FEATURE: Spotlight: Bawo — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Bawo

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THIS time out for Spotlight…

I want to shine a light on an artist I recently saw NME raving about. I am going to bring in their interview with it. He is a new name to me though, when I first heard him, I was instantly gripped and invested. Bawo is an artist that you need to know about. Before coming to some more recent press, I want to head back to the start of last year and DJ Mag heralded a West London artist who was making waves beyond the capital. It is interesting learning about Bawo’s beginnings and the music he grew up listening to:

“Over the years, West London has given us some titans in the rap scene, from C Biz and K Koke to Nines and Knucks. Although some in that list are more active than others these days, there’s an exciting new generation of talent who are pushing rap into new territories, finding new connections between the different strains and sub-genres.

One of the latest in this new tidal wave is Bawo, a rising artist who’s been connecting the dots between grime, garage, rap and soul (plus a few other influences) in a way that feels both new and yet fundamentally West London. “I think there’s an appreciation of sound that unites us,” he explains, trying to pin down the ‘sound’ of West. “I think it’s a bit different, I don’t know if it’s a thread that the average listener would clock, but if you’re from West, you can hear it.”

He describes his own sound as “homely” and there’s certainly a warmth to it — this is music for the home, best enjoyed without the distraction of the outside world — but that’s not really what he means. What he’s actually referring to are the cues he takes from the artists he grew up with, the mercurial, intangible feeling he got from listening to 50 Cent, Michael Jackson or Akon in the family home. “They just have this sort of familiar tone about them, whether it’s the backing vocals or the chords that are used,” he says. It’s the high production value of those blockbuster records, but it’s also the intimate familial connection from a record shared between loved ones. “And I think that comes through,” he adds.

Away from his parents’ stereo, however, was the much-closer-to-home influence of Channel U. “Jme, Scorcher, and Chipmunk were huge influences," he says. "[Chip] had an album out when we were teenagers [‘I Am Chipmunk’] — that was like, ‘Wow, this guy’s living the dream!’ That was pretty big for me as well.”

Six years ago, Bawo uploaded his first track to SoundCloud, an ultra-‘90s, ultra-New York boom-bap tune called ‘It Don’t Stop’. Even though his sound has evolved immeasurably since that first drop, a nostalgic edge has been one of the few constants in his music. In the years that followed, he would play around with instrumentals from a mixture of unknown producers, alongside bigger names like Wiley, The Streets and Preditah. As he jumped between grime, garage and back to rap again, his punchy, commanding delivery remained. Though each track was wildly different, gradually, a pattern was beginning to emerge.

At some point during this period, a message hit his SoundCloud inbox from Oscar #Worldpeace. He’s still not entirely sure how Oscar heard him or what made him reach out, but he’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. “I’ve been listening to him for years, before I ever had anything on streaming platforms in that way,” he explains. “He just literally shot me a message out of the blue. It was a cold moment for me, having listened to him for so long.

“To be honest, he’s one of the only people I could consider a friend in the whole game," he adds. "So it’s been a pleasure knowing him, and working with him so far has been really easy."

By 2019, Bawo had started to settle on the kind of rap that’s since become his calling card. A fluid, ever-shifting sound that draws, in varying combinations, from basically all the sounds that have led him to this point. The SoundCloud-only ‘Things’ EP, dropped just a few months before ‘Bag To Get’ (which for all intents and purposes was a breakout track for him), is perhaps the best distillation of this. The original ‘Things’ was grime through and through, but he followed it with a ‘2.0’ version which was much harder to pin down; it really felt like a watershed moment for Bawo. Before that, he was playing around with different sounds, but only ever one at a time. With ‘2.0’ it really felt like he’d hit his stride and cracked the formula for combining grime, garage and hip-hop into something he could call his own.

And that brings us neatly back to his “homely” comment. Because what he’s doing now is more than just grimey-garagey-hip-hop; you can hear the warmth of those records that played in his parents’ house, memories being made in real time. Just look at ‘Starts With A Text’, another landmark release for him and by far his most popular yet. The verses give probably the best example of his understated rhyming style and on the hook we get an even more understated singing performance — a talent honed in church choirs in his youth.

