Scroobius Pip - Speech Development

Full transcript: Scroobius Pip on London Real

10:45 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Mr. Scroobius Pip, who is a performance poet, a spoken word artist. You are one half of the hip-hop duo Dan le Sac versus Scroobius Pip. You’re a DJ on XFM.

11:02 You run the label Speech Development Records. You are an MMA aficionado and Cage Warriors commentator from time to time. I do a lot of stuff. You do. You hail from Essex, right here in the UK.

11:14 Scroobius, welcome to London Real. Thank you for having me. It’s good to be here. It’s good to be here. I think I first started hearing about you when we had Dan Hardy here, which was August of last year, and that was a really big episode for us, because in anticipation of Dan, we really stepped up our whole game around here, and we got all the cameras in.

11:31 I remember planning it for a bunch of weeks, and I just thought that Dan was going to be like the quintessential guest, because you know he was obviously a quite skilled MMA guy, but he was also really open-minded and talked about psychedelics, and also Dan isn’t afraid to come out of the psychedelic closet. I even told him that day, and this is when he was actually, I think, talking to the UFC about being an announcer, and he’s walking me through the specifics of how he takes psilocybin and mushrooms on the show, and I was just afterwards. I was like, Dan, you’re so honest.

11:59 Why do you do that? And he said, Brian, like, my whole life I’ve found that the more honest I am, the better people I meet, and the better experiences I have. Completely. It’s the only way to be. I hear people, kind of, in different careers and different industries complain about, oh man, there’s so many scumbags in the industry I work in, or in the area I work, or something like that.

12:19 It’s probably because you’ve portrayed yourself in a certain way that you’ve got in, you know, if you’ve portrayed yourself in an honest and open way, you wouldn’t have got into those. You wouldn’t be surrounded by those kind of people. If you’re open about yourself, then you should be surrounded in the end by kind of people that fit and gel nicely with you. Right? So you might be attracting that energy in a weird way.

12:38 If you’ve hidden certain things about yourself, then yeah, you might not be attracting the right crowd. And I think, to give homage to the pioneer that was probably Rogan when he was talking about everything he did. And I remember I worked in banking for 10 years, and I remember before we did our before and after ayahuasca episode, I was like, okay, you’re saying goodbye to the whole banking industry because you’re going to be f***ed if everyone ever watches this show.

13:02 But then part of me was just like, I got to go that way, and I kind of did, and I honestly don’t know now that if it would be. But it’s just like, it’s just been the right thing to be honest about this stuff. Completely. I remember there’s a spoken word artist. I always struggle with the term poet, cuz I think if you’re not into the spoken word scene, or even that, you’re going to be cringing and thinking, ah, spoken word, it’s not something that naturally appeals to me, even kind of the word poet, even the word spoken word at times.

13:29 But I think it’s the most literal. But as a spoken word artist, I know, called Mus R Wanga, um, he went to Eton. He had a great upbringing and was, um, a lawyer. He was trained and qualified as a lawyer, and then one day he realized that he can’t be a lawyer and be honest with himself about who he is and what he is as a poet, as a spoken word artist, and all that, and he quit, and you know he’s become a journalist and all sorts of other kind of areas, and he’s doing great.

13:58 But it was always a beautiful thing to hear that he’s like, even the fact, even standing up in front of 10 people and doing this particular poem about this particular subject where I’m being honest, then it makes me feel like a fraud in my day-to-day job. So it was kind of had to pick or choose, had to either be a poet in inverted commas, a poet, or a lawyer, and you can’t. He felt you couldn’t really cross the two over. Honestly, wow, and that would affect his poetry if he was doing something he wasn’t completely sincere about.

14:28 Completely. And I said, you’re thinking in anything you write. I mean, a great advantage that I’ve had in my career is the first thing that I wrote was a track called Thou Shalt Not Always Kill. Um, and it went in the top 40 instantly and was our big song. So I wrote without worrying about what other people think, without worrying about anything else, which set me up nicely for that.

14:53 But if you’ve got a job or anything else where you’re thinking, kind of, want to say this, but as you were saying there, kind of want to talk about this but I don’t want to affect, right, then it’s going to inhibit what you do. Whereas if you’ve always had that thing of, well, I write what I write and hopefully it hits the spot. I’ve never had that fear of I can’t really say that. It’s kind of, if I feel it or think it, then that’s something I think we should all think about, because, like, people get that vibe.

15:18 Humans know when you’re being 100% or when you’re being genuine, or humans know when you’re even doing something that you enjoy. So, like, a lot of us were taught, okay, just go do that job and smile and say the things you need to do, and then go home and have your free time. But it does invade your whole personality, doesn’t it? I’ve, I mean, I’ve always been one for that. In every job I’ve had, I’ve always struggled to just clock in and clock out.

15:41 Clock out. Like when I worked in a record store, you know, it’s in retail. It’s not the most exciting job. It wasn’t like a cool hip indie record shop. So it was HMV.

15:51 It’s kind of, but I worked really hard at it, cuz like, well, if I’ve got to be here, I’ve got to be here, do you know what I mean? I need to be 100% in it, rather than going home each night and moaning about it and how I want to do something else. I do want to do something else and I work on that, but in the time that I am here, I’m going to be really good at selling DVDs. You know, if that’s what I’ve got to do, then that’s what I’ve got to do. Otherwise I’m spending six seven hours of every day wasting my time and doing something I hate, you know, not developing in any way.

16:19 So, right, well, you just took my two leads there. One is Thou Shalt Not Always Kill, which you released in 2006. I was watching the video of it yesterday, and it’s funny to watch that video. It’s got the old aspect ratio, and then you realize, or people don’t realize, that it was hard to make videos back then. You couldn’t buy a DSLR.

16:37 YouTube didn’t exist. So, like, so quick how it all happens, and you had a video that there were camera shots that I know. The opening shot, there’s someone walking out on the streets of London. I mean, you guys thought about making that video? Obviously.

16:48 Yeah. I mean, it was all, I mean, we still made it. I think we had £200 to make it, and yeah, it was all done with a lot of love and creativity, more than anything. And then yeah, exactly, that it went up on YouTube because it was just as YouTube was starting to become a real channel for that kind of art. Art that sounds too pretentious for music, for whatever you wanted to put on there, and again that was it.

17:16 It was a time when you didn’t realize that you could spend, or no. A time that previously you couldn’t have that kind of exposure. You had to be on a major label and on MTV and on this and on that, or you didn’t have it. It was, we made this video for a couple of hundred quid. And again it was challenging stuff about the way people live their lives.

17:37 It was a, a, a lot of tongue-in-cheek stuff, but also a lot of social commentary, which again you’re not going to just walk into radio play with that and MTV play with that. But because of things like YouTube, if it was something that people could relate to and interact with, then yeah, you’ve got your audience. And back then people forget there weren’t actually that many videos on YouTube, so if you had something hot it would actually get watched a lot.

18:02 And a lot of those YouTube youngsters that were uploading content, they became very famous in the YouTube community, cuz uh there weren’t a lot of people that had joined. I know probably no music videos were on there. Probably the MTV stuff was staying on MTV. And yeah, I mean it was really interesting, cuz there, I mean there was, there, I think there would have been music videos on there, but you’re exactly right on that. People would go and watch stuff on YouTube, which is different to what people do now.

18:29 Now people watch a specific video, do you know what I mean? Whereas people at that point would go, oh, what’s popular on YouTube? Like, are using YouTube more as a TV channel than as a host for an individual thing that you want to watch, an individual clip. So it was a good thing, yeah, in that it got that initial hype, and then because of that, you know, it’s because of that that we’ve got to America, Japan, just all these things around the world, cuz people would go, all right, well, this has got a million views.

18:57 What’s what’s what’s going on here? Look, you’ve been using YouTube your whole career. I mean, if you look through, you got some crazy stuff on YouTube, like great videos. You did The X Factor spoof. I want to talk about that in a bit, but you were actually using the video to sell your singles at the end.

19:10 You’re like, buy my single here. That kind of thing, really, like, really intelligent use. But just quickly on the song, like you submitted that Thou Shalt Not Always Kill to was it John Kennedy’s Xposure show, and they played it within a couple hours of receiving it. Like you said, you’re in the top 40 right away. I mean, this song is really, it’s, it’s, it’s on many different levels.

19:29 You look at the YouTube comments on your song, and there’s people that are either getting it or not getting it at one level, people not getting it, or getting it at the second and third level. You’re calling a bunch of things out. Um, what happened there? And it was just, I said it was insane. I mean, it was a crazy experience.

19:44 And again, a lot of luck there, I guess, but with that song, it was a spoken word piece I’d written. I’d been trying out at shows. And for anyone who’s not heard it, it’s basically a list of commandments, just adapted for today’s world, kind of thing. And I’d use it as spoken word gigs because it was an easy one to adapt. So if someone’s overrun, hugely, or been really condescending or anything like that, you can add a “that should not be a condescending prick” when everyone’s just here for the same reason.

20:17 Or like a standup comedian, you can do some crowd work. You could just adapt bits but put it into an already solidly structured piece. So I knew I already had the bits that would make the serious points or social points, but I could add a lot of different areas, you know, if I needed to. And Dan le Sac had remixed a few of my, my solo stuff, and uh, and he sent over this one beat, and I think it, I think he was watching “4-year-old virgin.” Okay, it’s just a weird reference.

20:47 I remember he, by the time it had finished, I’d recorded, I’d written the vocal and recorded it and emailed it back. Okay. So that’s kind of the full lifespan of this. I don’t even know the length of “4-year-old virgin,” but yeah, so he was watching it like in your flat, and you were right there. It was all over email, it was all over em.

21:03 He emailed me this, and I was like, all right, and then he put this film on, and by the time he finished he looked in his email and that was the original vocal that was on the video and everything. Okay, okay. And that’s what got played on XFM, and yeah, we sent a couple of CDs out. Yeah. And John Kennedy and XFM heard it.

21:21 I didn’t hear it get his first play, because we didn’t expect him to play it. We kind of sent it out, kind of thinking, well, you know, we’ll see what happens. And yeah, it all went crazy from there. And radio play is huge. I mean, I didn’t realize, I guess it’s still huge even today, for making or breaking things.

21:36 Um, we had, like I said, we had Ashley Walters on here a couple weeks ago, and he said, like, with uh, so solid crew that 21 seconds, he’s like, it’s all about the radio play, and that can make or break you. Had you, you still been working at HMV at that time? Had you stopped working there? What were you doing, spoken word, when you were there? Yeah.

21:54 I’d worked. So I worked in HMV for 5 years, and um, got, I’d always been like, oh, I’m working on an album. I want to do hip-hop, I want to do spoken word. And then I got offered an assistant manager’s job, and I decided, again, like it’s kind of what I was saying earlier, I decided at that point, either I need to take it and accept that this is what I do, right? And again I’m fine with that.

22:17 I don’t think there’s any shame in that at all, or I quit and try and do music for a bit. So I’d saved up enough to record my debut album, which I think I spent a grand on. Right? No, no commercial breaks. Y.

