Mr. Slowthai from Northampton, how are you? How’s your day been? 

I’m good, man. It’s been good, how are you G?

Chilling bro, thanks for asking. It’s your first time in Australia, how would you describe your experience performing here?

Lit man, everything’s been going crazy. I don’t know, you don’t expect it this far from home but it’s been a blessing.

As a fan, it’s interesting to see how Australia has increasingly gravitated towards UK rap. I think a common mistake—one I’m guilty of anyway—is just assuming everything is from somewhere in London, which definitely isn’t the case. What was it like growing as a person and artist in Northampton?

It’s the same as any small town, just normal people growing up. You get it through however you can and there’s not much opportunity, no one really aspires to do anything, just a small place where they’re five years behind everywhere else. 

Nothing for the kids to do and such?

Yeah, you gotta go out and search for it, the more you search for it, the more you find and in the end it all comes to you.

How did people around you respond when you decided you wanted to pursue music?

I suppose they don’t believe in you until you’re doing something. I mean for anyone who’s from a place where there’s not much opportunity or no one’s got aspirations, you just gotta be the one to do it. No one’s going to tell you to do something they don’t believe they can do themselves. Everyone just wants to hate because they feel they can’t do it. So that’s all it is, you just get on with it and not pay no one no mind, work on your talents and push through.

And how have those people’s attitudes shifted as your career has progressed?

I think everyone’s proud man, no one gives me no negative nothing, I feel they are happy. I think for someone who comes from there, where there’s nothing to do, they are all just proud and in a way everyone played their part. Be it that they told me to quit, I couldn’t do it, or they dissed me for it. In the end without them, I wouldn’t have been so motivated to prove them wrong yet. I feel you should just use it as ammunition to push on.

The song ‘Dead Leaves’ is about ambitionless people from your hometown jaw jacking, was there a certain experience that brought that out of you?

There was this guy called Bronson who was looked at as Britain’s most violent prisoner, and they made a film about him. Tom Hardy is the actor and there’s an interview with Tom Hardy speaking about a phone call he had with Bronson where he was basically ignoring him. Then one day they managed to get him on the phone and he said “Oh man, sorry, I’ve just been having like relationship trouble, we’re breaking up, dah, dah, dah, dah. I feel like this and I can't give this. Then Bronson said to him, “Remember there was floods in Oxford once? And a boy got his foot trapped in the drain and the water kept rising and rising and rising. In the end the boy died.” And he said, “You know why it wouldn’t happen to me? Because I would’ve told them to cut my foot off.” Then he said, “Sometimes in life to grow, you need to cut pieces of yourself away to fully blossom innit?” It’s like the same with trees, if you allow stuff to take all the nutrients from something that’s dying anyway, it would just drag you down and won’t let you blossom into what you could be. So, dead leaves, you have to cut them off. It was just relating to people in my life, who may not have been pushing for the best for me. May have been dragging me down and that is just something that always stuck with me. I felt like I needed to put it down and then cut them people off.

Can you tell me about some of the experiences surrounding your album, Nothing Great About Britain?

Well making the album was a lot of sleepless nights, sleeping on the floor and trying to get out how I feel. Going through a lot of things in my life with personal relationships and stuff, feeling isolated and like I’m on my ones. Yeah, just forcing through really man. 

I remember watching an interview you did with Julie Adenuga right after the album dropped, and you said you didn’t know how to feel. Now that the public has had time to sit with it and you’ve seen the response, have you come around to it yet?

I’m proud, but it’s its own entity once you give it out and so you just gotta watch it grow. I mean the reception is like you’d never expect. You always doubt yourself, I doubt myself so much, that’s why I push on to try and be better and that. So many people have given such a blessed response and are being positive to it and it's more inspiring. It allows me to go ahead and do better things because I know people believe in what I’m doing and people connect with it. It’s the best feeling.

What do you think of the idea that your debut album tells your life story up until now?

Yeah, I don’t think my life story, I think it kinda gives people an insight into my life and allows them to get to know me more, get to know Britain and what it’s like growing up there. I feel like everywhere has got a similar thing, we all have the same struggles, the same politics. There’s always something to be pissed off about, it don’t matter. 

As you said, the response has been mental, so mental that you were shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. You performed at the ceremony, in which you used a cutoff head of Boris Johnson as a prop. How much heat did you catch for that?

I don’t really watch no one like that, it’s a blessing to be a part of and to be considered as part of the Mercury list. But, [I] feel like it’s a curse anyway. For anyone who’s ever got it, it has gone on to haunt them. 

How would you describe the current political climate in the UK?

I feel like living there is a big confusion because you’re told one thing when it’s a completely different thing. There’s so much going on behind the scenes that you don’t actually know and the people that it counts for are cut off from it. Banging your head against a brick wall is the best way to explain it. 

How important do you think it is for people to form their own personal judgments about things? 

People have to have their own opinion that can’t be provoked, otherwise, everyone’s just a sheep. It’s the most important thing for people to have different views and know different things to spark a conversation, so we can find some solution or resolution. If people don’t have an opinion they’re just dumb and like what does anything matter otherwise. You have got to have your own thing.

Did you think the album would translate as well as it has outside of the UK, especially because a lot of the topics are so British?

I always had ambitions to be like, “Yo yeah I want to do this.” It was more so going to places I didn’t ever really think of. I don’t see it as a because you’re from somewhere different, you can’t connect with it thing. If it’s good music then it’s good music. I’m not going to compromise or cater it to somewhere because I want to go there more for music. If people feel it, they feel it and if they don’t, then keep making music innit? I make it for myself and the people around me, or for people who can connect with, or have the same outlook I have.

There’s a certain nostalgia I feel when listening to ‘Gorgeous’. Can you tell me about that song?

‘Gorgeous’ is about making certain decisions in life that may make you feel ugly, but behind those feelings, we’re all still gorgeous. The way the song come about, is that [Kwes and I] were just chilling, chatting shit and then I was like, “I wanna wear the Bally”. Because he always used to wear a Bally on stage and he was like, “Nah, no, you can’t wear the bally. You’re gorgeous” and I was like, “Nah!” In the clip he was playing the piano while he was saying it, then we just made the tune out of that. Then with the bit at the end, he records our sessions on his phone, so if I say something that could be used or if I’m spitting a bar, we can go back to it and be like this is what you were saying. I didn’t know and this was like one of the first few times we proper got it in and I was just telling him the story. I was like, “This the beat reminds me of when I was a kid with my stepdad” and it was just about being lied to basically. That’s that story, it just came naturally. I felt like everything good just comes and you don’t have to force it, you know?