Interview: Get To Know SHAY D (@shayduk )

Q. First off thank you for the chance to inter­view you. If pos­sible could you give us your thoughts on our magazine “I Am Hip Hop”?

You’re wel­come. Thank you for hav­ing me in your magazine! I remem­ber run­ning some rap work­shops for young girls in Brick Lane and the arts centre had your magazine in their office, it had Lowkey. I picked it up and was impressed with the con­tent; the UK needed a socially con­scious free mag espe­cially on Hip Hop so big up yourselves.

Q. Why and how did you decide to pick up the mic and start rapping?

Dig­ging deep, I guess I star­ted rap­ping as it was  per­fect for being able to speak your mind and express your­self in a way that people would be inclined to listen. Obvi­ously I already loved hip hop and gar­age so back then we would all be MCing over eskimo beats and old hip hop instru­ment­als for fun. But hav­ing that minute or two to be able to get your mes­sage across and get a pos­it­ive reac­tion was really excit­ing for me. Hip Hop has always been about giv­ing the oppressed people a voice and I think that the core of that is the same, if we have con­cerns we want to share them!

Q. Who or what type of music has had an influ­ence over your rapping?

Hip Hop for sure. Rap­pers such as Tupac, Foxy Brown, Bizzy­Bone, Onyx, Da Brat and Big Pun have always made me be like “ah that’s a sick line, or sick flow” and it motiv­ated me back in the day. Over time, music from clas­sic­al to trip hop has an influ­ence on my mood and what I feel to write about. So it’s more music­al how­ever, life has been the biggest influ­ence to my bars.

Q. You recently released your first EP Once Upon a City. For people that have not listen to it yet what types of issues do your songs on the EP touch on and what were the reas­ons for these par­tic­u­lar topics?

I write poetry too and of course as a human feel so many dif­fer­ent emo­tions. I have always had a love of mel­an­chol­ic stor­ies and love has been a very power­ful emo­tion in my life. Through rap I usu­ally touch on social sub­jects, com­munity, life, the sys­tem, people and exper­i­ences. Once Upon A City how­ever, was a per­son­al pro­ject where pieces of my poetry which were more intim­ate, were sit­ting there and I really wanted to make a concept EP telling a story. It’s a dark fairy-tale of a for­bid­den love, two people that have a deep con­nec­tion and just want to be able to explore it but factors affect them. I think many people have these struggles through mor­als, cul­tures, class, race and cir­cum­stance. I also love lounge music, trip hop style music and the sing­er ‘TheWeeknd’ really inspired me, and I think it has these ele­ments. I was heav­ily involved in the dir­ec­tion of the effects, pro­duc­tion and nar­rat­ive so I loved cre­at­ing it.

Q. Do you feel as a female mc that you get treated any dif­fer­ently from the male mcs?

I get asked that ques­tion and my opin­ion evolves each time. I think that you def­in­itely do, you get judged imme­di­ately as if you are not going to be that great, but then that can work to your bene­fit if you are tal­en­ted. You are some­times shown a lot of respect and then some­times brushed aside. It’s a funny one. I mean we are classed as ‘female’ mcs as if mcs are just men, but then that’s con­di­tion­ing of soci­ety and it just is what it is. When we stop labelling ourselves as female mcs then there may be a gradu­al change, who knows.

Q. As well as a mc you are also a youth work­er. What type of work do you do with the youth and why do you feel it is import­ant to ingrate with the youth of London?

I run rap and lyr­ic writ­ing work­shops. Young people get to express them­selves through a cre­at­ive plat­form to get their voices heard. The work­shops encour­age young people to col­lab­or­ate and inspire each oth­er and work on their con­fid­ence. It also releases their opin­ions or any issues they have cre­at­ively instead of chan­nel­ling it through a neg­at­ive activ­ity. My job is to inspire and guide them, and give them love and growth through music. It’s vital to integ­rate with the youth of Lon­don, there are power in num­bers and espe­cially if we have pro­gress through a pos­it­ive outlet!

Q. So what can we expect from Shay D in the future?

My Hip Hop EP is out before sum­mer so look out for that on my site www.shaydmusic.com. I am also part of the hip hop col­lect­ive Lyr­ic­ally Chal­lenged and we run monthly spoken word and hip hop nights so we are work­ing hard on that all the time. I per­form reg­u­larly and hope to do some fest­ivals in the sum­mer. Next should be a world tour – inspir­ing people to unite and pro­duce beau­ti­ful things together!!