22:31 And then um, I’d saved, I think, 3 or £4,000, which I felt I could survive off that for a year. So I’m, you know, I’m low maintenance, so that is low maintenance. I quit my job, and I had a 1987 Toyota Space Cruiser, and I toured around the country living in that. Okay, sharing in service stations and whatnot, and just kind of trying to get gigs anywhere I could. Um, I did a thing of just, I’d perform on street corners but not busking, because I felt busking instantly puts you in a wanting something from someone.

23:08 It puts you in a negative zone, and people will instantly dismiss that, whereas if you’re just performing as a gift, as it were, then it’s a different mindset, and I learned quite quickly that you could go to a town centre and there’s tons of people there, but very few of them want to hear spoken word hip-hop hybrid, kind of a weird mixture. So what I learned quite quickly was I’d get to each town and I’d look at the gig listings and I’d see who’s playing, because I’d figure if, say, a Black 65 or ASAP Rocky or Sage Francis or Atmosphere, or anyone in that kind of hip-hop area, are playing, then they’re literally going to bring everyone from that area and line them up against the wall, literally. So I’d turn up and play to other people’s crowds.

23:53 I turn up outside their show. I’d hand out flyers so people can remember who I am, but I wouldn’t have anything for sale. I wouldn’t ask for anything. Okay, I’d just say, look, you’ve paid for a gig, it’s going to be amazing, you’re going to have amazing supports, but while you’re standing outside awaiting, here’s, here’s an extra performance. And I do that, and that’s kind of where it all started off for me.

24:15 You play music in the back, or was it just spoken… I do. Um, I had a ghetto blaster with some backing beats on. I also had a loop pedal where I’d beatbox and loop. I beatbox into a loop pedal and loop it, and then I’d go over the top of it, and some bits I’d do just as raw kind of a cappellas.

24:33 Um, so yeah, I did that for a bit, and it’s basically, I decided I’m going to quit. I’m going to try music as a full-time career for one year, and if it works out great, if it doesn’t, I’ll happily go back to retail or to whatever else. And it was almost a year to the day. It was like about four or five days out that Thou Shalt Not Always Kill came out and got in the top 40, and it was like, well, you know, that gamble paid off, but things aren’t supposed to happen that way.

25:01 Scroobius. Yeah, I know. I mean, that’s one of the things. It’s always weird. I tell that story to people, and I say, I’m not saying that you should do this, cuz I think it was a freak situation, that a lot of stuff kind of, kind of happened and aligned, and that it worked.

25:14 You know, I wouldn’t be one to say, every, this, what everyone should do: quit your job, do your passion, and it’ll all work out, cuz that’s not how life works. Sometimes it’s called survivorship bias. I think, exactly, like it happened, it worked out for me, it’s not going to work out for everyone. I think there’s a lot of work ethic in there. I think it is because I could put 100% into it.

25:35 I do. I’d do five or six open mics a week when I was in the London area. Obviously I toured around the country, just playing outside pubs, getting on open mics in different pubs and areas and things like that. And yeah, hard for this whole vibe of not busking is interesting to me, so if you stuck a hat out there, or if you put something on like “give what you want,” it immediately changes a relationship, and they don’t want to become fans, that you’re intruding on them.

26:01 Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, it’s just something that I felt personally, because I don’t live in London, but I live just outside London. I’ve come to London a lot, and I’m aware of how much, I don’t know, how judgmental at times I’ll get of buskers. “He’s trying to do something,” you’ll be like, “He’s not that good,” it’s like, and he’s giving you free music, because he’s asking for something that you kind of have, that, and I don’t know, I guess it becomes easier to walk past.

26:28 Whereas in the, it worked best in the situation outside of other people’s shows, because I’d be able to articulate, look, I’m not after your money, all I’m saying is listen to this, you know, and again it’s not forcing it, unsolicited, into their face. It’s researched solicitation. It’s saying, look, you’re into this kind of thing, I think you’ll probably dig what I’m doing. If you don’t, it’s not a problem. Like, you’ve s for hip-hop people, be selling their CD, just trying to, and again I think that is another thing that, from going to hip-hop shows for years, it felt like, I don’t know, something obviously isn’t working there, cuz you see the same guys outside every show on the same hustle.

27:15 So I don’t know. There was a lot of things I thought I needed to find a different way to do this, and not selling anything seemed to be the one for me. I said it was at the time where MySpace and YouTube and all that was just coming about, so I could hand out flyers with information of how to easily buy stuff from me, or at least follow up on me and know what’s happening, so I didn’t have that instant need to go, right, either they buy this now or they never hear of me again.

27:43 So you evolve with the times. Five years earlier you couldn’t have done that. Five years ear… It’s like, yeah, how are you going to find out about me in the future? Whereas at that point I can say, look, and again it’s a it’s a slight intelligence thing there, of going, look, these are people who go to gigs, these people who like live shows.

28:01 If they’ve got my fly on that, then you know I do live shows. Hopefully they’ll go, oh well, I enjoyed that guy, I’ll go to his show next time. It’s like they invested in it already. Yeah. It’s like the next best thing to open up for the live show.

28:13 You could argue it’s even better, cuz people are going to miss that early performance, and then you’ve got a captive audience when they’re waiting in line. Completely. And I also think, um, there’s an again it’s trying to be smart with it all. I think there’s an art to being an opener, as an actual support act, cuz I think a lot of people go out and smash their gig and go, yeah, we did great, but if you’re not putting a flyer or something in their hands, it’s arrogant to think they’re going to remember you in any way, cuz you can kill it, but then the band that they’ve been listening to their CD for months is about to come on and play an amazing set.

28:44 That’s what they’re going to remember in the morning. They’re not going to necessarily remember the support band who they didn’t know any of their songs, but it was cool. Whereas if you’ve put something in their hand, and again they’re going to get drunk, they might meet a girl and take her home. There’s a lot of things that are going to distract them from the support band who they’ve paid to come and see. So I think, in even in that respect, I’ve always been one for trying to be proactive and yeah, adapting with the times, and going, right, I’ve got this good support slot I’m opening up for.

29:15 I mean, we’ve done open for Mark Ronson, for Saul Williams, for RZA from Wu-Tang Clan, for all sorts of people. And again it’s trying to go, right, it’s cool to get the gig, but you can’t just get the gig and then pat yourself on the back and go home that night. Again, opened up for RZA. It’s like, yeah, and then what does that mean next week? Yeah, and next week you’re still sitting at home and you’re not opening up for RZA.

29:39 So you know it’s that, it’s that trying to make it all have that mark and leave your card, as such. Good advice to new artists. It’s definitely funny how you say that. You know, when we were on Joe Rogan, everyone’s like, oh, you’re on Rogan, and then it’s like, and I remember telling my crew, I’m like, and the next day we’re going to wake up and guess what, we have to do the same thing we’ve been doing for the last year. And we had a spoken word artist in here, Sully Breaks.

30:00 I don’t know if you know him. He got to meet Will Smith when he was in LA, and he’s like, he instagrammed a picture of him and Will Smith, like, you know, who has more Twitter followers than Obama? And I talked to Sully afterwards, and he’s like, yeah, everyone’s like, you made it, and then it’s like, the next day you’ve got to get up and do everything that you were doing. Exactly. You know, there is no making it.

30:21 Exactly. And again there’s nothing wrong with that. I think it’s right to be excited about those things, you know? Damn straight. I was buzzing, tort rizer, or to, you know, all of these different exciting things that happen.

30:33 But yeah, you can’t let it distract you from what you do, and what is your goal? You’ve got to continue on. You’ve still got to work. You can’t just, right, let’s talk about your next album. Distraction Pieces, right?

30:46 And your video “Introdiction.” You’re burning some stuff in there. I was playing it for my girlfriend last night. She got very disturbed. I was really happy about that.

30:57 You know, you’re quoting Lenny Bruce. What, tell me about that first album, or the first album when you were, when you were on a label. It’s like, was my first solo album? It’s quite a confusing history, cuz I did a no commercial breaks, and then the stuff happened with Dan le Sac and we had two records. Okay, on a label called Sunday Best, okay, but Distraction Pieces was my first solo album properly, on my own record, properly releasing it.

31:23 Okay, with music videos and again doing everything myself. So okay, co-directing everything, doing a lot of the editing now on the music videos and everything. So, and were the beats done by Dan le Sac or not? No, the beats on the solo record, that’s where I kind of built my LA connection. So it was working with a lot of different producers, but one of them was Danny L, who was in Nine Inch Nails and loads of amazing stuff, and he managed to get Travis Barker to play drums on it, and all sorts of people.

31:55 And that’s kind of, it’s also how I met Eddie Bravo through Danny. So I’m now working on my next solo record, which I’ve only just started, but that’s again hopefully a Travis Barker has already laid down some drums for it, and Danny’s in there. So yeah, it’s exciting to work on that. Did you record that album in LA? Record again, it’s all over email, man.

32:14 I’ve really, I’ve used the technology. Just okay. So Travis, a drum track, and send it to you? Yeah, he sent it to Danny, and Danny made these beats, so the album was out and “Introdiction” was out and it had a million views, and because that was another one that the that one I made for £100, and okay, it was just me, unlocked in a metal container. Yeah, like, cut my beard off, I shave my hair, and it’s all, it had to be one take.

32:39 Yeah, I saw that, because of what happens in it, cuz cutting my beard off and stuff like that. How many times did you practice that before? Again, it’s tough, you can’t really practice like the clippers in your hair. It’s like, I don’t know how long it takes to shave chunks out my hair. It’s like, I’d imagined it all.

32:52 I knew the songs, and the other people involved, like all my friends, again, just a small crew, were far more nervous than me, for some reason. I was like, I know the words. I know the words. Whatever happens, I know the words, so I’ll be able to adapt. I’ve always been quite good at kind of, I think it’s, this is going to sound odd, but I think it’s from growing up with a a stutter.

33:13 Um, I’ve always been good at adapting things in my head, so when I, I was growing up with a stutter, and I’d, I’d be thinking a few words ahead in the sentence, and I know I was going to start on a word, so while I’m talking I’ll be thinking of a word to replace that word. So I think that’s always that’s set me out well for things like that. I was like, look, the basic thing is, I know the lyrics, so I’m going to deliver the song correctly, whatever happens in between, that’s for me to deal with, if the clippers don’t work, if the stuff is set fire to.

33:42 I mean, cuz we set a fire to this horse’s head. Yeah, like a hobby horse. Sorry, just to be clear, we set fire to a hobby horse, and that thing, like we covered it in petrol, cuz we’re like, it needs to go up. That thing went up, and we’re in a closed metal container. I noticed that, so the smoke starts to fill up, and all this.

34:00 I’m like, we need to get to the end of the take. I’m like, I’d be fine if everyone else left, but it’s like, I’m getting to the end of this take, cuz at that point I’ve already cut my beard off. I’ve already shaved chunks of my hair. It’s like, you’ve got like 60 seconds left, and this horse’s head is smoking, and uh, you’re, I’m thinking, wow, this is, he couldn’t have practiced this before, cuz it’s one take and it’s a shipping container, so it’s obviously closed in there.

