GREATEST: James Massiah

I rated the proposition that was made to me. The initial deck, the communication in the early meetings, the clarity of vision and long-term perspective, the caliber of other collaborators on the project–the ducks were all in a row. 

I think of "rhythm and poetry" as more of a ‘backronym’ than anything else. I've made music for a long time, starting in church playing the drums, but even with these more recent releases, they'd been in the works for some time. It's maybe a symptom of our times, but people struggle to see that a person can be a thing and another thing at the same time. In my mind, it's not that I've gone from one thing to another, I'm just doing things. I sing, I write, I recite, I read, I rap, I speak, but the title that seems best fitting is poet. Poet and musician.

If I'm approaching a song from a production standpoint, it's about the construction or arrangement of the music and the sounds. The [Natural Born Killers] EP features very little in the way of lyrics or lyricism because that wasn't the way the tracks were. I didn't feel obliged to slap a verse or a poem over the beats just because. I've written a lot of poetry and made a lot of music this year, particularly during the lockdown. They're distinct things, in my mind. The music isn't a backdoor way to get more eyes and ears on me as an entity or to try and make my poetry more appealing or accessible by virtue of having a beat to it. The poetry is purely about the words and the magic they hold. The music is about the sounds, how it makes people think and feel, and perhaps, as with Natural Born Killers, some words, well placed, well said, can add to the feeling and enhance the music rhythmically or sonically, melodically or whatever. I write poetry and I make music.  

It really depends on who you speak to. I know you said "according to you," but I can't stress that enough. Some would say that once you've broken out of any kind of traditional verse form, it's already lost its right to be called a poem. Others would say, it's not if its themes are not "poetic." Others just don't like the idea of anyone other than the existing canon or ‘Oxbridge’ students or people who've been tapped by the big publishers being called poets. I really don't know. What is art? When does food become art? When does a piece of furniture become a sculpture or when does a pop song become a sound piece? When does a shopping list become a poem? When do the lyrics to a dancehall song become worthy of a Pulitzer Prize?

I think it's important to know who you are and what you do, and to like what you do or at least see the value in it. I write poetry because I read poetry and take influences from all sorts of places, with my roots firmly in the poetry I read as a child, under the guidance of my parents and school teachers. I want my work to be read far and wide, to be considered as important and within the lineage of great English writers. To some extent, I feel accomplished enough by virtue of the fact that I like what I write. I enjoy my poetry and I classify it as that. Whether or not anyone else enjoys it or classifies it as poetry is almost none of my business.

It's interesting that you refer to her as a vocalist, not as a rapper or singer or even a poet. I'm not making any statement or accusation here, I just find it interesting and I wonder how much someone's identity or background or the social demographic they belong to, relative, of course, to whatever it is they create, determines how that individual will be classified or how their work will be defined. Just as an aside. (I hope this makes it through the edit.) We go way back but I think I'm a bit older than Shygirl—we're also from different ends [of London]. I'm Southwest and she's Southeast and for those in the know, that's almost further apart geographically and culturally than being from North and South or East and West!

I won't talk it up, but we've had some really important conversations over the years at very specific milestones along the way. How she and I have both grown and changed over that period would maybe be better said by an outsider, but the consistent themes in our relationship are our respect and admiration for one another and our love of poetry and music. That may have even been one of our first conversations and more often than not, the spaces we're in together have one or the other or both (poetry and music) taking place in the background. She's a very special person and a fucking wicked artist. It's an honour to be able to work so closely with her on this and I'm honoured that the heads at MCQ figured out that this might be a good way to launch the new venture. I think they might be onto something.