INTERVIEW | AN INTRODUCTION TO UK RAPPER ZEPH

By Oscar Green • On Interviews

Zeph is one of Manchester new­est pro­spects mak­ing a name for him­self in the UK rap game. Already accu­mu­lat­ing mil­lions of views and streams across both You­Tube and Spo­ti­fy, Zeph is cel­eb­rat­ing the release of his debut EP ‘Ini­ti­ation’ as he ends 2020 on a high. A rap­per whose abil­ity stretches across hip-hop, drill and grime con­tin­ues to demon­strate his tal­ent with catchy flows and lyr­ics through­out his EP. Rap­ping since a young age, Zeph has become one of Manchester’s biggest acts fea­tur­ing on the P110 You­Tube chan­nel twice, Kenny Allstar’s ‘Voice of the Street’ radio show and even mak­ing it as a sup­port act for the Puma x Manchester City kit launch. I inter­viewed Zeph to ask about his back­ground, New EP and what he thought of music com­ing out of Manchester.

How did you first get into music and decide rap­ping was what you wanted to pursue?

I didn’t take rap­ping to ser­i­ously, but when I got a bit older I was work­ing and didn’t enjoy work­ing, so I felt like I could rap and I took that chance. I was about 18 and I just took that chance with a free­style and it took off from there.

Grow­ing up, who were your inspir­a­tions in music? 

Obvi­ously, I listened to a lot of music. I listened to a lot of old rap in my opin­ion but to be hon­est when I star­ted doing music I was more inspired by Manchester artist. People like Bug­zy (Malone). See­ing someone from around the area just do something…

Your EP has been out for just over a month now, what’s the response to it been like? Par­tic­u­larly in Manchester? 

Its def­in­itely been pop­ping off. We are doing a little some­thing tomor­row (Sat­urday 19th), a pop up shop. We’re going to four dif­fer­ent loc­a­tions in Manchester and sell some mer­chand­ise and meet some fans. But we are doing what we can and because of my man­age­ment team there’s def­in­itely good stuff hap­pen­ing from it.

This is your first full EP, what was the think­ing behind the name initiation? 

I was just giv­ing my audi­ence a little taste to the styles I wanted to put in. So, ini­ti­ation is just like the start. It’s just like the start of my career and a little taste of what’s to come.

On the EP I feel that you showed a dif­fer­ent side to you and you weren’t spit­ting straight bars on every track, is that some­thing you have been work­ing on? And is the next step for your career to add some com­mer­cial ele­ments to your music? 

I really enjoyed put­ting it out because it’s got load of dif­fer­ent kinds of songs and styles and I wanted to show people that so it’s been good so far. Yeah lit­er­ally, I’ve been work­ing on mak­ing because as I said I listen to a lot of music and I just wanted to make some­thing I like listen­ing to.

There’s clearly a grow­ing music scene in Manchester and you fre­quently col­lab with them is there a big sense of com­munity between the artist in Manny? 

 Yeah def­in­itely. It’s some­thing I learnt when I first got into the music game. I’ve met so many people, espe­cially in Manchester, through this music. There is def­in­itely a com­munity in Manchester on social media and stuff like that.

How do you think the music com­ing from Manchester com­pares to oth­er cit­ies across the UK and do audi­ences res­on­ate with your lyr­ics and culture? 

 Nah I would def­in­itely say its bet­ter, I feel like we got our own kind of sound. There’s not a good loc­a­tion where you can make music from but I do feel people in Manchester are lock­ing onto their own style and not try­ing to do what every­one else is doing.

Do you feel Manchester gets over­looked by the rest of the UK or have you proved your­self as a city enough? 

Def­in­itely, Def­in­itely. I would say that Manchester is one of the best cit­ies in the UK music wise.

If you had to pick your top 5 Manny artists to com­pete in a clash against oth­er cit­ies who would you pick? 

 Its mad name drop­ping like that but; Aitch, Meekz, Tunde, me and we will say Bug­zy Malone. That’s a strong tem!

I’ve seen a lot of com­ments on your You­Tube videos talk­ing about you and Aitch link­ing up, is there some­thing in the pipeline? 

 Nah not right now. But we are under the same man­age­ment so if we ever wanted to make it happened we could make it hap­pen but it is some­thing that we want to hap­pen naturally.

Are there any new Manchester artists you feel people should get to know?

Yeah, Yeah. Mas­ter­mind, Ayo Bri­tain and Rob­bah­hol­low. They’re all hard.

What’s the plan for next year?

Con­sist­ency

Be sure to check out Zeph’s latest EP on all stream­ing ser­vices as well as his socials for updates on new music.

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Oscar Green

Oscar is straight out of North West Lon­don. A music enthu­si­ast who loves any­thing from Hip-Hop to Reg­gae to Drum and Bass. He is always on the hunt for new music and runs an events/blog page on Ins­tagram @juicymuisc.uk

About Oscar Green

Oscar is straight out of North West London. A music enthusiast who loves anything from Hip-Hop to Reggae to Drum and Bass. He is always on the hunt for new music and runs an events/blog page on Instagram @juicymuisc.uk