34:23 Yeah. Um, okay, and so, and so yeah, cuz you could tell you’re kind of improving. You’re good at because even when you’re trying to light the envelope, first couple lights, you’re not panicking. You just keep, you like you said, you know the lyrics, so in a way the stutter kind of made you used to that, cuz you’re always having to think a couple steps ahead. Completely.

34:39 And I think that’s genuinely helped me over the years. It’s a weird thing of, it’s only since I’ve got to any level of public exposure that I’ve become more aware of my stutter. In that I have a lot of people who’ve got stutters hit me up asking how I deal with it, and things like that, cuz I think I’ve got so comfortable with it over the years. I think of it the same as an accent, right? You know, like you have an American accent, so that’s just how you talk.

35:05 I stutter sometimes. That’s just how I talk. That’s part of, of my, of my voice, of my, you know, so I just stop panicking about it, and yeah I think it’s benefited me in that way, that it has allowed me to. It’s made me more sharp and quick. You know, it’s great that I paused for a long time to think of the word sharp.

35:24 That’s kind of ironic, but yeah, it’s, I think it’s given me a sharpness because of that, naturally needing to adapt. It’s weird how it’s just about frame of mind, cuz so many people could think of a stutter, especially for a guy who’s a poet and a hip-hop guy did that, it would immediately hurt them. Again, it’s hilarious to think of the fact, again, if you look back, if I think back to when I was a kid, just everything I do now should be restricted from having a… from the radio presenting, to, you know, any kind of commentating on anything, or spoken word or rapping, any of that.

35:56 Everything I do for a living involves speaking, so growing up with a speech impediment seems ridiculous, but yeah, and so now, and so now it’s just a part of you, as your character. So it’s just an accent. It doesn’t hold you back in any way. No, I don’t think, this is your signature in a weird way. Yeah, yeah, in a way.

36:14 Um, I find it, I find it fascinating. I think it’s a fascinating thing. We don’t know how the brain works at all. I’ve, I’ve discussed this a few points. But there’s a, there’s a certain comedian’s name that when I, I say it, I stutter.

36:28 I can’t say his name about stuttering. I’ll say him now. It’s Dylan Moran. Okay, always a struggle like that. It’s like a neural path, so it’s this thing, but a guy taught me this thing of tapping out syllables, so if I use that technique I can say Dylan Moran, Dylan Moran, Dylan Moran, and it’s just cuz I’m tapping out.

36:51 Wow, so how crazy is the brain? How crazy is the brain that that can make an, that can make that difference? And is it your right hand, like, either hand? And then D Moran, Dill Moran. Yeah, whereas without it, doesn’t struggle.

37:06 That is fascinating. I find all of that fascinating with stutters and things like that, that we just don’t understand the brain, and it’s why I find things like, as, as, as we were saying before, and just all the kind of different like all the ayahuasca stuff, and all that, and stuff like that. How we, there’s so much we don’t know, and there’s stuff that, and we’re not going to know for a long time. Just, just things like that, that that can change your ability to say something.

37:34 And it’s, I mean, I’m fine with it, but if you think about it, a lot of people don’t think about a stutter. You kind of have to dismiss it, but as someone who’s lived a normal life, and again I’m not saying it’s the sh… their stability, but one of the main things that we talk about, and have been, has been fought over throughout history is freedom of speech, and being able to say anything you want, and with a stutter, you can’t there’s certain things you can’t say, right? And that’s a crazy, like, that kind of gets overlooked.

38:01 It’s a crazy thing to try and have a concept of. Is there’s certain things that I, yeah, like Dylan Moran? I’ll make it easier for everyone um, things that I don’t have an option of saying. And that’s, you know, it’s a crazy thought, but it’s something I’m used to. So it’s not, I’ve never allowed it to be a big deal in my life.

38:20 But yeah, it’s interesting that the brain can have that much kind of gray areas, or literally that we don’t understand it. It’s amazing. I, me, we don’t know about the brain. I don’t think we fully understand why we sleep, or why we need eight hours of sleep. It’s not like the body needs that much time.

38:34 I think it’s, we think it’s something to do with processing memories from the whole day. We don’t understand it. Psilocybin or ayahuasca are a great example. Like, they’re doing some studies at Imperial College right now, and they were surprised to see that, it actually, as opposed to increasing activity in the brain, because you see visuals and think about stuff, it seems that it actually decreases, like the central control center to where the brain is able to do some things independently.

38:56 So I mean, like, we still don’t have any idea what’s going on. It’s, F, fting, so when you stutter, do you go ahead to the tap, or you just, like, look, this is me? I don’t, I’d really I only ever use that tap when discussing it, as a party trick, or cuz I find it interesting, but in general I don’t stutter that much, and I don’t have to bring up that particular comedian that often, so it’s not too much of an issue. But um, James Earl Jones apparently had a quite a stutter.

39:23 A lot of famous actors, a lot of them performed their way out of it. Watson was famous for it, and it was an interesting thing to hear that, like when I was younger and I had some speech therapy, which I didn’t, I really think helped that much, particularly, but um, one of the things that they were saying, it was interesting, that cuz he was in a series called Blackadder, and again I’m not a massive fan of that concern, but in that he had a really pronounced way of saying Baldrick. It really pushed the B, and it was his stutter.

39:51 It’s become this known thing of Baldrick, and it’s like, no, it’s because he struggled with B’s that he had to go and really push it out, and again you wouldn’t have known, no one notices, that James Earl Jones, who is basically Darth Vader’s voice. Yeah, I mean, he’s the voice. He’s this is CNN, is him, and he, yeah, he had a stutter. So it’s interesting how you said about holding the B. I never thought about that.

40:13 So, all right, so let’s talk about Dan le Sac really quick, because it’s sometimes hard to separate you guys, even when you Wikipedia Scroobius, you get Scroobius with Dan. It’s like you guys are kind of connected umbilically. But we have seen both of you in the room at the same time, so you’re not the same person. I bet in the beginning you might have been accused of that. Still now, I’ll walk down the street, I mean, not that I’m super famous, but more kind of in London, East London, because I got a club night here.

40:40 I’ll get recognized more, and at least half the time people go, Dan le Sac, and I’ll be like, I don’t know what to do here, cuz I can legitimately kind of rudely ignore this person, cuz that’s not my name. So you know I’m aware that they’re calling to me. So it’s kind of, yeah, it’s an interesting one. I think a lot of the confusion stemmed from the fact that we are called Dan le Sac versus Scroobius Pip, and it’s kind of unusual, cuz he’s the producer.

41:04 He makes all the beats, he makes all the music, whereas I do all the vocals. So because of that, if anything shortened anywhere, I guess it will be saying Dan le Sac, and you’ll automatically assume that the guy in the video with the beard talking is Dan le Sac, because he first mentioned in that partnership. Okay, but again it’s just, again, it was all unplanned. We made our Dan le Sac versus Scroobius Pip, a MySpace page, cuz we’ve done some songs together, and then, yeah, Thou Shalt Not Always Kill happened, and it was a name that we were stuck with.

41:33 And I’m again, I’m pleased, because we do, we are solo artists in our own right. We both, we’ve just done our third and probably final record together, and we’re going off to do solo stuff again, and I think that, yeah, that works, because we’ve always been Dan le Sac versus Scroobius Pip. It’s, you know, we’ve always had our own, been our own entities, I guess. Yeah, I saw an interview with the two of you, and it, and you seemed like it was a great way of working together, cuz you can kind of join up, and get a couple tracks done, or an album done, go tour, and then go do your own thing, and you don’t seem to develop tension that can with bandmates that have to stick together and have to get everyone back together.

42:12 It’s not that it’s not as big a thing, cuz again, we’ve announced that, cuz we always plan to do three albums, and this third album has been our biggest sales-wise, our biggest tours, and it’s kind of, well, this for us is a great way to go out. It’s nice to go out on a high in that way, but we’ve kind of said to people that’s the last record, and, oh, you’re splitting up, and it’s like, it’s not that dramatic. We’re not there. There wasn’t a big are we going to split up?

42:38 It’s like, I’m going to do some solo stuff now, and I’ve not got any plans to do. You know, it’s not as… whereas with a band it has to split up, or it has to be together. I think that was the kind of advantage of being a duo, as such, as we can kind of just leave it, and it doesn’t feel like this big thing. It sounds like Chael Sonnen’s retirement to me, as, as in, I don’t believe you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

42:59 But that’s the beauty of, when, when you’re an MMA fighter, is that you can retire whenever you want and come back whenever you want. And like Randy Couture did it like two, two times. Tito Ortiz has done it six. Jesus. Um, so but this is your third album with, with Dan le Sac, and potentially last album.

43:16 And okay, so now that’s done, and now you’re going to go back and work on your own piece next. Okay, and you re-released, um, uh, No Commercial Breaks later, uh, and what was that all about? Why release it? Well, it was, was basically my original release of No Commercial Breaks. I think I only made a thousand.

43:35 I think it was. And is it true you put your own, uh, a fake serial number on it and barcode? Yeah, it was all made up stuff. I mean, that’s why Distraction Pieces, I see as my first release on my label properly, cuz it had a barcode and catalog number that was a registered one on No Commercial Breaks. I didn’t know what I was doing.

43:53 I’d seen you need to have a number on it. I worked in records. I put a number on it. I didn’t know how to register it and stuff like that. So, but because I only made a thousand of them, I mean, I think the most a one sold for on eBay was about £250, and it’s like, caral CD and all this.

44:11 So was one of them where I wanted to give it a proper release, and I’d done a spoken word thing, so I thought I’ll make it a 2 CD thing, and I did it as like this amazing case that’s a pop-up book, so you kind of open it up and the CDs pop out. And yeah, it was, I wanted to give it a proper release so that people wouldn’t have to pay insane amounts on eBay for it, but I wanted it to, you mean, I wanted to have a reason. I wanted to make it a specialist thing, so it’s this nice.

44:41 Yeah, okay. And uh, so talk to me about spoken word. I mean, we had Sully Breaks on the show a couple times. He’s co-hosted with me a few times, and you know he does spoken word. You announce him as a spoken word artist, like you said.

44:53 It’s probably just one notch above poet when it comes to people understanding what that is. But then you lay a beat over it and you say hip-hop and everyone knows what that is. So how do you tell people what you do, and what do you do? Do you still do it? It’s the beauty of the way the world is now, is I don’t need to tell people what I do.

45:11 I can show them on a phone or on a laptop, and things like that, cuz I think, I think all of these terms, every, by their very nature, every term is personal. So I could be a hip-hop fan and you could be a hip-hop fan, and we could have 100 CDs in our collection each, and we could have none of the same CDs, cuz it’s such a broad thing. And I struggled in the early days of referring to myself as hip-hop, just cuz in the area I lived and grew up in, and a lot of the circles I mix in, and I started off growing up being more into punk and hardcore and stuff like that, and that Thou Shalt Not Always Kill, that’s you’re talking, sh, always kill, sorry, that sh always kill.

