Emerging from London with some deft rhymes and inventive rhythms, Speech Debell isn’t what you expect.
Debut album ‘Speech Therapy’ is laden with acoustic instrumentation, with one track even featuring the MC rapping over a bassoon. Yet with its inventive feel the album has sparked the imagination of critics.
A slow burning success, the Big Dada release was among the outside chances for the Mercury Music Prize 2009. Yet despite competition from the likes of Florence & The Machine, Glasvegas, The Horrors and more it was little known Speech Debelle who waltzed away with the prize.
A brave choice, but with one ground breaking album under her belt Speech Debelle is now the toast of the music world. ClashMusic caught up with the rapper some time ago to chat about her album, and the pressures of being a female MC in UK hip hop…
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
I’ve read you began writing at an early age, when was this?
About thirteen. I was rapping, but I was doing poetry before that from about the age of seven. Words sort of flood out of me, from a very young age. It was one of the earliest things I was ever interested in.
Well one of the things that attracted me to hip hop was the great use of words. It was really technical, rappers would play around with words. Also once I got into it the rappers at the time were people like 2Pac, and I just really appreciated the level of consciousness. People telling their stories as opposed to people writing pop songs and I just found that a lot more interesting than the songs that were on radio.
Do you write by yourself or is it a collaborative process?
I never took part in hip hop battles and I don’t plan to either. Unless I don’t like you. I wrote a lot of songs, a lot of songs that are on the album I wrote by myself. Others I wrote with my crew. Some songs dates back a long way, others don’t. Some I wrote when I was seventeen which is nearly ten years ago now. But others have been written more recently.
How do you construct the songs, by yourself or with a producer in the studio?
I was kind of working on my crew in the studio. Working on beats and songs. We kind of hooked up along the way. We like each other’s style, so we like to head into the studio writing beats.
UK hip hop tends to be male dominated, does this make you feel isolated at all?
Well it’s always been like that. If that had just occurred then I would maybe notice it more – be like “what’s happening?” That’s just how it is, and once you learn that you become used to it and you know how to work with it. I think hip hop in general in this country is something that is not very well understood, and if you add being female into there the it just fries people’s minds. It confuses the fuck out of people, it’s just way too much for people to understand.
How did the deal with Big Dada come about?
I called them up. I wanted a place to finish the album and they offered me a deal. Not that straight forward – it took a while, took a while to iron things out.
‘Speech Therapy’ has a very different feel to most UK hip hop albums…
It’s something that just happened. I wanted to do an album that was like a film score. I already had the songs written and I also wanted it to use musicians. I knew how I wanted it to sound but I didn’t know how to get there – it’s a good thing I had the producer and all the musicians.
In the UK rap scene there’s a certain pressure on women to look feminine, how has this affected you?
I’ve never really been into wearing dresses or stuff like that. As I’ve gotten older I wanted to dress differently, I wanted to feel sexy as a woman. I’m 26 now, so I feel as if I’ve had a coming age. For me, perhaps, rather than what the outside world thinks.
A lot of the album seems to come from a difficult point in your life, is it difficult to look back on this?
I write songs about pain and about love and they had to have some inspiration. I grew up without a father which is a lot more common than I realised before I put this album out. My childhood was good, I grew up in a middle class single parent home. Obviously a single parent home is not exactly a home – a broken home. Other than that, considering it was a broken home I had a really good childhood. My mum worked really hard to give me all the things I wanted – I was actually a spoilt brat. I got pretty much everything I wanted, even now after being kicked out coming back to my mum’s I still do. I spent some times in hostels and in friend’s houses so I got to see the real underbelly of society. That was when I wrote the majority of this album.
Are you set to take a break after ‘Speech Therapy’?
I haven’t wrote anything for the new album in a while. I think going away to Australia for six weeks really helped, so I’m going to go away for a while to write the next one.
Speech Debelle’s debut album ‘Speech Therapy’ is out now.
