around CD fairs and he bought me my first turntables and records. All of this makes it sound like we were extremely wealthy or something, but we weren’t. My dad just spent pretty much all of his disposable income on music, I think. It’s something he passed down to me. Anyway, he’d lend me all his old reggae records, Marley and Gregory Isaacs and Culture and Capital Letters and Black Uhuru, and always tell me to just go through his record collection and pick out something that looked interesting. That’s how I found Metal Box, for example. So yeah, given all of that it’s no surprise to anybody that I turned out the way I did. I grew up in a house full of music, and I intend to die in one too.

While there may be some overlap with these questions I guess focusing more on your own musical journey, How have your preferences evolved over time? Do you see specific links of favorite music of your childhood to your favorite music of today?

The things my dad introduced me to have obviously had a huge bearing, especially on the guitar-based music I listen to, but perhaps less obviously soul and reggae-wise. I think listening to Sam Cooke a lot as a kid probably instils in one an understanding that it doesn’t take overly complicated lyrics to make a great song. Soul was the dance music of its day, and for me dancing is a huge part of music. I’ve regularly been to gigs and raves, events where dancing is often just as big a, if not the biggest, part of the night.

While it's certainly not the only (slightly) under-exposed genre you've brought to light here on BEA, Hip-Hop may (for better or worse) be the musical area you're most often associated with on BEA, and you're knowledge of the genre is awe-inspiring. What got you into the genre, and what have been your favorite works in that specific genre over time?

I don’t really know what got me into the genre. I like to think it was because I didn’t really listen to anything my dad didn’t approve of, and so I had to find something and hip-hop seemed a pretty good option, but to tell the truth I can’t really remember. I know that I picked up The Blueprint after seeing the video for ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ on MTV (and I fell in love with the album), and that I knew every word to Eminem’s ‘Without Me’ when I was about eleven, but at that time I just liked whatever was popular or whatever my dad listened to. I didn’t even know what hip-hop was. 2003 was a big year in terms of my appreciation of hip-hop, what with The College Dropout and Get Rich or Die Tryin’ both being released. However, despite my enjoyment of the odd record, it was still a genre I struggled with for the large part. One of the real turning points was picking up It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. I’m sure I owned a few hip-hop records by the time I heard it, but it was probably the album that helped to convince me that hip-hop wasn’t just the stereotype guns and bling stuff that it’s so often and lazily made out to be, that it was a genre to be taken as seriously as any other. There was a point when I was of the opinion that hip-hop was largely shit, and I know that I used to espouse the same sort of bullshit I now regularly call people out for, but I was young and I thought I knew everything. I was one of those annoying “real hip-hop” people, the type that tell you that most modern hip-hop is shit and that everything went downhill when Biggie died, the guys that think that explicitly political hip-hop is somehow automatically superior to all other hip-hop because “it has a message”, even if that message is so muddled that you aren’t entirely sure what it’s supposed to be, the kind of person that says stuff like “KRS-One is a prophet, man” and yet somehow manages to clumsily reconcile that with a love of Snoop Dogg because it’s “old school” or something. Fucking confused is what I was.

36 Chambers was a big turning point; that record helped me to stop worrying about the music having a message and just worry about enjoying something because it sounds cool and it makes you feel good. From there, Ghostface was another big turning point. I can’t remember what convinced me to listen to Fishscale that day, but I remember getting to ‘Back Like That’ (about halfway through the record) and thinking, “I just let most of this record fly over my head, I need to go back and actually listen to what he’s saying from start to finish because I’m pretty sure, from the snippets I’ve been paying proper attention to, that this is amazing”, and sure enough it was. After that, I got really into Desire by Pharoahe Monch, then The Art of Storytelling by Slick Rick, eventually Illmatic, Aquemini, the classics. I started only looking at the hip-hop aisle when I went into music shops, basically purchasing anything that was reduced or on offer. By about 2009 I probably owned about 200 hip-hop CDs, and had heard at least that again thanks to the internet. I just got greedy, tried everything, stopped worrying about what real hip-hop was. Now I like to think I can enjoy hip-hop of all kinds, from the hyper-lyrical formalism of guys like Freddie Gibbs, to the dumb-as-fuck, music for jumping around to of Chief Keef. It took time to get to that stage of acceptance, but now I’m there I just feel like there’s so much more out there for me to enjoy. It’s like people who enjoy Indian food, but always order the same curry every time. Like, there’s so much more for you on the menu. Try everything.

