BUGZY MALONE | “THE RESPECT IN JAIL IS HIGH, BUT THE RESPECT IN THE MUSIC SCENE IS IGNORE EVERYONE.”

MAN­CUNI­AN grime artist Bug­zy Malone has launched a scath­ing attack on the people in the music industry, stat­ing that there was more respect for his lyr­ics in when he was in jail.

Bug­zy, real name Aaron Dav­is, was speak­ing to Chuck­ie on JD Sports’ In the Duffle Bag pod­cast when he spoke about the dif­fer­ent responses to his work: “Everything in music or cre­at­ive art is feed­back and the feed­back I was get­ting was you were like the Skep­tas or the JMEs of the hood so when I’m hear­ing that can’t I do it — because I talk dif­fer­ent?

“Then what happened is I went to jail, and when I was in jail, I was in with Lon­don guys and that’s like your first encounter with Lon­don, Birm­ing­ham, Liv­er­pool and you just see that every­body bleeds the same col­our.”

“The respect in jail is high, but the respect in the music scene was just like, oh, we can ignore every­one — so that’s where I seen a couple of my good friends was from Lon­don — there’s no dif­fer­ence — and I think when you’re from the hood you stay in their hood — you don’t even go to anoth­er hood in your own area.

The grime artist, who recently col­lab­or­ated with fel­low Manc Aitch on Kilos, added: “People are for­eign to you so when you see Skep­ta on screen, it’s for­eign, it’s like he must be a dif­fer­ent creature to us but, for me, when I was around a lot of Lon­don­ers in jail it was like they rated me because of the way I was con­duct­ing myself, so when I spat lyr­ics, they rated the lyr­ics.

“So I thought if you’re rat­ing the lyr­ics and you’re Lon­don-cer­ti­fied, then I’m bring­ing this sh*t to out­side.”

Bug­zy also spoke to Chuck­ie about the first time he heard spit­ting lyr­ics in Manchester, and his take on the genre: “We had the young­er gangs, who’d spit lyr­ics and you’d kind of doc­u­ment that cul­ture, depend­ant on how deep you were into it, but we had MCs that were not involved in any­thing but was doc­u­ment­ing it with the sound, with the instru­ment, with the kind of things that they were say­ing.

“Then you have the people like myself, one of the older, not the deep deep involved, that was doc­u­ment­ing it from the angle of drill with grime.

“We was more like we’d see MCs as mup­pets, just this bar-for-bar sh*t but they’re not say­ing any­thing because it was like ‘last night we was there and we’ve done that to my man when we see that man’ — so that’s kinda’ (sic) like what we were doing, so that’s kind of my first encounter of spit­ting lyr­ics.”

Bug­zy was speak­ing to Chuck­ie on JD Sports’ new pod­cast In the Duffle Bag, you can listen to the full show on You­tube and iTunes.

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Rishma Dhaliwal

Rishma Dhaliwal

Edit­or / PR Con­sult­ant at No Bounds
Rishma Dhali­w­al has extens­ive exper­i­ence study­ing and work­ing in the music and media industry. Hav­ing writ­ten a thes­is on how Hip Hop acts as a social move­ment, she has spent years research­ing and con­nect­ing with artists who use the art form as a tool for bring­ing a voice to the voice­less. Cur­rently work­ing in TV, Rishma brings her PR and media know­ledge to I am Hip Hop and oth­er pro­jects by No Bounds.

About Rishma Dhaliwal

Rishma Dhaliwal
Rishma Dhaliwal has extensive experience studying and working in the music and media industry. Having written a thesis on how Hip Hop acts as a social movement, she has spent years researching and connecting with artists who use the art form as a tool for bringing a voice to the voiceless. Currently working in TV, Rishma brings her PR and media knowledge to I am Hip Hop and other projects by No Bounds.