What does Tinie listen under the shower?
“Excellent question! I listen mostly the news now. I am a big fan of new music, always looking for new ideas for my own. I would like to show you my Spotify or my Apple Music. If your album is released this week, it is likely that I will be listening. Lately I am listening quite a lot an American rapper named Travis Scott, then Tame Impala, Ne-Yo …. ”
Tinie makes no secret of being an esthete, a beauty lover, one that comes from the second generation of grime rapper is perhaps more flexible to give in to temptations. Skepta would never do that and with is 35 years he can still be found around in overalls. But not Tinie, who always proved to be more ductile to external contamination. Choosing hispseudonym, the 12 year olded Patrick had softened Tempah (from temper, anger) with Tinie (small), as he wanted to distinguish himself immediately by the politicized phalanx of grime. Mathematics and Science, that are the reasons that always convinced Patrick to open his books. Imagine then how should you react when in September a team of scientists asked him to undergo to some neurological experiments.
“I went to the University of Reading to make this test along with some truly absurd scientists. They wanted to figure out exactly which areas of the brain were involved while listening to music and, above all, how this can act on mood and attitude. “
Most of the repertoire submitted to Tinie, which of course immediately agreed to take part, focused on classical music. With some exceptions of his songs, such as Girls Like. “On my song I felt a warm feeling. I think the results will be slowly published, I just hope to be helpful. ”
Tinie Tempah in lab rat version lacked the list of roles that he can assume. But which one of these works best? The grime rapper, spitting rhymes in bursts, or the vocalist from electronic and dance, which can safely do his figure in an Ibiza club? Here too, it seems that the only possible way is to his city into this. “It’s complicated, because of the place where I was born,” says Patrick. “Our culture is a very colorful concentrated built by hip hop, grime, dubstep, dance, drum ‘n’ bass.”
I define my-self a London-centric artist, which represents the continuous vibration changes. Obviously, I like to dance, but as an English I feel the need to wander between the genres when and how I want.
The problem now, though, is that the grime from underground form of rapping on fast bases, escaped from the suburbs.
Not only, it was also released from the White Cliffs of His Majesty, becoming a bit the current fashion both in Europe and in the States. Bigwigs of American rap as A$AP Rocky would bend over backwards to have two stanzas barked from Skepta or even to enter into an historic English grime label. Think about Drake, who in 2015 would sign with Boy Better Know by Skepta seems only for a matter of image.
“I’m really proud of what is happening to grime,” says Tinie without any jealousy. “For me it is a genre that has always existed and it has not so far received the visibility it deserves. Other British genres with the same vehemence, like punk and rock, were more incensed, more recognized by the world. Now it’s grime turn? Well, he deserves it, he gave me everything. ”
Cerco disperatamente di estrapolare dalle parole di Tinie qualche indizio che mi dica di più su come sarà l’album. Sarà grime senza compromessi pop, come l’ultimo Junk Food, del 2015? I primi tre singoli fanno pensare al contrario. «Il mio lavoro è di innovare, di spingere il sound avanti nel futuro. Che sia allo stesso tempo giovane e nostalgico, con tantissimi campioni R&B e UK bass, oltre a suoni che non credo tu abbia mai sentito in vita tua».
I try desperately to extrapolate from the words of Tinie some clues to tell me more about how the album will be. It will be pop grime without compromise, as the last Junk Food, from 2015? The first three singles suggest the contrary.
“My job is to innovate, to push the sound forward in the future. It will be both young and nostalgic, with many R&B samples and UK bass, as well as sounds that I don’t think you never heard in your life.”