45:51 You’re talking about Pixies and all these records that aren’t hip-hop. Yeah. That’s what’s kind of interesting. Exactly. And yeah, it’s kind of, so it was that weird thing of I struggled to call myself hip-hop, just because I knew a lot of people I’m into would associate hip-hop with 50 Cent or whoever, who I don’t think I’m, I’m like in any way, but I mean I’m into Sage Francis, and you know even like De La Soul, Caris Onean, Public Enemy, things like that.

46:19 But if your relationship to hip-hop is one thing, then it’s still a pointless label to say I’m hip-hop. Oh, I don’t like hip-hop. Oh no, it’s like, I don’t like 50 Cent. It’s like, well, neither do I, right? For a man, I’m hip-hop, you know, for a man that uses language as a living, which is what you do.

46:35 This is where language limits us as human beings. And is, yeah, I mean, again, yeah, I, I love that. I love it. Always annoys me when people are overprecious with language as well. I love language, but I love that it develops and grows, and becomes redundant in places and becomes more important in other places.

46:53 I mean, as you mentioned in Introdiction, I refer to Lenny Bruce. I’m a massive standup nerd, and Lenny Bruce was, I think, one of the ones that blew my mind with his illustration of how stupid it is that we give so much power to certain words and to language and things like that. That’s completely, completely. And in Lenny’s case he had an amazing piece, um, on all sorts of different racial profanities, and showing that they’re only horrible because, or they’re only powerful, because we allow them to be.

47:26 You know, it’s so stupid. I always remember seeing him kind of explain that a seven-year-old kid hasn’t got the mental power to insult another seven-year-old kid in a way that will make them question their history and heritage, and all that, but give them certain different racial slurs and profanities, and they can, right? And then watch the parents’ reaction. They can say that one word and make that person feel like a second-class citizen. I, like, feel useless or empty or worthless, why have we invented that?

48:03 Why have we given that word that power? Why that, didn’t exist? That’s not something that could have been done. We’ve chosen, like, as much as you can hate any word, any, any horrible slur, we invented that. If we hate it so much, then take the power away from it.

48:21 Make it meaningless. Make it not that thing. It’s all, I mean, it’s all, it’s all, it’s all, it’s all human made. Do you debate this often with other artists, or yeah? I’ve discussed it a plenty in the past.

48:33 I find it fascinating. I’ve discussed it with other artists, and I’ve discussed it with my mom. You know, I’ve discussed it with anyone, because it’s kind of, my mom isn’t a fan of swearing, right? Fair enough. She thinks it’s not great, but she respects my angle on it.

48:47 On, um, c*** is just a word. I’m sorry if we’re not, could be bleeped out, but you know it’s just a word. It’s just, you know, it’s these, the only reason, like, you’re choosing to be offended by that. It’s completely your choice. It’s a noise that we make with our mouths.

49:03 That’s all it is, and if you choose to be offended by a noise, it’s crazy, right? And then like in your Introdiction, you’re like, you say [expletive], and then you say [expletive], you’re like, well, you know, this word might make you feel this way, and then this word might really upset you, and it’s yeah, it’s just crazy. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s crazy, the power we give to these things. And you know, I like swearing as well. There’s that part of it.

49:25 I enjoy it. I think a lot of profanities are very enjoyable to use and say, and it can, particularly when writing it, can be great full stops or highlights or points, right? So you’re saying that the prevalence of online video makes it, you don’t have to define yourself by a specific limiting word, poet, on this, because what do you do? Here’s what I do. And your website very specifically doesn’t describe what you do.

49:51 There’s actually not a very good description of what you do out there. It’s just like, and I got a feeling that that’s, that’s design. Yeah, yeah, pretty much, cuz I think again it’s becoming, it’s again, it’s adapting with the times. It’s becoming redundant. Why spend 10 minutes reading an article breaking down what I am, or what I do, when you can watch two or three of my videos in that time, showing exactly what I do, and make your own mind up, why read this and go, this sounds like, I like this, and then watch, and don’t, you could just skip that and watch it and go, I don’t like this.

50:23 Does a word, almost in a weird way, give someone else control over you, or give someone else power over you when they, I hate to use the word label, but I’m going to use it, when they label you as this, and then they can be like, does that reduce your power? Yeah, I mean, I, I I understand it. I understand it, cuz people need to, particularly, I mean, even on a show, if you have, say, next week on the show we’ve got, yeah, you know, you can’t say next week on the show we’ve got, here’s a video.

50:49 Do you know what I mean? You need to. It’s, it’s a necessary thing, but it’s just something that I try and keep away from as much as possible, because, yeah, I think any label you can give, there’s good and bad in all of it. It’s like, um, like with music or with comedy or anything like that. I’m into stuff that I enjoy, right?

51:08 Right, it’s as simple as that. There’s not, there’s not a set thing. Like, I’m, I’m, I’ve got a film night I do at Cinemar in London as well. People often ask what kind of cinema I’m into. It’s like, again, stuff that I enjoy, it’s killer.

51:22 I know a lot of fellow film geeks who you’ll hear say, I, a black and white films, I love, subtitle films. It’s like, are you serious? So you’re saying if I put, um, if I put Drive My Car into black and white and gave it subtitles, it would become your kind of film? No, it’s not. It’s like, that’s, that’s a ridiculously arrogant and odd thing to say, or pretentious thing to say, as I like it in this form.

51:46 It’s like I get enjoyment from a blockbuster as much as I will from, you know, a, a French art house thing. It’s kind of yeah, okay, I like what’s good. So if you go to Scroobius’ movie night, it is movies Scroobius likes, that’s what it is. Exactly what it is. It is, or, or maybe you shouldn’t even say that.

52:06 It’s movies Scroobius is playing for you that night. Exactly. Was it David Lynch famously said, because they always wanted a Q&A with David Lynch after his movies, and they’d be like, okay, but what did it mean when this happened? This happened. What did it mean when Blue Velvet, and David Lynch said, look, the movie is the movie.

52:22 You watch it, and then that’s it. It’s not the movie and my Q&A. It’s not my movie. In the interview he’s like, it’s the movie, and that’s it. So I find all that fascinating.

52:32 I find it really interesting, times that, because I mean, again, we’re turning this into all talking about social media, but because of the way the internet is, I find it fascinating. I think it’s good and it’s bad, cuz previously with music, with films, with anything like that, you’d watch them or hear them and you’d interpret them in your own way, and that’s all you’d be able to do, whereas now it’s so much easier to ask the meaning behind this lyric. It’s it’s why, on lyrics, I again, as much as possible within the realms of being polite, because I’m a big fan of manners, I think, hug within the realms of being polite.

53:08 I try to not explain my lyrics too much, cuz they do mean something to me, but if they mean something different to you, then that’s fine. I think if you choose to sell your art, you have to hand over a lot of the meaning to who the listener is. It’s what they needed to mean at that point. It annoys me a bit when artists get really adamant over, no, it’s not that, it’s this, you’re understanding that wrong, or whatever. It’s, well, you’ve sold that to that person, so it’s their right to interpret it in this way if they’re seeing it as motivating them in their particular situation, but you actually writing about a different situation, it’s not your… it’s not your business anymore.

53:51 It means what it means to them now, and that’s kind of, yeah, I think that’s a key part in anything, where you’re comfortable, and again a lot of people hate admitting that what you do for a living is sell your art. Again, it’s a tough thing to get your head round. It’s like, no, I’m a musician. It’s like, you’re a musician who pays his bills through being a musician. You’re selling your art.

54:10 You shouldn’t be ashamed of that. Like, you know, I’ve not got a problem with that. It is what it is. Are you comfortable with that? Yeah, I’m fine with that.

54:16 It’s completely, it is what it is. If I wanted to, I could be an artist and not charge for anything and have a job doing something else, and then, you know, that would be one thing, but I’ve made a conscious decision that I want to make a living from this, a career from this. I do. I do, and again I’m kind of, I feel, rather than ashamed of that, I feel lucky to get to do that. I make a living from doing stuff that’s enjoyable.

54:40 It’s hard work, but it’s enjoyable stuff. So yeah, I’m fine with that, I’m fine with the fact I sell my art. Um, and again, particularly spoken word artists hate that, they hate that, that, that, that their poetry is, if they’re making a career from it, that they’re selling it, you know, although I don’t think of that when I’m writing. At some point in the process that becomes there. So I’d never change anything I write in the name of further commercialising anything I do, or anything like that, but once it’s there and it’s done, you know, that’s what you’re doing.

55:16 You’re going on the radio, you’re trying to get airplay for sales. You’re not trying to get airplay to, right, spread your message. I guess you are in a wave. You’ve got some content in there, but it’s still, it’s still, still, it’s still about, right, making a career. So man up and sell it, or let’s just be honest, that we actually trying to, man up and sell it, or don’t.

55:34 You know, it’s fine not to, but it’s ridiculous to try and walk both lines, try and be this, this righteous kind of, kind of hippie, but then going, oh, but my DVD is £10. It’s like, all right, that doesn’t fit with your views on the economy and the way we should be overthrowing the system, or the current systems of, of, of of, of retail power, and all this kind of thing, right? Like, yeah, I think we, spoken word artists, since they decided to not play the music game, maybe in their mind they’re like, I’m not like those guys that do those things, so maybe those guys are the harder sell.

56:08 And again that’s completely fine, though, and you can do that, but if you live your life in that way, I said, I’ve chosen to make this my career rather than just my art, as it were. You know, I’ve chosen that this is what I do for a living, and again there’s going to be thousands of, millions of spoken word artists who, it’s completely that they make, they, they write what they write, and that’s it. They’re putting it out there and it’s this, this piece of art, but you know, if you’re making a penny from it, you’re selling your art, you’ve got to deal with that.

56:40 Well said. I’ve heard that if people would ever dare and I don’t know this, to, like, download one of your songs illegally on a torrent, I’ve heard that they will actually get a track of you rapping about how they’ve just stolen your stuff. Is that true? It’s one of the things I did, on again, on Distraction Pieces. It was the first time I was doing all on my own label, so um, I, because again I’m not even that familiar with a torrent and whatnot, but I decided to do a thing, so I got all the beats so as the right length, and then I just sat there and talked, and it’s weird, cuz it kind of turned into a director’s commentary on a DVD, cuz like I talked about, oh, the drums on this were by this guy, and oh, and this guy did this, but it was.

57:23 It was kind of to get that message across, cuz again people are going to steal stuff, that’s a fact, and it can annoy me a bit, but I don’t want to be a preachy dude about it, but I don’t, the thing that does annoy me is that people haven’t got any shame in it anymore, that people will tweet you saying, oh no, you know, I torrented that. It’s like, don’t come and talk to me about that. It’s cool, I understand you do that, right, but don’t come and talk to me about it, cuz particularly as that was the first thing on my own label I was doing, like me and the artists involved in the tracks, that was the only people that you were stealing with.