Of course we know you're more than just a hip hop fan, but to continue with the previous question, What are the biggest comparisons and contrasts you find between the UK and US hip-hop scenes?

For a start, hip-hop in America is just so much more varied. There are five times as many people in America, and probably ten times as many black people, if not more. Each area seems to have its own scene, and often there’ll be four or five different scenes in one state. Look at California right now. You have the ratchet music that YG and DJ Mustard and TeeFLii and people are making, then you have guys like Warm Brew and, to a certain extent, Kendrick who are making music in the classic G-funk mold, as well as people like Kool John and IamSu! who are doing that whole party rap thing that is a blend of lots of different Cali styles of the past. Over the last twenty years, you’ve had the conscious crowd, the likes of Souls of Mischief and Hieroglyphics who have been doing their thing, and people like Mac Dre and E-40 who basically started the whole hyphy movement, and of course Dr. Dre and DJ Quik with their own inimitable brand of funk, and these guys were the precursors to what we have now. And this is a pattern that you see in probably four or five states across America, be it in Illinois or New York or Texas, each one of them with their own totally unique styles and subgenres. British hip-hop just doesn’t have that scope, that variety, that ambition.

British hip-hop draws from a very small pool of influences, it’s a very small-minded thing. Occasionally guys will try and do something different, like Roots Manuva or Juice Aleem, but they’re in a minority. British hip-hop sounds like Jehst or Braintax or Task Force for the most part. I know people from within that scene, and it just doesn’t excite me. Don’t get me wrong, there are some really talented people making music within that template (Jehst’s last album, The Dragon of an Ordinary Family, is probably the best British hip-hop album I’ve ever heard, and better than the vast majority of American hip-hop albums), but the problem is the template. It’s almost as though people are too scared to step outside of their comfort zone, and it means that British hip-hop is all very much of a muchness. That isn’t to say there isn’t great British rap music though, because there is: grime. Grime was born out of UK rave music, a strange mutation of garage that’s cold and dark and abrasive and has aggy guys with West Indian flows shouting constant threats down a microphone. It’s a very basic genre, but one of my favourites. The most famous example, quite rightly, is Dizzee Rascal’s Boy In Da Corner, but there’s tons of great grime out there if you know where to look. It came from pirate radios, and subsequently much of the greatest grime is actually in the form of radio sets or dubplates, meaning it isn’t a particularly accessible genre in the most literal sense, and this can make it not only quite daunting but downright frustrating to try and newly acquaint yourself with it, but it’s worth the hassle.

Where did the term BAWP come from? Do you think it's really a sort of way to view music or just a particular mindset of the listener?

I’m not entirely sure, but I think probably because I’m surrounded by white friends who listen to a certain type of hip-hop, or rather ignore another type of hip-hop. They aren’t too enamoured by Jeezy or D-Block or Lil Boosie, actual hard street rap. I think there are certain types of hip-hop that appeal to white people, hip-hop that’s either positive and conscious (Common, The Roots) or otherwise doused in all this creative wordplay and whereby the artists are seen as these album-based, auter-geniuses whose music, despite its negative vibe, transcends its violent outlook (Wu-Tang, Dr. Dre). They dismiss rappers who just talk about life on the streets without any artsy flourishes or pretences, or people not backed by Pitchfork-approved beats. I just never, ever see white people with Styles P albums in their collections, and I think the idea spread from there. I don’t think BAWPs actually exist, I just think most white kids don’t really listen to the most outwardly thug music, though there could be a few possible reasons behind this – for one, the white, suburban kids that I grew up around aren’t thugs, so the music is inherently unrelatable, but also because there’s a subconscious feeling that may be lying dormant within them that, because this music isn’t for them, they’d be lying to themselves even if they were enjoying it, and possibly also because it largely took mixtape form, and mixtapes weren’t as readily available at the beginning as they are now. Do you know how long it took me to track down The Power of The Dollar by 50 Cent when I was 13 or 14? Weeks and weeks. But who knows, largely it’s just a bit of fun. I’m now just desperately searching for reasons (which probably don’t exist) behind a jokey acronym.

