INTERVIEW | A SIT DOWN WITH SPOKEN WORD ARTIST POETIKAH FOLLOWING THE RELEASE OF ‘THAH HURRICANE’

Spoken word artist Poet­ikah dropped some ser­i­ous post-christ­mas fire for our speak­ers with her latest single ‘Thah Hur­ricane’ which is taken from her upcom­ing album ‘Like Smoke On Water’.  The track, which was accom­pan­ied by an equally strik­ing music video, has been mak­ing noise across the music scene, so it was only right for us to shed some more light on this incred­ibly tal­en­ted lyr­i­cist.

For those just being intro­duced to Poet­ikah, tell us a bit about your­self?

I’m a poet/ spoken word artist, music artist, freel­ance copy­writer / con­tent writer and mas­sage ther­ap­ist from South East Lon­don, where I still reside. I work full-time and am either usu­ally cre­at­ing, host­ing, heal­ing or rest­ing when I’m not.

Music is truly my Great Love, my gift is to wield a Pen into words and I love to care-take for people through heal­ing prac­tises. Those are my super­powers, Word, Sound and Heal­ing with it all.

You are a poet, spoken word artist and rap­per — what came first?

Exactly in that order. Word first. But I would­n’t and don’t refer to myself as a “rap­per”, I’m a word­smith and lyr­i­cist. Rap­ping is apart of it, there’s just so much more ..

Your lyr­i­cism is accom­pan­ied by ver­sat­ile pro­duc­tion, from Jazz to Drill. How would you define your sound?

I define my sound as the lyr­i­cism itself. Without the beats and instru­ment­als, my sound is what I write and how I speak it. My gen­er­al sound ranges around Hip-Hop, Neo-Clas­sic­al, Altern­at­ive, I just nev­er want for the music to be defined, it’s organ­ic and chan­ging, I wish to change with it.

Tell us a bit about your latest single ‘Thah Hur­ricane’? Where did the inspir­a­tion behind the track come from?

It’s spoken word poetry, it just came to me, but It was around the time of writ­ing with a war­fare theme, spir­itu­al war­fare, intern­al .. such as my single before this one, ‘Four Score Wars’, it will make more sense once you hear the album. It ties in with the Yor­uba Orisha God­dess OYA, deity of winds light­ning, viol­ent storms, death and REBIRTH. Hur­ricanes are thought to be the fem­in­ine spir­it from West Africa going after the slave ships of those stolen from It’s shores and Poet­ikah was com­ing to Hur­ricane on the scene, no half step­ping with the cre­ativ­ity and her pen.

Tell us about your upcom­ing album ‘Like Smoke On Water’ — what can we expect to hear on it?

‘Like Smoke on Water’, is almost an exper­i­ment­al album. I’m exper­i­ment­ing with tak­ing Spoken Word Music and Neo-Clas­sic­al Hip-Hop to cine­mat­ic depths, high­light­ing thah Spir­it ( GOD ) in the mak­ings. You can expect to hear word­smith­ing in a way, that hope­fully you’ve nev­er exper­i­enced before.

Where do you get your inspir­a­tion from when writ­ing lyr­ics / poetry? Does most of it draw from your own life exper­i­ences?

The inspir­a­tion comes from down­loads, divine inspir­a­tion, as it’s not from me its through me. It could be at ran­dom whilst in my day to day or on a train, because I’m listen­ing to Ghetts, James Blake or Black Thought and a lyr­ic becomes a cata­lyst, some­times it starts as an idea or stream of con­scious­ness.

We have seen you shell it down in the free­style cir­cuit at EOW, heard your per­form spoken word, and with this track seen you smash it on a stu­dio song. A multi-dimen­sion­al artist! What have you enjoyed most about your jour­ney in music so far?

What I enjoy most is the cre­ation pro­cess with­in the stu­dio. Work­ing on some­thing from scratch, on instru­ment­als and well thought out com­pos­i­tions with producers/composers. It’s the time I can really dive into the musi­cian­ship and become one with the sound and assist in guid­ing the vibra­tion of the pro­ject.

What else have you got com­ing up in 2023?

I have a couple of col­lab­or­at­ive albums com­ing with a fel­low spoken word artist and close, per­son­al friend of mine, Miss Yan­key with ‘Daugh­ters of the Waters’, and a Hip-Hop artist., anoth­er close, per­son­al friend of mine, from RU‑1 Fam, Watusi 87 with, ‘Sen­ti­Ment­al­ity’. Also, I’m sure that there’ll be more show­ings of inter­act­ive theatre show, Apex Zer­o’s, ‘Drum­mer War­ri­or Storyteller’, which Guy Kelton Jones and I wrote poetry for and were cast mem­bers in. In the mor­tal words of Ghetts, “I Don’t Care Bout Nos­t­a­liga, my Best Years are Ahead of Me” ..

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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.

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