58:01 There wasn’t some big evil label or publisher or whoever that you’re stealing from. You’re stealing directly from the people that you’re getting this enjoyment from, so do that if you want to, but know that that’s the case. Do you know what I mean? Again, and that was the whole point, and what I say on the kind of, on the commentary as such, is saying, you’ve, you’ve stolen in this, and that’s, that is what it is, but know what it is, and be, again, be comfortable with that in yourself.

58:25 You can’t. I’m not going to allow you to kid yourself that you’re just ripping off the man or the machine. You’re you’re stealing from me directly, so if that’s what you choose to do, then cool, but know, know what it is, and I’ve got a weird thing with that. I get people, again, we, or before we started, we were talking about mixed martial arts a bit, and I’m a big fan of MMA and Brazilian jiu-jitsu and everything in the area, and I get people, because I tweet about it a lot.

58:53 I’ve had the UFC hit me up in the past for some of the UK stuff, to tweet some promo stuff and things like that, cuz they know I’m genuinely into it. So, but I get people tweet me fairly regularly saying, oh, have you got a, you know, a stream? I’m like, well, no, cuz on BT Sport over here, for example, it’s something like £5 a month. I get more than £15 a month’s enjoyment out of all the UFC I watched. You know, I mean, there’s, there’s, particularly now, with like four or five every month.

59:26 It’s like, it’s worth to me, it’s worth what I pay for it. If I get, say, the, the, the cost of the, of, of the event is the same as a gig ticket, I’ll have as much fun watching an event as I will go to a concert. So it’s, it’s justified to me. I feel that’s, you know, I, and I think you get more value. I think with the music thing, I’m going off on all sorts of tangents now, but with the music thing, I think I, I prefer to buy music, because, with my investment, it, it gives the music more weight, and I’ll explain that.

1:00:04 Like when I was a kid, I could probably, I wasn’t, I didn’t have money, I could probably fold an album a month, but that meant that I’d listen to that album over and over again, and you know it was an investment there. Whereas now, if you’ve downloaded 10 albums at the beginning of the week, you’re probably not even going to get around to listen to a few of them, whereas if you’ve paid for one, you’ll be listening to that, cuz you paid for it, and you listen to beginning to end. I think yeah, there’s a thing there of adding, of adding value by actually spending.

1:00:31 People value what they pay for, and uh, I think with some of these streaming services like Spotify, I find that all the time. Like, I’ll listen, listen, listen, and then I’ll hear something I really like, and I’m like, who are these guys? And I’m like, but they’re almost expendable, because they come on for free, and I didn’t have to search them out. And then, once, cuz once you buy, you make literally an investment, don’t you? Completely, a personal investment.

1:00:53 Again, it’s not me trying to be artist of saying, by my stuff has said, if you steal it you steal it, as long as you’re not coming to my face and going on about it, then we’re cool. But um, yeah, just on a personal level, yeah, I feel I get my money’s worth, and I want to invest in it. You’ve got to stay for something that’s important, to have those principles. Let’s talk about your videos, because you basically have said, I mean, if everything boils down to everything, it is the videos and the music that tell people who you are.

1:01:23 I mean, it’s your main way of communicating. It really is. I mean, as just a touching on being a film nerd, I think I’m often thinking of the videos as I’m writing the lyrics. So all of the videos we’ve done, I’ve either directed or had a hand in, in some way, and all the ones on my solo record and all the recent ones, all on all the recent ones with me and Dan le Sac, I’ve directed them all with my mate Tom. Um, and yeah, I think it’s a key side of it, and I think it’s the side that a lot of artists forget about.

1:01:55 I think if you’re not a pop artist and you’re making a video that just is going to have naked women in, or whatever, which again I’m not got a big problem with that, if people, let’s not get into a feminist thing, but if these people are all choosing to be in this situation and being paid, and they’re adults, then you do what you do. But I find it as exciting an art form, so I’ll I’ll say the videos are as much of a, um, a work of passion on my part as the songs are a lot of the time, so I put as much time and effort into making a beautiful video as I will into really crafting in my lyrics and having the message there, and making it all work, rather than, oh, we need a video for this, let’s shoot something. Is that rare for a musician, because musicians by definition are all about the audio and not about the visual?

1:02:42 I mean, again it really varies. It depends what musician you’re looking at, and again it’s not, it shouldn’t be a m, either way. All of these things, I don’t, I never think that just because I talk about some political things in my lyrics or some, some social things, I don’t think all music should have that. I think music would be boring if all of it had that. It’s kind of, I think there’s room for everything, and equally there’s a lot of artists I’m into who are into that side of it and direct and make these amazing, it all just comes together beautifully, but equally if you’re not into that, I’m fine.

1:03:16 Like, it’s, it’s not like you’re not, you’re only doing half the job. You know you should, anything that you’re passionate about, naturally go into it, rather than going, well, I’ve heard now that you meant to direct your own videos as well, and have this, it’s like, well, it’s what works, I guess. So you had some crazy videos. I was, uh, I was only, I watched like five or six of them the last few days and get ready. And it was everything from, yeah, you in a shipping container, you know, lighting horses’ heads on fire.

1:03:43 Okay, they might have been hobby horses, but uh, to, um, you know, there was one that you released for a Christmas album, where, you know, it’s you in this room, kind of reliving it. It’s really dark, and you’re reliving some things where the room was kind of trashed when you got there. Yeah, that was our last single. It was released at Christmas, um, just cuz we thought it’d be fun to release a really dark, serious, intense song when everything else is hey, Christmas time.

1:04:08 Um, but yeah, I mean that was my favorite one that we’ve done, cuz I had to, um, I had to learn the second verse in reverse. Oh, crap, cuz, cuz what happens is, yeah, you said the, for the first, first, the, the room is all smashed up, and I’m kind of going through, and I’ve got, I’m gradually taking off a suit, yeah, and then when the second verse starts, it all starts to fly back on me, and the room starts to un- smash, because, yeah, I, I’d learned that, and you learned it in reverse. Yeah, yeah, it was, it was intense.

1:04:40 Um, I, um, so you have to play it back and learn it that way. Oh, the way I did it was, I got that act to send me the acapella reversed, and then I wrote it phonetically. Okay, so that it’s like, yeah, Wu w, and things like that kind of, and I, I did it that way, and again it had mixed results. I I learned all that. We did a, a making of, which is online somewhere, and the first bit we did, we watched it, and it worked, and I was buzzing because of having to learn all that, and I ordered up on my Alpha Brain to, you know, to just, to be really, I need to be proper on this.

1:05:22 Um, and yeah, but some bit didn’t work, cuz some things backwards, when it’s like, makes a or whatever noise, if you replicate that with your lips, it’s not going to be the same as, right, that reverse. So we did another way of doing it as well, was we, so we did a, a load of takes of me a… lip-syncing backwards, and then we watched over and looked at what didn’t work, and then we got me to say them lines forward, then we reversed it, turned the sound down, and tried to write what it looks like I’m saying. Okay, so it looks like I’m saying, like, a cow hat moon dog, you know, and then so we rewrote that, so then I’m saying that in time with the backwards.

1:06:05 Okay, was intense. It wasn’t easy, but again it’s the beauty of being limited by budgets. Again, I think that’s a great thing. I think your creativity has pushed hugely. If we had big budgets, we could say let’s just shoot on this air strip and have this going on, and that going on.

1:06:21 Oh, when you’re going, right, we’ve got, I think we had a, a thousand pounds for that, but I think it looks like a far more expensive video than that, coming. So yeah, it’s finding interesting and creative ways to make it. So you have a couple DSLRs, and a set for a night, or someone’s apartment and some lighting, and then you maybe pay some editors or something. I mean, that was, I mean, again we edited it ourselves. Tom has shot it.

1:06:46 We, the set, might have, mine worked in a theatre, and they had a kind of a loading bay out the back, where allowed us to kind of take, pick some of their old sets from out the back and build this and make it look how it looks. So again, I love the fact that I get to do things like this with my mates. Right? This is all people I went to college with, or have known for years. It’s not, it’s, it’s thinking right, rather than thinking, right, what do we need to get?

1:07:17 It’s thinking who do I know that’s got a job that we can kind of get a favour from, and kind of go, all right, can you help us on this and build this with us? And yeah, that’s how, how great indie films were made, like that’s as Robert Rodriguez, who made El Mariachi. Um, he was always saying, he’s like, if you want to make a movie, make a list of what you have. He’s like, your family owns a liquor store? Well, use the liquor store.

1:07:36 He’s like, if you have a car, use the car. There’s a film, one of my favorite films, it’s this film called The Fall. Um, and the first time I watched it, I’d heard it was kind of an independent, um, I think it’s a Spanish film, and I stand at the, at the vastness of the landscapes, and some of the shots that I did, some research, and the guy who wrote and directed it, his main job was shooting adverts. Okay, so when he’d get an advert in Dubai, he’d have a week, he’d get it shot and wrapped in two days, and then he’d just pay to fly his actors over, and he’d have all this equipment, these amazing cameras, these amazing locations, and that’s how he did that over several years, of using, again, is seeing what you’ve got.

1:08:25 Right? What jobs have I got in and where is it going to take me? And what kind of cameras is it? Is it paying for me to have cool let’s, let’s work F around, and you wouldn’t even know your own assets. Like, you could have someone walking around this city being like, I don’t have anything, and then like some kid in Argentina is like, you’re in London, wake the f*** up.

1:08:42 Just look at what your mates do, and what any, on, yeah, right, right. Yeah, we probably have a lot more access. Um, what’s, uh, uh, tell me about the beard. Uh, have you ever thought of getting rid of it? How did it start?

1:08:52 It’s a big part of your look. It’s really weird, isn’t it, cuz it’s become a, like, beards have become a huge thing in London now, now, last 4 years, five years. I’m, I’m, I’m not into beards, which sounds odd cuz I’ve got a beard, like, but I’m not like a fanatical, I, people hit me up talking about their beards all the time. I was like, it’s just a thing that’s on my face, man, it’s not this big deal, and honestly, it’s but again I’ve, I’ve, as you said though, I have used it.

1:09:14 I’ve used it as, again, it’s using your tools. It stood out, and so I’ve used that, and the reason in Introdiction I cut my beard off was, till that point, everything I’ve done, been with Dan le Sac, or done, that people are really know of, and I thought, right, how can I make sure that all the Dan le Sac versus Scroobius Pip fans at least look at my first solo song, whether they like it or not. Again, I’m fine with that, as long as they actually look.

1:09:42 And I thought, cut my beard off again, it didn’t go completely, but if, if, if I then tweet saying, oh, I’ve got a new video in which I cut my beard off, then people, [expletive], you know, they want to have a look at that. So it’s that that thing of getting people unbolded. But initially it comes back to our first story, where I, I, I was quitting my job at HMV, and I was going to spend a month or two living in a van. I thought it’s going to be easier to have a beard than having to shave every day.

1:10:08 So in the weeks, in the month or so building up to going off in a van, I started to grow a beard. So I’d already started it and was past the uncomfortable, stubbly, rashy stages. Yeah. So, and that was it. It was genuinely, this is going to sound such a lie, but it was a functional option at the time.