What's the first album you bought? How do you feel about the album today?

The first album I owned that I picked myself was the Space Jam Soundtrack. I love it. It has some pretty unforgivably cheesy tracks on it, but I like a bit of cheese, especially when it’s so intrinsically linked with my childhood.

You seem to be among the most well-listened users, especially when it comes to newly released music. What are the different resources you use to find all the music you listen to?

Mainly blogs and websites and sometimes magazine (Fact, Passion of the Weiss, Steady Bloggin’, Horror Show Tunez, Pitchfork, New Album Releases, Complex, HipHopDX, XLR8R, Tiny Mixtapes, The Quietus, NME, The Source, Mojo, Songlines, Potholes in my Blog, Exystence, No Data), but also through friends’ recommendations, and of course through BEA, which is a goldmine. People here know their shit.

From the time you first started getting serious into current music to now, how do you think music has progressed and do you see any boiling-under-the-water movements in the musical world that might lead to some great things in the future?

The rise of illegal downloading has been a godsend, and I truly believe that. It’s given potential artists the chance to check out more music than ever before. I can now sit and listen to music from the remotest corners of the world, across thousands of genres. That has to be a good thing, going forward. We’ve already seen the rise of post-regional hip-hop, guys like Rocky coming out of Harlem with a Houston sound, and the same thing is happening all over the place, from metal to electronic music. I definitely think that the immediate availability of tribal music these days has had a massive influence on the polyrhythms of post-dubstep music. The likes of Ramadanman and Untold sound more in tune with African music than any form of European, melody-based music. We’re seeing far more natural genre-hybrids these days, as opposed to the awkward ones we used to get (funk-metal, anybody?). These days, people’s varied influences are pushing all types of music in new directions, but in a subtle, organic manner. It’s healthy. I don’t know what comes next, but I’m excited to find out.

Not surprisingly here on BEA frequent run-ins with people who have completely opposite musical tastes to your own can occasionally lead to some quite contentious arguments. As a matter of finding common ground, What do you think is the best way to both discuss and recommend music to someone who seems to have a musical viewpoint quite different to your own?

Just speak your point of view passionately. I think if it’s clear that you have a real love for something, it can change anybody’s mind. If it’s something the person you are talking to may not enjoy, you can at least prove to them what it’s worth to you; if it’s something they’ve never heard, it can convince them to go and check it out.

And for the question Im sure everybody's been waiting for you to answer, What's your favorite Shaq rap?

‘Can’t Stop The Reign’, the one that Biggie quite clearly wrote for him. The whole flow is Biggie’s flow, and Biggie features on the track. “You ain’t even fit to step in Shaq’s arena, I look inside your mind and I see your shook demeanour”. That one, for sure.

I think it shouldn't be a surprise to most BEA regulars that you make your own music. What are some key experiences you've had composing and writing songs, performing live and recording your music?

I don’t ever sit down to write a song, they just come to me. I know that sounds wanky, but it’s true. I’ll wake up with a nice rhyming couplet in my head, put it down on paper, and something blossoms out of that. It’s not a regular occurrence at all, but it’s nice when it happens. I’ve probably tried to force myself into writing a song three or four times, and every time I end up hating the song. It always sounds too well thought-out, not natural enough. My melodies are usually just robbed from Orange Juice, which makes everything easier. As for playing live, I always find that way more fun than recording. I like the interaction with the crowd, as I’m usually at least a little tipsy and so are they. People laugh at the lyrics they’re supposed to laugh at, which is nice, and bob their heads accordingly. Having somebody tell you they like a song you recorded is far inferior to catching somebody in the act of enjoying it, there and then.

