Interview

JS

What is it most people don’t understand about you?

Fox

Some of the tracks that people even know me for, they’ll be shocked to realise those weren’t the first bars I spat in studio for whatever producer it was. But because I was in a collaborative situation I didn’t have power in that situation and they were like “aww it’s a bit deep that”. So, then I switch it up, writing light-hearted I’m in the club ravings, because that’s a part of me too. I don’t ever want to be one dimensional I get shedded like the best of them. But then in the midst of one of them tunes I’ll still sow little lines or things, if I’m going to use a metaphor even in a party situation you can still use a real life poignant metaphor. So even 'True Master Plan' that a lot of people know me for. Actually, even though it’s a very clubby, boom boom boom, I’m saying, have a master plan for your life bro’, or someone else will have a plan for you and you’re not guaranteed to like their f***king plan. So best you get a plan for yourself. Nobody can live a life where everything you do is something you like. That’s not how learning works either coz through the struggle of doing shit you don’t like sometimes it’s how you get little bits of knowledge.

JS

Your experience of life comes from the varied roles and positions you've held?

Fox

I’ve taught in schools, I’ve done youth work for 20 years now. I always thought I wanted to be a teacher, wanted to work towards getting in that environment. The more I worked in schools, as a freelancer the more man realised “anuh me dis” because the restrictions around education. What their aim is, differs from mine. Like, remember those adverts they used to have on TV about charity? They go right, you can give a man a bottle of water and he can quench his thirst or you can give him the tools to dig a well and they can drink forever. This is how I look at education. What they’re trying to do is basically, give you a bottle of water. Teach you how to be a good obedient citizen to go out here and accept these double standards called Values. That’s what schools become [pause]. Where are the tools to dig the well? Adults are broken horses. We’ve been broken out of our wildness, time ago, man have rode us, broke that little bronco ting out of us, the need to wanna kick and roam free across the meadows. Now we’re happy to be sedate and now we’ve got the young horses. But here’s how it goes. They broke that out of us and actually put us in charge of breaking our young horses. So that’s an actual sick thing because there’s parents or adults who are being held prisoner by a thing that are now helping to break in the other prisoners.

JS

What reaction do you get when people know you’ve done all these things alongside music?

Fox

When I tell people about this youth work thing they go "aww good on ya". I don’t want a pat on the back for it. It's re-balancing the karmic tables. I’ve done a lot of naughty shit back in the day, I want to be that person who comes across a young person and say some shit to them I wish someone had said to me. It’s about communication.

The experience has taught me that it’s in the more deprived places that you find a level of realness that you can't escape.

JS

What is Britain’s cultural heritage?

Fox

As in youth culture? Nowt necessarily bad, as long as we incorporate and make it our own. It will be interesting to see what the heritage looks like in 20-50 yrs. As so many other cultures now call Britain, home. There are two cultures I know people in England I think have tried to replicate is Jamaica and America. To me those two black cultures have the strongest influence in England and froze into the British melting pot. The good and the bad.

Culture is a world thing for everyone. If I want to make Albanian folk music and add some yardie music, ain’t no Albanian’s can tell me nothing about that. But that being said you’ve still got to approach the enterprise with a degree of respect. I’m going to do a bit of history on Albanian folk music. If I know that rah, Albanian folk musicians have traditionally not been getting paid and the system prefers hearing me more than it likes hearing from them, I’m holding the door open innit. Respect to Chimpo (record producer, DJ) all day long, because no matter what he does, he always points back to the community. Always goes “yo, check my man over there, who you don’t know about, who made some of this stuff” that’s all you can ever ask from anybody. Iggy Azalea or whoever, do whatever you want to do who cares, I only don’t like you on the basis that I don’t like your music. Not on the basis that you’re a white girl from Australia with an American accent, that’s doing Hip Hop. That’s your business if that’s how you want to roll.

In an ideal world we wouldn’t have arguments about cultural appropriation. Because in an ideal world where every group had access to some or reasonable access to economics, no one would care. Simples’ bredrin. That’s where the basis of this thing is. No one really cares.