1:10:28 It was that thing of, I was going to be living in a van. It’s hard enough to get clean every day when you’ve, you know, you just go to service stations and whatever, and using sinks or showers, to have to go in there with a full shaving kit, or whatever. Right, forget it. Yeah, that’s a great story. And you said when you used to head back to Essex on the late night trains people would give you a lot of s***, and uh, you remember, you said, had some interview where someone, uh, would, that you said sometimes you’d be called Osama, and things like that.

1:10:56 You said one time someone called you Saddam Hussein, but you didn’t try to correct him and tell him that Saddam Hussein had a mustache. Yeah, yeah, it was, it was the one time I really, I wanted to just say, no, hang on, you’ve got that wrong there. I think you mean Bin Laden. Um, if you’re going to call me a terrorist, then get it right. But no, again, yeah, it’s one of the things I like.

1:11:16 It’s why I still live in Essex, I think, cuz you can’t help but stay grounded. Right, around there. You know, it’s, you know, not that I’m some superstar, but get to travel the world doing what I love, so it’s pretty cool. Um, I always remember after I did a gig, um, with some, it was a collective of people, and it was at Hammersmith Apollo, I think it was, which is about 3,400 cap, and I’d opened and closed it, so it was a bit, we doing individual bits, either way, and then I chose to get the train home, and I’m sitting there thinking, right, I’ve just done this gig with some comedians I idolized, some musicians, iiz, and then on the train home I was getting abuse and being called a terrorist, had kids trying to, some, some girls from from til, we trying to steal my shoes, and it’s like that stops any ego building, cuz you know it just keeps you, the ultimate grounding experience.

1:12:12 Again, it’s why I love it there. I love it, cuz no one, again, it’s changed as, as time’s gone on, but generally people don’t know who I am in that sense. I’ll get a few every now and then, but yeah, so it’s just, it keeps you, it keeps, for the Eddie Bravo fans listening to us in LA, what is the typical person from Essex? Are we going to go with the fake orange tan? Are we going to go with, what are we going to go with?

1:12:36 It’s really tough, cuz it probably is. It probably is. Um, yeah, a bit of a fake tan, a bit of, or I mean, I, I live in a rough part of Essex, so again it’s, it’s tough having a look like this, cuz again it’s, it’s an area that’s got a lot of racism, of sexism, a lot of cocaine, a lot of kind of just violence, and not nice people, but I’m painting it well, aren’t I? Come to A6. It’s lovely, but no, it’s again, I think it’s in, it’s weird that I choose to stay surrounded by that, that kind of s***, but I think it’s, I don’t know, keeps you in touch with the real world in a way.

1:13:15 It’s easy, it would be easy to live, I spend a fair, a bit of time in LA, and the parts of LA I spend time in, everyone’s so cool, man, everyone’s so lovely and open and all that. It’s like you fit right in. Yeah, but that’s, but that’s not what the world in general is like. So I think it’s important to dip in and out of these things. And yeah, yeah, again, you could, you could fit right in in Shortage, probably too well.

1:13:39 In yeah, your beard precedes this movement by six years. Um, so but yeah, at the same time I guess you wouldn’t be really, you wouldn’t be questioning, be too easy. It’s one of the things again. I think it’s really important to, I don’t know, um, I think a mistake that a lot of people, musicians or artists in general, make is you get a bit of success and then you surround yourself, in a way, with that success. I think it can, you move to LA, you sign a label, you start flying first class.

1:14:14 Yeah, exactly, and I think things like, I mean, only, only I realized recently, but over the years I’ve always had something that I’m, I’m the new, being so when the music was going good is when I started doing radio, and I was the new kid. I had no experience in it as a DJ. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and just all, all different things, like I started my club night, and all stuff that I was new to, so that if I’m excelling somewhere, I’m learning somewhere else, and still having someone above me, and like, I’ve just started up again on, on, on BJJ, and I think things like that are key, cuz it doesn’t allow you to be, yeah, man, I’m the, I’m the boy, I’m smashing it on the music thing, I’m doing this, there’s always something where you’re going, right, this guy is far better than me at this.

1:15:00 I’m still needing to learn, and I think that’s a key thing for keeping you grounded. I think that genuinely is important in life, that you always have something that you’re surrounded by people that are better than you at. And I know that sounds odd, but yeah, I think that’s key. Yeah, the jiu-jitsu mat is a great way to get humbled on a regular basis. Um, there’s a term that jiu-jitsu guys always use, and it is that, uh, everyone’s a white belt at something, and it’s another thing, just a good to realise, just because that’s great.

1:15:29 Yeah, I completely agree, and I think that’s just, I think it’s key, if not, you need to find something that you are a white belt at, because you know the last thing you want to be is walking around being the black belt of everything, because you’re not pushing yourself, you’re not learning, you’re not uncomfortable. Exactly. It just means that you, you, you found something you’re good at, and gone, I’ll stick with this now, cuz I get praised, I get validation.

1:15:49 It’s like, cool, that’s enjoyable, but yeah, not a lot of growth. Me, about MMA, your training, you rolled, your jiu-jitsu, how long you’ve been rolling, do you do standup? Um, again, all on the actual, on the me, side, it’s amateurish as hell. Um, yeah, yeah, but so for a few years, um, me, my brother, and another mate of mine, um, I got some mats in our garage, and just would roll, and would, my brother had done a crab mcgar for a few years, so you know I had a heavy bag, had some pads, some, some gloves, and some mats, and we’d roll and kind of learn off tutorials and things like that, and then I stopped for a long while, and, and and last time I was in LA, I was, I was chatting with Eddie Bravo, and he was like, I come down to 10th Planet.

1:16:35 I was like, have you got a, like, beginner’s class? Cuz I, I was literally, I’d never got to any. I’d learned a lot of submissions, essentially, right? Um, and he was like, just come down, and um, this is a story I’ve not told Eddie properly before either. So I came down in the excitement of getting to go to 10th Planet.

1:16:54 I planned it and roll with Eddie. I’d forgotten that the reason I, I’d stopped working out for the last two weeks was cuz two weeks ago I’d bust my ribs, so they were healing, but you know I, and, and, and had thought about it, and I didn’t tell Eddie about this afterwards, cuz my busted ribs isn’t the reason everyone in the class kicked my ass. The reason everyone in the class kicked my ass is cuz they’re amazing Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners, and I’m an amateur, hadn’t rolled in years.

1:17:23 Um, but the first time, time we were, yeah, started to roll, and I had someone just on top of me, and we had even started, so we just, that’s how, thing, we were starting from side control to do a particular drill. Eddie’s big on drills. As soon as we start the drill I was like, oh, f***, cuz my, my ribs. I was like, I’ve forgotten completely, um, so I got, I got through the thing and again I didn’t mention it to AR, cuz like I don’t want it to sound like a tapper’s excuse, um, you know, you know, if I don’t tell you before, then it doesn’t exist.

1:17:58 So it’s one of them, cuz yeah, that wasn’t the reason everyone was better to me, obviously, but it was the drive home. I that that night I’ve never driven drunk or high or on anything. That’s the most dangerous I’ve been as a driver, cuz even though the pain in there was bad, I had adrenaline, okay? As soon as I got in the car, adrenaline, war, and I was, I was hazy I was hazy, cuz it was literally, I was, I just need to get back to where I’m staying and get some painkillers.

1:18:27 And yeah, so it was painful. Yeah, rib, I mean, painful ribs is like the worst. Bust my ribs a load of times, because in my live show, again, I grew up more on punk and hardcore, so in my live shows I’ll often end up stage diving or crowd surfing or just different things. That’s so, I’ve bust my ribs. I’ve got kind of all, all wonky and messed up ribs because of that.

1:18:45 So do you go pretty crazy for your live performances? Yeah, I tend to, and again I think it’s key. I think you should get what you paid for. I mean, and I really, yeah, on the last tour, um, Dan le Sac was, it was kind of mocking me afterwards, cuz I always go a bit nuts, but I kind of, you know, I build up to it. But cuz it was a notam show, and Dan Hardy was along.

1:19:13 I went out at 100% already, cuz I was all buzzing, cuz he’s, you know, he’s a great fighter. I’m a fan, he’s a mate, but still, it’s exciting. He hadn’t seen us live before. Okay, we share a lot of love for a lot of different punk bands and stuff like that. So from the start I went out 100%, and going absolutely, and, and Dan just knew that as soon as I came off I’d be exhausted, but again, it’s great for cardio.

1:19:34 It’s great for keeping you in shape if you’re on the road and doing a 90 minute show each night, if you can push yourself, and that’s jumping around, moving on stage into the crowd, moving around into the crowd, and just generally a lot of movement and energy when you’re delivering words as well. It’s a great workout, cuz that’s really, it’s working your lungs at different times, speeds. And yeah, how important is the live show and touring from a revenue standpoint, or just you as an artist performing, or touching with fans, from both?

1:20:05 It’s absolutely key. Um, again, it’s a thing we jumped on really early, and we had this, a YouTube hit in that kill, which a lot of people have YouTube hits, and then they just sit back. Exactly, as we’re saying there, sit back and go I’ve made it. Are we, we were like, wow, we weren’t expecting that to happen. So now we’re going to gig and tour constantly, and we, you know, we’ve done hundreds, hundreds of shows.

1:20:26 A number one to get good, but number two to get your name out there, and to get a reputation as a good live act. Um, and that carries, that carries the reputation, and then building the fan base, that’s what gives you a career. Okay, that’s the reason I’ve been doing this for seven, coming on eight years now, as my main source of income, and because, yeah, it was, it was smashed out there and we’ve, again, it’s weird, cuz I think it all, I think if you do it right it can all overlap it doesn’t have to be that Alan is where you make your money.

1:21:02 So it’s purely a financial thing it’s a balance of the two. I’ve, for years, I’ve always run my own merch booth, and, I, someone, I won the show saying afterwards, ah, you do that cuz it makes you more money, and it’s like, well, yeah, it, it does make me more money, but also it’s kind of, it’s kind of a win-win. Do you know what I mean? If cuz each person gets to buy a book or CD or whatever off of me directly. I sign it, I chat to them, have photos with them.

1:21:34 No one’s really a loser there. I enjoy it personally, but again I can’t deny that we do sell a lot more merch if we run the merch ourselves, but again I don’t see that, I don’t see why that’s a bad thing. So that’s kind of good, cuz we’re all enjoying it, all interacting, like I’m, I’m very active on Twitter and Instagram and everything. So half the people that come to shows, I’ve chatted to at some point, so again it makes it more of a friendship. Sounds too cheesy, but more, more than just a financial transaction.

1:22:07 Do you know what I mean? It’s not just we put our record out, they buy it, cool. It’s, again, the reason I’ve ended up doing MMA blogs and things like that is because I used to tweet about it a lot. I said it was, it blew my mind when the UFC hit me up, um, about the, the last, a UK show, and asked me to tweet some links and stuff like that. It’s like, you’re the UFC, but it’s, it’s, but it’s come about because when I tweet about it, it’s because I’m genuinely into it.