It also shouldn't be any surprise to most of us here that your album A Vessel for My Ineptitude has been released online, and has gotten wide acclaim here on BEA. Could you give a brief timeline of the album, from initial conception to release?

The reason I put it out there had much less to do with wanting to release an album or whatever than it did to do with the fact that I wanted to put those songs behind me. I’d fallen into a comfort zone whereby every time I played live I was just playing the same songs over and over again, and I thought if I made those songs publically available then it might motivate me to write something else, because nobody – nobody in the world, no matter who they are – should be playing the same set every night. So it was just a case of gathering my favourite recordings from over the years, recording a few songs that I’d been playing for a while but hadn’t gotten around to putting on wax, so to speak, and cobbling them all together and putting them out there. That’s why it’s so all over the place. The earliest recording, ‘Falling For You’, was done at a friend’s house when I was about fourteen or fifteen, so that makes it seven or eight years old now. A few of the songs came from recordings I did at a place in West Bromwich called The Public, which is a council-funded arts centre that was in the news this week because it’s having its funding pulled, from about four years ago. At the other end of the spectrum, the Daniel Johnston cover and ‘Monster Trucks’ were recorded in the hour before I uploaded it to Bandcamp. When I had the recordings I wanted, I had to decide in what order they’d go. I decided on my first and last tracks, and then stuck everything else in between those, trying not to have two rap songs back-to-back at any point. Then I found a picture of Ruel Fox and it was done. I’d like to say there was any planning or forethought involved, but it really was just thrown together and put out for the sake of it. That said, it hasn’t motivated me to write a rash of new songs, so it probably wasn’t worth it in the end. It’s also about five songs too long, but you live and learn.

I think one of the most striking things about A Vessel is that it covers a lot of stylistic ground. How have your various influences inspired your individual songs, and has real-life affected your music quite a lot as well?

As I said, Orange Juice are a major influence in terms of melody and song structure. ‘Falling For You’ is just ‘Consolation Prize’, for example. A lot of my lyrical influences are rappers, and I think that shows through in some of the internal rhyming on songs like ‘Monster Trucks’, or the Pharcyde-esque off-kilter lines of ‘Back In The Day’, which was totally modelled on Fat Lip’s flow, and whose chorus is robbed from a song by Ahmad, a West Coast rapper with ties to the group. Belle & Seb are a major influence, as is Jonathan Richman. I like jangly stuff, so hopefully that shines through.

Other than that, I’d just say that a lot of my songs are pretty autobiographical (‘Back In The Day’ being the most obvious example, but all of them are based on events in my life to some extent), so I guess my own experiences are the biggest influence on my music.

Any planned projects for the future?

Yeah, a lot of rapping. Send me beats, people. Also, a live album. I prefer how my stuff sounds live, so I’ll do that at some point.

Well, I guess to get a little insight to your time here on BEA, how did you find the site and what are some of the most memorable and enlightening experiences you've had here from when you first joined to now?

Honestly, I’ve no idea how I found the site. I probably typed “best flaming lips albums” into Google or something, in the manner many people find the site, but I just can’t remember. In fact, I made my chart years ago, back in 2010. I joined in with a few threads, but I don’t recall anything particularly interesting. I just remember thinking it was all very cliquey (lol). I think I came back for purely selfish reasons; I recorded a couple of songs and wanted feedback, and suddenly remembered about this place. And it seemed different. It was still cliquey, but I wasn’t afraid to speak my mind or talk about the music I wanted to talk about. Everybody seemed more receptive, I guess. I remember Bork calling me, “the hip-hop guy”, and I was like, “wooo, somebody realises I’m here”. Then I didn’t want to be “the hip-hop guy” anymore, but I like hip-hop too much not to be.

