Interview| Introducing Krash X Elements…

 

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IAHH Catch up with U.K Hip Hop duo Krash X Ele­ments in light of their Debut release ‘Astro­nauts and Crosses.’

What is it that brought you two togeth­er as a group?

Krash Wil­li­ams: In 09 we linked up as part of a team and were the 2 main rap­pers doing music work­shops in pris­ons. Lit­er­ally I remem­ber our 1st meet­ing, Ele­ments was play­ing me some of his beats and spit­ting bars and then we star­ted chat­ting about mak­ing a tune togeth­er to per­form on tour. The tunes got bet­ter and so we just added mir­cow­ave foods, Logic Pro and late nights into the mix.

In your opin­ion what’s the biggest prob­lem with the rap scene today?

Krash Wil­li­ams: People don’t talk about bod­ies of work as much any­more. People read in lyr­ics because a lot of artist’s would rather vent on social media instead of mak­ing a song about what they really feel. At the same time a lot of up and com­ing artists includ­ing ourselves would­n’t neces­sar­ily have a big plat­form to be heard so it’s a catch 22.

We love the art­work on your soon to be released EP “Astro­nauts and Crosses”, do you actu­ally look like the car­ton depic­tions and the front cov­er?

Ele­ments: To tell you the truth, I’m way short­er than Krash in real life, got me feel­ing like a giant on the cov­er tho!

Krash Wil­li­ams: Yeah pretty much haha

What are your day jobs or are full time artists?

Ele­ments: I work in men­tal health, before that I was work­ing for a home­less­ness char­ity

Krash Wil­li­ams: I work for ITV as a run­ner and occa­sion­al assist­ant edit­or.

As a group who are you main inspir­a­tions?

Krash Wil­li­ams: You gotta rate Out­kast for cre­at­ing their own lane as duo and mould­ing the game. Andre 3000 is was one of the 1st people I ever heard as a sick emcee and dope sing­er too. Also Kano, Massive Attack, Kanye and J Dilla to name a few.

Ele­ments: Yeah to add to that Yasi­in bey, wretch 32, Kendrick Lamar

What have you learnt from deliv­er­ing work­shops through­out pris­ons in the UK?

Ele­ments: People talk about things in lyr­ics they would nev­er be pre­pared to speak on in con­ver­sa­tion. Music, espe­cially hip hop is so import­ant because it gives people a plat­form to express them­selves hon­estly and reflect on things. Music is so import­ant for express­ing your­self. The amount of tal­ent out there is crazy but even regard­less of your tal­ent or how far you plan to take it writ­ing lyr­ics can be like ther­apy. For some people it’s their only way to talk about their feel­ings and exper­i­ences in an hon­est way.

Krash Wil­li­ams: There’s a lot of tal­ent that is unheard due to life cir­cum­stances and a lot of the people we met had been in and out of pris­on due to a sys­tem that fails them. People that even­tu­ally ‘make it out’ of the sys­tem usu­ally have to devel­op the drive to do so but must work 10x harder than most people out of pris­on but from tough back­grounds.

What’s your favour­ite food?

Ele­ments: It’s got to be my wife’s cur­ried chick­en.

Krash Wil­li­ams: It’s between cur­ried goat with rice and peas and Chick­en stew and Jol­lof rice for me…please don’t make me choose between the two LOL. Or if I wanna go com­pletely left I would say cer­eal in gen­er­al.

When did you first start pro­du­cing music, and what promp­ted that?

Krash Wil­li­ams: Ele­ments pro­duced the entire EP and I’ve pro­duced a pre­vi­ous solo pro­ject so I’ll let him answer this one.

Ele­ments: I star­ted off mak­ing beats when I was like 16, I’d already been try­ing to Dj for a few months and I got really inter­ested in how the music was made. I remem­ber I looped the drums from don’t change your love by the five Stair­steps on a cracked ver­sion of cool edit pro and layered anoth­er loop on top. I can still remem­ber the feel­ing. That break is mad fam­ous and has been used on loads of clas­sics but at the time I did­n’t have a clue about all that. I was hooked from then. I’ve nev­er got bored of it and I’m learn­ing all the time.

Where do you see your­self in 5 years?

Krash Wil­li­ams: Hope­fully hav­ing a 2 or more pro­jects under our belts and a bunch of singles. A track record of con­sist­ency along with more people that are into what we do. It would be great to be able to prop­erly eat off music too.

Ele­ments: Rais­ing a fam­ily and mak­ing music

Whens your next Lon­don gig?

Krash: Still in the pipeline so you’ll have to fol­low us at @krashxelements on insta to keep up to date.

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I’d you could rewind the clock on the cre­ation of your EP “Astro­nauts and Crosses”, is there any­thing you would of done dif­fer­ently?

Ele­ments: Nah man, there was the time pres­sures of fit­ting it in between 9–5 and fam­ily life but that’s what makes the music real. Work­ing on the Col­lab from dif­fer­ent ends of the coun­try has been mad but we know each oth­er deep­er than rap so the music is still authen­t­ic and we cut the vocals and wrote some of the verses in my home stu­dio in New­castle.

Krash Wil­li­ams: I can­’t pin point any­thing that I would want to do dif­fer­ently on this pro­ject because it was so organ­ic and pain­fully hon­est to us, that to fine tune it any more would dam­age it…you gotta show the scars meta­phor­ic­ally speak­ing. How­ever any­thing that we would want done dif­fer­ently will be on the next pro­ject for sure.

The 1st track off the EP of the same title, Astro­nauts and Crosses!

The EP will be avail­able across all major plat­forms includ­ing Spo­ti­fy, Apple music, iTunes, Deez­er, Google play, Tid­al etc.

Travel with us on social media:
@imkrash­wil­li­ams @elements1070
www.instagram.com/krashxelements

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Adam KG

Adam KG

Adam KG, is con­scious Hip Hop artist hail­ing from Lon­don City whilst walk­ing the world’s pave­ments. He is inter­ested in the enter­tain­ment and media sec­tor, youth work and hol­ist­ic health.

About Adam KG

Adam KG
Adam KG, is conscious Hip Hop artist hailing from London City whilst walking the world's pavements. He is interested in the entertainment and media sector, youth work and holistic health.