1:22:37 It’s not promo. It’s chatting about it and discussing. I’ll have long conversations with people about different fights, about different techniques, about what should be done about the, the, reing situation, about what should be done about the, the weight cutting situation. That’s one of the things I discuss, the, the most with people, cuz yeah I think everyone seems to discuss the problem with the, a, weighing, so like with the weight cut situation, people say, well if you weighed on the day, then you’d have to fight your actual await.

1:23:13 But people, the big argument there is, if you miss weight, so on and so forth. So it’s kind of between weighing in the day before or weighing in on the day, and the thing I always argue with people online is, it doesn’t have to be an EV at all. Surely you could do a weigh-in the day before, as you do now, and the weigh-in on the day, with separate financial penalties, or, or, or whatever, and then gradually it will get people to, and separate limits. So currently the day before if you’re a pound over, or you’re allowed a pound, say, that’s fine, but then say on the day you’re allowed 22 or something like that.

1:23:52 So you know, but it keeps everyone then fighting more in their weight, and in their correct, are I, one of the states in the US, have proposed that at some point, like the day before and the day of there has to be certain ranges. I think it should be, that’s what I think would work. I completely understand, say, if you, if you do it on the day, then if someone has to pull out, it’s not, you’re screwed. Right, right, right, whereas I think if you’re doing both, and there’s, you know, a varying levels of penalty, fine-wise, if you’re over, and things like that, at least then you still, if someone’s heavily over the day before, you know, that’s, that’s not going to work.

1:24:25 Now well, uh, well, and we probably should have you back on. We talk more about MMA judges. That’s a whole another hour. One of the, you talk about Twitter, one, one of your fans tweeted to us and asked about you touring in the US? Have you, you haven’t toured in the US?

1:24:38 We have. Yeah, we have, but not for a few years. So we did, um, I think the last time we were over was 2010 or maybe 2011. We did 20 four shows in 25 days, which was kind of intense, but we, on the day off, we did The caraston Daily Show, all sorts of kind of crazy stuff like that. But yeah, I hope to get back out there, but it’s just it’s hard when you’re not on a big label.

1:25:07 It’s as simple as that. If you want to, yeah, just cost straight away. You’re a few grand in the red because of flying the people, the kit, everything. I like that, and when obviously in the UK we’ve got a bigger fan base than we have in the US, so in the UK we can instantly play, you know, two or 3,000 cap venues, whereas in the US we can’t, so we couldn’t expect much of a fee. So we’re already losing several thousands, and again it’s that thing of, it’s the problem, it’s one of the restrictions of being so DIY in that way, right?

1:25:44 Doing it all yourself, so much means that you’ve not got this huge pool of money to speculate, to accumulate, kind of thing, whereas if you’re on a label then they can say, well, you know, we’ll drop 30 to 40 grand on them over the first few years of touring and hope that that turns around. But yeah, I definitely plan to get back at some point. Would you ever move to LA or New York? I know you said you’re resisting that, cuz Essex keeps you grounded. I mean, I definitely could.

1:26:11 Yeah, it’s been, would that push you artistically in a weird way? Maybe, I don’t know. It’s again, it’s all about who you surround yourselves with. Um, I don’t plan to, but in the last two or three years has been the first time that I’ve thought I could, you know, at some point in my life I could see myself living in LA or New York. Originally I loved New York and wasn’t a fan of LA.

1:26:39 A few tours we did there, the crowds were great, but there was just stuff that I didn’t, I, I like the vibe of, but then since I’ve met a lot of the people I’m working on my new record with, again, I’m spending a lot of time in LA on this record. Um, yeah, yeah, I, I love it. It’s a home away from home. Yeah, it really is. It feels like, yeah, I get there.

1:27:00 It’s the first place I’ve had, other than my home, that when I come out the airport and get in my car I feel like I’m at home. It doesn’t, it’s not got that panic of a new, you know, a foreign country, or a foreign land, or town. It’s, you know, it feels, it feels comfortable now. There, you must have friends, you must have made some good relationships to make you feel that way when you land? Yeah, exactly that, and it’s great.

1:27:25 It’s people like, yeah, Dany, I’ve got a friend out there. Always stay with Kelly, who’s a script writer, and things like that. It’s just that thing of having that comfort of knowing I’m going to go here. I’ve got people. You know, I’ve got work to do, but I’ve got people I know.

1:27:41 And people, yeah, it’s funny, cuz I’m from San Diego, but when I go to LA I don’t know really anyone there, so I feel, and it’s a city, in my opinion, you can feel really distanced from it, differ West Hollywood. You’re walking around all this nonsense and you’re like, I tried. I tried to live out there when I was 18. Um, I went out on my own to try and live. I stayed a lot in Santa Monica.

1:28:03 I kind of went about up to Vegas briefly, and all other things, and it was horrible, cuz I didn’t know anyone, and it was really, it was a really, it’s not a pleasant a memory as such. You know, I’m glad I did it because it was very character building. Hadn’t thought about the fact that I was 18, but in America you have to be 21, yeah, to have any fun. Again, it makes it really hard to meet people if you can’t go into a bar, if you’re just the random British guy, and I’m not that outgoing.

1:28:31 If you’re just a British guy strolling around, it’s really hard to make friends, or yeah, good luck. I mean, even if you can go in a bar, it’s it’s, it’s not easy. But yeah, it has been a different time, the time now that I’ve met people out there, and again, who can take you to the good places, rather than you walk around feeling like an outsider and going yeah, you really need to know people. And I bet it probably helps if you do work out there, you can form work relationships.

1:28:56 Those are like real relationships, as opposed to, yeah, maybe just performing relationships. What’s the next thing that you’re going to get your black belt in, or try to? I mean, you know, you’ve done music, you’re still doing music, you probably always will. Videos, I mean, is there something out there where you’re thinking, this is what I’m going to do next? It definitely is.

1:29:14 There’s a film, a film or TV, or that kind of area, is something I’m as much of a film nerd as I am a music nerd, or, you know, or anything else, or MMA nerd, even, even that much. Um, and I’m not going to get my black belt in BJJ anytime soon. I work to it, but not not too soon. But yeah, or film is something I definitely find interesting, which I like to try my hand out at, but I like all of them things. I’d want to get good at it, so you know, I’m, I’m, I’m doing a lot.

1:29:45 I may never do anything in that area, but I’m already starting, doing a lot of, I’m reading a lot of scripts. I’m reading a lot of things, and just, yeah, just seeing if it’s something I feel I can learn. See, was right now, you’re spoiled now, because you are the director and you’re the main actor, and you get to seriously perform in your videos. If you make a movie, even if you star yourself in it, you’re going to have to act for a lot of the time. It’s nowhere near as exciting as your videos, but that’s exactly, and that’s what I find interesting and exciting, and it’s, it’s, it’s weird, cuz it’s kind of shooting myself in the foot, but I know I could go out now as Scroobius Pip and get a role in something, or do something, or get something made.

1:30:24 I don’t want to do that. I want to. I only want to do it if I’m good at it, so I want to kind of learn, earn my stripes, and see where I can go, and if it turns out I’m awful at it, then that’s cool. I’ve learned, again, I don’t, I’ve not got that need to be the best in the world at everything. It’s kind of it’s nice to, I want to try these things, and if I’m not good enough for it or not, right, I’ll work hard.

1:30:47 But yeah, I could see like a 25-minute music video, a la Thriller, for one of your tracks where there’s a storyline. And then I’m sure you already thought of, um, just a couple last things. Talk to me about your label. I mean, uh, what’s it like having Speech Development Records? I know you said you’re working with guys like Sage Francis, Warren Peace, Polar Bear, uh, and that must be a completely new experience.

1:31:10 It’s amazing, I love it. Um, and it’s, it’s crazy to get to do, and it’s, it’s, again, it’s like most things. It’s been unplanned. I’ve stumbled into it. I, I set up Speech Development to put out my solo record, and saw that as being a small side produ project from from Dan le Sac versus Scroobius Pip, and yeah, it, that, that, again, it got in the top 40.

1:31:30 It had Introdiction on it and things like that that have become some of my most known stuff. So what I had to go through to release that kind of left me with the structure of a label that I could release other people with, and whilst it’s not something I can just do freely, cuz it’s only me. I’ve got a, I’ve got a guy at my distribution who I work with who helps amazingly, but actually officially employed by the label is, it’s just me, so I couldn’t, for example, release someone while I’m touring or while I’m doing this or doing that.

1:32:04 But it’s great. I mean, Sage Francis is one of the reasons I started doing this. He’s an amazing MC and poet, and he opened my mind up to a lot of these things, so it blows my mind to get to release his record in the UK and be Dolan and Warren Peace. So yeah, it’s just cool, and again it’s, it’s that the same thing of, it’s not having a label. It’s not, it’s, it is a label, but not having a label is, in it’s, it’s not a hip-hop label.

1:32:32 It’s just a Warren Peace kind of indie dancy, a bit rocky. I released a guy called Jacko Brown, who’s like a blues folk guy, but good, blues folk, not like the folk that’s blown up in hipster areas and things like that. Good, good, good, raw, stuff. And then there’s Sage, who is, who is hip-hop and rap, and kind of, it’s getting to do that, a variation. I wrote our slogan recently, and we’ve had our first t-shirts with a slogan out, and it’s just Speech Development Records, we may not be for you, and that’s fine, and that’s what I’m all about.

1:33:07 It’s, it’s exactly about that, and I’ve had that in my career as well. I’ve never had that design. I don’t think I’m for everyone. A lot of people will watch this and go and listen to my stuff and go, oh, I didn’t, I didn’t enjoy that. That’s cool, it’s not a big deal.

1:33:18 It’s not, not everything is for everyone. That’s, if you think that way, it’s, it’s ridiculous, right? You’re looking for people that really get what you’re doing. Yeah, if you get it, then that’s amazing. I love that, but I’m not going to hate you because you’re not into my stuff.

1:33:29 It’s not, I’m not going to have a personal issue if you do. You have a heavy male audience? Um, it, it varies. It varies a decent amount. Okay, cuz I just played for the girlfriend and she was like, I don’t get it, and I was like, how could you not get this?

1:33:41 No, I understand that, though. Again, it’s just, yeah, it seems to vary. It’s, yeah, and plus there was some anger in there, and like, I don’t know, I always relate to that. An intense run to start with, though. Yeah, then what I was, I SP, there’s a bunch of in, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

1:33:55 I tend to go intense, but yeah, what, what do you think? Uh, and this is a hard question to ask anyone, but what do you think has made you successful? I mean, when I listen to you, it sounds like you’ve always fully invested yourself in what you’re doing. It’s like it’s not like you made yourself perform of those people in line. It’s like that was just part of being you, and like doing your own merch, you’re like, well, this is just, this is the way to do it.

1:34:17 I mean, what do you think? It’s, it’s not like you’re being disciplined. It doesn’t, it seems like this comes natural to you. It’s a combination of everything, I think, there is a level of just natural. I genuinely think that anyone, I, again, it could be because certain things come natural to me, and I’ve not experienced it any other way.

