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Image via Marco Grey @ Wot Do U Call It
Daily Discovery is a feature that highlights a new or recently discovered artist who we’re excited about. See the rest of our Daily Discoveries here.
There’s an exciting crop of MCs in the UK who have put in the long, hard practice hours spitting on radio across London, and who are now coming through with a variety of sounds and styles. Before they had even released any music, keen listeners would already recognize these MCs from the sets they had killed and the bars that would always get a rewind.
Jammz built up his buzz as a beast on the radio, but ever since last year’s Hit Then Run EP, he’s shown himself to be a versatile artist, consistently dropping some of the best records out, from “London Living” with Plastician through “Final Warning” with Finn and Fallow to the heavy “Mr. Wait” produced by Trends and Mr Dubz.
Just last week, Jammz dropped a full project, Underdog Season, curated by Jack Dat, and now he’s announcing his own label, I Am Grime, by dropping two buzzed-about instrumentals which have been floating around as radio rips for a while, but are finally getting the vinyl release they deserve. What, you thought Jammz was “just” an MC? Hell no. He produces as well, and we’ve got the premiere of “The World” below.
Pre-order “Keep It Simple/The World” on vinyl and digital via Jammz’ new Bandcamp here and get familiar with Jammz, who breaks down his background producing and MCing, the importance of pirate radio, and what makes a classic grime instrumental in our interview below.
Did you start MCing or producing first?
I was an MC before anything else, I started writing about mid-2002. Back then it wasn’t as easy as it is now to get my hands on instrumentals that I liked, so producing was a way to combat that. I got my first PC in 2004 and my life as a producer pretty much began at that point.
What do you enjoy more—writing a sick lyric or making a beat that is going to go off in the rave?
Writing a sick lyric. Every time.
Who are your favorite grime producers—who do you look up to?
This is a tough one…there are too many producers I’m rating at the moment. If we’re talking about who inspired me, then Terror Danjah and Wiley. If we’re talking currently, there’s too many names to mention—Trends, Rocks, Dullah Beats, Haggi. Half the names I’d mention you probably wouldn’t even know—nine times out of ten its somebody Jack’s put me onto or something I’ve found on soundcloud
What do you think makes a classic grime instrumental?
Anything that allows MCs space to breathe on it. For me, all the instrumentals we call classic today are ones we liked because we heard a certain MC on it.
Tell us about the project with Jack Dat Underdog Season. It feels like it could be an official album to me, but I’m wondering how you approached it?
The name itself came from me being the underdog in most situations in life, and I think at the time I felt that people thought I was just going to be the guy who made “Hit Then Run” or the radio don for a long while. There’s more to what I do than just that.
Underdog Season was something me and Jack decided to do off the cuff after I knew “Mr. Wait” was coming out. We’d been doing shows together for a while and with the Kano tour coming up I wanted a fresh body of work to touch stage with. Jack’s got a very good ear for instrumentals so one day I just holla’d at him and said lets do a project where you curate the music and I vocal it. The whole thing was a joint effort… A majority of the time when I was recording Jack or Shemzy would be there giving input into how the final product came out.
You are always spitting on radio sets. Can you break down the importance of pirate radio and now online radio stations to grime culture?
Radio as a medium was way more important 10 years ago than it is now (not just in grime) for the simple fact that things like the internet weren’t as advanced or accessible as they are today. For grime in particular, radio was definitely important—there were barely any platforms you could go on and talk about the stuff that MC’s were talking about back then. It was too real.
Even just to attend radio at that time was no joke. In some cases it was a risk for everybody involved. Station owners would have had to deal with avoiding the DTI and putting up aerials on tower blocks, as well as other stresses. Even as an MC, going to radio was a risk. More time it’d be in a tower block or somewhere off the radar, so if anything did go down, nobody’s coming to help you if you cant help yourself, ‘cos you don’t wanna draw attention to the station.
Today radio serves the same purpose, but with the internet its not the go to platform anymore. That’s something the new batch of MCs have tried to change though.
And how has radio helped you personally in your career so far?
Too many ways. Connected me with some good people mainly, but more than anything its been a good training ground. Radio’s my dojo, man. If I got a new lyric I wanna get on point, you’re going to hear it first on radio.
When did you actually make “The World” and “Keep It Simple?” They’ve been on the airwaves since last summer at least I think?
Yeah, pretty much. “The World” is the newer out of the two, that was made in late 2013. It didn’t get played until the following year when I gave it to Sir Spyro. “Keep It Simple” was a lot earlier, that one dates back to 2012.
I had the project file as an 8 bar loop, and one day I gave the loop to Big Mikee by mistake. He ran it on his show the same weekend and people just went mad for it from that point onwards. That was when I knew I had to make it into a full song. Since then I’ve been lucky enough to hear it in raves, even seen DJ Maximum batter it at Eskimo dance which is a certified win for me.
What else can we expect from Jammz in 2016? Is a full album something you’re interesting in making?
More vocal and instrumental releases. “The World/Keep It Simple” is the first release on my label so I just want to build on that mainly. Other than that I plan on using this year to experiment with different styles to see where I wanna take things next. I wanna push boundaries and create debate.
As for an album…It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long while. Everybody keeps telling me 2016’s the year of the album, but I’m not in any rush to do one. When I do make one it needs to sound how I want it to sound and I can’t put any time constraints on when that will happen, but it’s definitely in my mind.