Another prime example is ‘Headtop Buss From Luss’ / ‘Mazzalean’, the double-drop release he gave us in 2022. The first half is a booming rap joint that takes more than a few cues from the sound system culture that’s been embedded in West London for the better part of a century, but the second veers away dramatically into more beautifully understated singing. There’s no polish, no theatrics, just a subtle vocal performance backed only by clicking fingers and a few guitar licks”.

I am going to move it forward. Last month, Bawo released his second album, It Means Hope Where I’m From. It is perhaps his greatest work yet. An album that will take him worldwide. Even if there are few reviews of the album and what is out there is pretty brief, the general feeling is that this is a big step from one of our finest young artists. Someone that everyone should know. I will end with that NME interview from last month. Prior to that, I want to come to this VERSUS chat. Even though a lot of the interview discussed trainers, football and style, there were some interesting observations and exchanges that I wanted to highlight:

“VERSUS: How did growing up in West London and your Nigerian heritage shape your status as an ‘Original’?

Bawo: The cultural contrast is all I've ever known. That being said, I found myself aware of wanting to balance Nigerian and British culture in my earlier years. It was the whole thing of going to Nigeria and feeling like it was home – but also feeling like an outsider at the same time. Then, in your class at school, you're the only kid who looks like you, and you've got a hairline that's clearly from Africa – you stand out. You're forced to stand out even if you don't want to. That's in both scenarios.

What does it mean to be an ‘Original’ in your eyes?

To be original is to be completely honest with yourself, which can make you seem like a weirdo because we don't know what normal is. Ultimately, originality is about being true to yourself in both words and deeds.

What does community mean to you?

We're all sharing the same space, right? It depends on where your parents are from; you get a mix of first, second, and third-generation kids. It’s all about the back-and-forth of support and, at times, not being so nice to each other, but we’re all growing together.

Your project, Legitimate Cause, is just over 18 months old. How do you feel about it now that it has had time to breathe?

I feel just as proud of it. It doesn’t feel like it’s been 18 months, which is crazy. My dream was for it to resonate with people. I didn’t plan for such a long gap before dropping another project, but I guess it was meant to be this way. A lot went into that music, and some of it, like “Figured Out”, was four years old when it came out”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Galloway

Despite the fact that it is not a particularly long interview – you hope that there will be a more in-depth interview out there soon -, it is an important highlighting of an artist adding something invaluable to music. Really making this, as NME write, “lo-fi rap for the masses”, because Bawo aims to put good vibes out into the world and really make a contribution is to be commended. This is someone who can act as a role model for young rappers coming through:

“You grew up in a Christian household, surrounded by different types of gospel. What pulled you towards rap music initially?

“Partly, the brainwashed side of me that had watched too much MTV Cribs wanted a humongous mansion… I wanted to be 50 Cent as a kid, so there’s a bit of that in there as well.

“But the more I did it, the more my actual motivations showed themselves. I don’t care about having a huge house or anything like that. I want to be financially comfortable, for sure. But I want to be a part of something that helps make people happy and add to the database of creativity that humans are constantly making, and be a positive contributor to that space.”

Tell us about the process of making ‘It Means Hope…’

“It’s been really fun and it’s been stressful at some points, because the nature of the tape has changed from ‘let me just put out a mixtape of 10 songs because I have quite a lot of songs that haven’t been released’. A whole identity started to form, visually and sonically, and then it became more and more serious. To be honest, I wouldn’t call it an album. It feels a bit unfair to call it a mixtape. But overall it was fun, I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed feeling like I was actually levelling up in my skill.”

On the cover of ‘It Means Hope…’, you’re now revealing the superhero suit underneath your corporate suit you wore on your last project. Tell us about the thematic evolution between the two bodies of work.

“I’m now even more confident in vulnerability and unapologetically being myself. But it’s also another way of saying that that was a shell. Now you’re getting closer to the real me. So those are the parallel things. In terms of what the logo represents, it’s been really effective, even for me. There’s been times I wake up and not want to go gym, but I’ll see my t-shirt with that new SN [Say Nothing, Bawo’s independent label] logo on it, and think, ‘I have to live up to that’. So it’s supposed to represent purpose”

With It Means Hope Where I’m From out into the world, more people are discovering the wonder of the simply brilliant Bawo. I am new to him, though I am committed to keeping an eye where he heads next. Humble yet ambitious, it is only a matter of time before he goes worldwide and is standing on some huge stages. If you have not discovered the brilliance of Bawo, then you really must do…