The Essex Dream… An Interview With Cally (@kickitwidcally)

UK Hip-Hop is at an all-time high.  The fre­quency with which new tal­ent bursts in to the scene is incred­ible, and this is fant­ast­ic for the music we love.  Earli­er in the year, Essex based won­der­boy Cally burst on to the scene with his debut ‘The Essex Dream EP’, a col­lec­tion of tracks that knocked the com­pet­i­tion out of the water.  To stand out in such a sea of tal­ent, an artist must really be some­thing spe­cial, and Cally’s com­bin­a­tion of dope rhymes and slick beats, mix­ing humour and real­ness with geni­us effort­less­ness, makes him very spe­cial indeed.  I Am Hip-Hop caught up with the man him­self to get an insight into the world of Cally…

Q. Tell us a bit about your back­ground and how you got into music…

I actu­ally got into the scene pretty late, did­n’t under­stand the excite­ment of UK music ‘till I hit year 10. The raw sounds of Grime man­aged to cap­ture me.

Q. You released ‘The Essex Dream EP’ a few months back, how has it been received?

Lit­er­ally did more for me then any­one could ever imagine…believe it or not it really helped me battle some Demons I had.

 Did you have a vis­ion when you set about mak­ing the EP, or was it more about allow­ing your sound to devel­op naturally?

The EP was about test­ing the waters, a bit of Grime, a bit of rap, a bit of exper­i­ment­al music, I wanted to show my ver­sat­il­ity on this EP and make it easy to listen too. I love gar­age and rnb so they were factors I made sure I had on the EP.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qwxbr32Qy0[/youtube]

 What’s your favour­ite track?

This is a hard ques­tion but I feel like “kick it” is the deep­est song on the EP.  It’s the one that caught the atten­tion of every­one. The lyr­ics are very per­son­al. I actu­ally am per­form­ing this next year at a friend’s wedding.

Q. You’ve got some dope col­lab­or­a­tions on there, do you have a favourite?

To be hon­est every­one was a joy to work with on the EP.  There was so many people that took too long for verses so I had to take them off.

Q.  Who would be your dream collaborator?

I would love to work with Skep­ta one day, he has this aura that seems to bring out the best in people.  Also Missy Elliot…she is the hit machine.

Q. Who have been your biggest influences?

I grew up in a house­hold where music was always play­ing.  I grew up listen­ing to a lot of soul and rnb so people like Luth­er Vandross, Barry White and Celine Dion.  Weird I know.

 Q. How do you feel about the hip-hop and grime scene in the UK?  Is it growing?

I feel like the scene is grow­ing dra­mat­ic­ally, so many new faces hav­ing a go and keep­ing it alive,  every­one needs to stay humble and spread the pos­it­ive vibes.

Q. Are you work­ing on a fol­low up record at the moment?

Yes, got my single com­ing out some­time next year so just work­ing towards that.

Q. Where and when can we catch you live?

Next year I’ll be super act­ive I’ll do a few book­ings will be post­ing about them on my media pages.

Q. Are you involved in any oth­er pro­jects at the moment?

Yes, I am joined a col­lect­ive of artists and pro­du­cers we’re called TheSix15 More to be revealed in due time.  I also got two EPs to drop next year.

Q. What’s the ulti­mate goal?

Ulti­mate goal to be able to live com­fort­ably and die doing some­thing I love.

Have a listen to the Cally’s EP ‘The Essex Dream’ here : https://soundcloud.com/callythedreamer

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Micky Roots

Micky roots is one of the edit­ors of I am hip hop magazine, a pure hip hop head and visu­al artist he brings his strong know­ledge of hip hop, social con­scious­ness & polit­ic­al con­cern to No Bounds.

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