The best experience I’ve had through the site is meeting Norman. I prefer human interaction to speaking over the internet, and having a couple of pints with him and his partner was delightful. We just talked about life and music for a couple of hours and then went our own ways, but it was just a very pleasant afternoon. As a side note, I remember my girlfriend turning round to me when I said I was going to meet him, and she was like, “You’re going to meet a random man off the internet?!? Who calls himself Norman Bates?!?” That made me laugh.

Besides that, I always enjoy reading people’s thoughts on music. My biggest hobby outside of going to the pub, watching football, going out dancing, and listening to music is reading about music, and users on this site give me the chance to do that every day, always about new things I wouldn’t otherwise have come across. I like that.

Oh yeah, and all the lovely internet friends I’ve met. I never had internet friends before BEA. They’re like real life friends, only faceless and anonymous and without the ability to properly communicate in a human way. But they’re cool.

Is there a particular method to how you compose your charts?

I start with the album I think is best and go from there.

How does your time on BEA compare to experiences with other music-focused websites and forums?

Before BEA, I’d only ever used a grime forum. Grime fans can be pretty violent and homophobic, so it was obviously shit. I found a lot of good grime there though. But yeah, BEA is great, a lovely site full of lovely people, and amazing recommendations from a variety of sources.

How do you think your BEA persona reflects how you are in real-life social situations? Is there a side of your personality that you feel more comfortable showing on BEA or less comfortable than in IRL?

I’m probably slightly more argumentative on BEA, but only slightly. If someone’s talking bullshit in real life, I’ll call them on it. That said, it usually occurs amongst friends, and so even explosive tirades can be made to seem pleasant with a smile. On the internet, you can’t put that across. I probably need to learn to be more careful with how I speak to people on BEA, some of the things I’ve written in the past make me cringe. But I try to be myself as much as possible on BEA.

What do you think is key for BEA to move forward and increase its exposure to all the different types of great music out there?

It’s doing well, I reckon. I’d like to see more people with 2013 charts, and a little more description of why people like certain things wouldn’t go amiss. I also like the idea of tailor-made recommendations, so if anybody hears anything they think I might like, new or old, holla.

And I guess to get a little insight into your non-musical artistic side, what do you do when you're not listening to or making music?

Drink. Read. Watch the football. Dance. Go on BEA. That covers about 90% of my waking life.

Do you dabble in any other artistic mediums beyond music?

I used to dabble in a bit of marijuarigami, trying to roll novelty joints of all different shapes and sizes. Then I grew up.

If you could have dinner with anybody who's ever lived, who would it be and why?

Margaret Thatcher. I’d like to ask her why she thought the things she did were in any way decent or humane.

What are some of the favorite cities and places you've visited, and of the places you've haven't been which do you most want to see?

I was lucky enough to go to San Francisco when I was twelve or thirteen, and that was incredible. The record shops, Chinatown, Alcatraz, Haight Ashbury, it’s all just really unique, totally unlike anywhere I’ve ever been. It might be the case that there are dozens of cities like it across America, but to a kid from England it just seemed like a totally different world. It’s completely hectic, yet it has a real laid back vibe about it, not in some hippie, Timothy Leary, “far out, maaaaan” way, but just in the sense that everybody there seems quite content and happy with their lot, which I think is at odds with the American ideal of always striving for more, faster, bigger, now. Or maybe I got it totally wrong because I was a kid.

As for Europe, Paris is amazing. I’m actually in Bergerac (in the south of France) at the moment, having just spent a couple of days in Paris. We didn’t have a lot of time to take much of it in, but we went to Notre Dame. Once you’ve seen one 850-year-old lavish cathedral full of countless priceless artefacts, you’ve seen them all. I also had the best veal I’ve ever eaten. The standard of food here is so high. Even the McDonalds are good. My bun had bacon bits in it. In the bun. We went to Disneyland too, which was so much fun. Obviously it’s all horribly overpriced and just full of people trying to sell you cheap tat dressed up as quality goods, not to mention the fact that everywhere you turn there seems to be another child screaming about something, but once you see the castle it’s almost as though somebody has just sprinkled you with pixie dust. I felt like a child again. When the final fireworks show was coming to a climax, I started to well up. For all the crass commercialism, there’s just something about Disney that warms the cockles.