1:34:34 But it rarely feels that I’m doing anything that a lot of people couldn’t do. Do you know what I mean? It feels like most stuff I do, a lot of people could do this if they tried, kind of thing, if they just decided to, or executed, and then, but again, the other part of is I do think it’s important to have a good work ethic. I mean, as in the Introdiction, it was the thing of label, a radio show, MC club, and all that. It’s like, it’s because that’s how I work.

1:35:02 I kind of, I like to be busy. I like to work hard, and again the reason I do my own merch is I don’t see why I should ask someone else to do it. I’m about, you know, I’m there before the show, I’m sitting around backstage, I should be doing something, right? And you’ll sell more merch, and you make a connection with a fan, and it works for everyone. Cing, so it’s that.

1:35:25 Um, I always laugh. Always, I joke with people at the merch store that up until recently I’d worked in retail longer than I’d ped about on stage. So the merch store, with anything, was more my home. You know, it’s just gone over now. I’ve now been a performing longer than I worked in shops but still, it’s like I worked in retail for 5 years.

1:35:46 I said I’m good at that, so, so why not if that’s one of my skills, then I’ll put that on the merch table, and use it as, yeah. I think there’s, as I said, kind of a lot of luck, some kind of natural ability, I’d imagine, but I think hard work as well, and just deciding to do it. I think that’s the thing that a lot of people don’t do. A lot of people go, I’d love to be a rapper. We’re going then, right?

1:36:07 And you saved the money up, and you took the year out, and you basically, they call it throwing your hat over the fence, like you basically made yourself do it for a year. Yeah, I did the whole, um, if you’ve got something to fall back on, you’re more likely to fall back. If you then, again, it’s a dangerous theory, because it’s what I went for, but I didn’t have anything to fall back on at that point, in, in, in that time. It was like, right, I’m doing this, if it, if it works.

1:36:37 Oh no, not if, it has to work. It’s got to work. I’ve spent 5 years saving up to put this record out, and all that. It’s one of the reasons I have a weird love-hate with Kickstarter, and stuff like that. I think they can do some amazing stuff, but I don’t think it’s possible to be as invested in something that other people have paid for as it is for something that you’ve worked for 5 years in a record store to then release.

1:37:00 In that situation you’re like, no, this has to work, whereas if it’s been a year of people investing and then it doesn’t quite do as well as you wanted, I think it’ll be easier to walk away from. Okay, interesting. I haven’t heard that perspective on Kickstarter, but I’m not hating on Kickstarter. I also think they do some amazing stuff, but it’s kind of, it’s why I’ve never gone that route, cuz it’s like, no, everything I’ve do is a result of the hard work I’ve done in the past.

1:37:24 Everything I do now is a result of the years I’ve done this and the years I’ve done that, and all developed into making this, this final piece. I always ask a few questions at the end. I’m going to hit you with them. If you can make a phone call to the 20-year-old Scroobius, uh, before he was called Scroobius, by the way, quickly, where did the name Scroobius Pip come from? Um, it came from an Edward Lear poem.

1:37:45 So Edward Lear is kind of a nonsense poem writer, um, and it’s about a creature that wakes up in the jungle. It doesn’t know what it is. It goes with the fish for a bit, it realised it isn’t a fish, it, it goes with the lions, it realised it isn’t a lion, and by the end it realises it, it is just a Scroobius Pip. It can be its own creature. It’s fine to go with all of them things, but it’s its own thing.

1:38:03 So it worked, because particularly at the time I was doing a lot of street art. I was doing, I was a photographer. I was, yeah. So it was that thing of, going, right, all of these things, I’m Scroobius. I read that definition of why you called yourself Scroobius Pip, and it looked like it was scripted, because it’s everything that you say you are, as in, I’m not anything specific.

1:38:21 Yeah, it’s crazy. It worked perfectly, but again, to, to now scratch that down is a lot of people hear that and think, oh, it’s taken from a poem and all this. I read that name for the first time in a, a book of cat names. J, in a book of cat names, said, screw, I like, what’s that and looked into. So it’s not that I was sitting in my, you know, in my room reading poetry.

1:38:44 It was like, no. All right, back to my question. Uh, make a phone call to the 20-year-old Scroobius, give that young man a bit of advice. What would you tell him to do or do differently if you could speak to him? Um, I’d tell him to take all his savings and wait till half-time in the 2005 Champions League final, when Liverpool were losing 3-0 to AC Milan, put every penny on Liverpool to win, and then he wouldn’t have to do anything.

1:39:13 Yeah, I’d pull him back to the future. I might give him with fly [expletive], some, some sports almanac, just give some tips, but again I don’t know. I guess that’s the best answer I’ve ever, I think, I think the mistakes I’ve made. Yeah, I’m, I’m not a believer in the one goal should be happiness. I think we need to experience a wide variation of emotions, and I think as sad as that can be, everything I’ve been through has brought me to where I am today, and I’m kind of, I’m fine with that.

1:39:41 Okay, good answer. Uh, best advice you’ve ever received, uh, throughout your career, business or personal? Um, when I went to, it’s, it’s a quote, but when I went to try and, and live in America, I was, I’d done it on my own. I’d never been away from home properly, and a lot of people told me stuff. My brother just sent me a text.

1:39:58 It’s a quote from Best in Show, and he said, just remember, if you get hungry, eat something. If you get thirsty, drink something. That was it. It’s like, that’s all you really need, man. That’s all you really need.

1:40:11 Everything else you’ve got to stumble along and learn on your own, but that was just perfect piece of advice at that point. I was like, yeah, cool, I’ll do that. Sounds like a Buddhist expression, something in carry water or something. Yeah, just kind of stay in the present and do what you’ve got to do. Um, last bit of advice.

1:40:26 Uh, this is very relevant for what you do. Uh, to 20-year-old that’s listening to us around the world that wants to, you know, get in the music industry, wants to be like Scroobius one day, wants to make their own music videos. What advice do you give them? Um, just that there’s, and this is something I’ve learned in numerous areas, but there’s not a shortcut. You know, you just need to work hard.

1:40:52 You know, the reason I had an impact at the first open mics I started going to was cuz everything I got up there to perform, I could perform in my sleep, cuz I’d drilled that. I’d practiced that hard, hard, hard, so I wasn’t getting up there kind of nervously and reading from a thing, which a lot of open mics are. I was getting up there and taking the mic and delivering something I was confident in and believed in, and then it kind of, yeah, all builds from there.

1:41:20 So yeah, I’d just say, just work hard and get good. It’s kind of key in anything. Get good, and then hopefully that can take you to where you need it to take you. I just heard you say take the mic, and I was like, that’s a good thing. Just take the mic, take the mic.

1:41:35 Yeah, take it away, and completely, and do what you do. Yeah. Um, I, uh, I really want to come see you live. Uh, cuz uh, it’s really strange, cuz I meet you in this context, you know, and I haven’t seen you live. I’ve obviously been seeing your videos, and the videos are so angry and dark, aren’t they?

1:41:50 I’m generally, I’m not that guy. I’m a cheery guy, but, but live you’re probably a bit intense. Yeah, I get there. So, uh, I definitely want to come check you out. If people want to get, uh, in touch with you, it’s scroobiuspip.co.uk, and Scroobius Pip on Twitter, Instagram.

1:42:04 Instagram is Scroobius Pip, and on Facebook it’s facebook.com/scroobiuspip. Easiest thing for everyone to remember is just Google Scroobius Pip. That’s that. And you’re active on Twitter and Instagram. I’m really active on, on all of them, yeah, on every format.

1:42:19 Do you have a problem? Do you have a Twitter problem? Would you say, are you, are you, are you, are you present around other people? She’s just like, what are you doing? Yeah, I mean, I’m constantly keeping an eye on it and, and looking at it, but again I don’t, I think I justify it a bit, because it’s, it’s it’s a positive thing for career.

1:42:35 Yeah, it’s business, it’s business. But yeah, I’m constantly on it, and anyone will know that, it’s become a bit of a thing now that people know that, because obviously I’ve got, I get a fair few tweets. I can’t, I reply to all of them, but people generally know if they tweet me with an MMA or a movie question or a standup question, something like that, it will drag me in, and I’ll be, be talking for ages. There’s certain things that people know now, the, the buzz buttons, that will definitely, if I, if I get to see it, it will definitely get a response.

1:43:02 Could you put it down for a week and not be tweeting for a week? I don’t know, if I could, I would. I, I think I’d enjoy it. I think it’d be a really good, positive I was listening to a podcast on the way here, and they were talking about, um, there should be an app, and appar there is for computers but not phones, an app that only allows you to go on Facebook twice a day or Twitter twice a day, and things like that, cuz for writing and productivity it’d be an amazing thing.

1:43:34 So I’m sure I’d be fine with it. It’s just at the moment it rarely, it, it really causes me an issue, so it’s, it’s a strange addiction. I’m an addict, AR. I, I wonder sometimes if I could just turn off for a week, cuz I’m not that bad, but I, I’m still always checking in. Tell you what, I, I really enjoyed it last time I was in LA, cuz I didn’t have, have mobile internet out there, so I could only use it when I was on Wi-Fi right, and that was kind of, I was there for 10 days, and obviously as soon as I was back in the UK it changed, but it was quite liberating.

1:44:09 It took me ages to stop taking, I still, I take it out of my pocket and go to check, and then go, all right, can’t check. Let’s see what’s going on. Let’s take this in, and you’re in a new place, so you can be like, oh, I’m in LA. Look at that, that’s different. So yeah, I’ve done that too, traveling when you don’t have that free 3G, and you just, you just chill out a little bit.

1:44:26 It’s kind of, it’s kind of the methadone of Twitter. Just slowly off, but then as soon as you get some Wi-Fi, it’s like, just need to quickly check what’s checking everything. Um, Scroobius, thanks so much for coming a fabulous conversation. I think people are going to love it. You don’t do a lot of interviews out there.

1:44:43 There wasn’t a lot of stuff, so I think people are going to really enjoy this. Definitely, thanks for having me. Um, if people are listening on iTunes, you can come watch our beautiful faces. You can see the beard itself on our YouTube channel, and uh, as we say on London Real, it’s about the journey. Uh, I wish you well on yours, and um, all the best.

1:44:59 Thank linguistically reinforced hallucination. This week London Real meets UFC fighter Dan Hardy. I’m not an athlete. I’m a fighter that’s trying to be a martial artist. His wins and his losses, that’s it.

1:45:38 I’m done. I’m not enjoying it anymore. This is not fun for me anymore. Um, I’m not getting anything out of it. I’m just getting damaged.

1:45:46 He talks the spirit world. The thing is, like, ayahuasca doesn’t necessarily do anything to change the person. It just helps the person understand who they are, and introduces the wolf heart they want to feed the wires in into my heart so they can measure the second heartbeat they can then burn it. This Sunday London Real presents Dan Hardy uncut. Every subject on the table, so feel free to ask away.