Rome is pretty dope too. The Vatican is a strange place. The Sistine Chapel is beautiful though. When you see something like that, as a non-believer, it always makes you wish you were born with faith, that you could truly appreciate why somebody would put that much effort into making something that beautiful. But the city itself is hectic, Vespas fucking everywhere. I’ve never been so scared crossing the road.

Amsterdam is strange. I spent the entire time there extremely high, but you can’t help shake the feeling it’s really sleazy. The Red Light District made me very uncomfortable. All I could think of was people trafficking. Sort of kills your buzz.

I adore London. There’s nowhere like it in the world, from what I’ve seen. It’s like a little cross-section of everything, it has its own microclimate. One minute you’re in Dickens’ London, the next you’re in Dizzee Rascal’s. It’s both the coldest, darkest, loneliest place in the world, and the most welcoming. I guess that in most places you can only take out of them what you give in, but nowhere is that more true than in London. If you want to have a good time, and you put the effort into having a good time, you’ll have the best time. If you want to sit and mope and think about all the ways in which the world has wronged you, London will magnify it and put it into a strange poetic context for you. Sipping a gin and tonic and laughing at the people as they walk past, you are Oscar Wilde. And it’s so vast that you could never see it all – I’m always finding new places I’ve never seen, and that excites me. But even all of that still can’t compare to Birmingham.

As for places I’d like to visit, I’m not sure. The East Coast of America maybe, see where hip-hop was born. Jamaica would be cool too. And Cuba too, before it all completely changes.

And I guess for a rundown:

Favorite Color?

Blue.

Favorite Book?

Can it be a poetry anthology? If so, Seamus Heaney’s Death of a Naturalist.

Favorite Author?

Flann O’Brien.

Favorite Movie?

Casablanca.

Favorite Director?

The Coen brothers.

Favorite Food Dish?

A good curry, preferably chicken. I like to vary what curries I eat, but I’m particularly fond of madras’, ceylons, anything with spinach in, dhansaks. That said, I do love a lamb rogan josh or a Goan fish curry too, so it doesn’t always have to be chicken. Birmingham has a massive Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi population, so you can get a banging curry pretty much anywhere for practically pittance.

Favorite Painting?

I don’t know much about art at all, but I do love Picasso’s Guernica. Is that cliché? Probably, but fuck it.

Favorite Thing to do on a rainy day besides listen to music?

Lie in bed with my girlfriend smoking roll-ups and watching shit TV.

Boxers or Briefs?

Boxers. Always boxers.

What's your favorite pick-up line:

“Do you fancy a drink?”

In a sentence, describe what you think the internet "is" in the grand scheme of things:

White people accusing other white people of being racist.

What's the best line of advice you could give to a complete stranger?

Listen to UGK.

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Well Lethal thank you so much for taking time to answer these questions and hopefully BEA will honor his wishes and have a collective UGK listen, and hopefully he'll visit central Texas someday

[Romanelli]

Nice. Very nice.


_________________
May we all get to heaven
'Fore the devil knows we're dead...

[Guest]

[MrFrogger]

Probably my favorite interview yet, well done both of you

[Romanelli]

[Guest]

Twas lovely. ^_^

Gave me deja vu though. I feel like I've read him being interviewed before. O_O

[SquishypuffDave]

Brilliant questions and brilliant answers. This is making me rethink my interview technique. Damn Lethal is cool.

[alelsupreme]

Knew this'd be awesome.
_________________

Romanelli wrote:

We're all fucked, lads.

[Le_Samurai]

Excellent questions. Very interesting and gave a lot of room for great responses. My favorite so far.

[Norman Bates]

Brilliant!