Interview: Next Wave Presents Jeshi (UK) - Auckland Show with Greatsouth

Spotlighting the brutal everyday realities of austerity-era UK with his breakout 2022 album Universal Credit, Jeshi headlines 100% GOOD's first ever Next Wave party this Friday at Tāmaki Makaurau's new Double Whammy, joined by special guest Greatsouth. Hailed as one of the most vital hip-hop voices of a new generation by The Guardian and Pitchfork, we chatted with the North London rap star while he was on a brief sojourn in Morocco, just ahead of his debut tour of Australasia. Jeshi spoke about his latest single / video 'HURRICANE' and upcoming sophomore album, how life has changed since recording Universal Credit while subsiding on welfare, getting the unexpected thumbs up from Blur and more...

Next Wave presents Jeshi (UK) with Greatsouth
Friday 11th October - Double Whammy, Auckland
Tickets on sale HERE via UTR

Chris Cudby: Are there any Australian or New Zealand rap artists on your radar at all? Have you heard there's a lot of controversy with an Australian drill crew called ONEFOUR?

Jeshi: I've heard of them and I've seen clips, I've never really deep dove into it. I listen to a lot of Australian punk music, like Amyl and The Sniffers that I love. But no, I haven't tapped into that yet. Is it really big over there?

Yeah with a certain cross-section of people. The Australian police are real assholes and basically treat this one rap crew like a gang. And will just try to shut all their shows down wherever they play, even overseas as well.

That’s wild. We gotta fix it.

Your debut album Universal Credit — which is recognised as a landmark album...

Which is amazing! It's so crazy that's the thing. It's meant a lot of people. Because I never had that intention when I was making it.

On the cover of your album you're holding a big beneficiary cheque — a welfare cheque. Were you on actually on universal credit when you were making that record?

Yeah I was. That was kind of the inspiration behind it. Trying to turn a negative situation into a positive thing and shed some light and humour onto that situation I was in at the time.

How has life changed for you since that album came out?

It's changed a lot. I’m in a much more comfortable position, where I have like the freedom to be able to live and create art and create music, travel the world and do shows. That's been great in that respect. I guess also having more of a platform where I have an audience of people who are listening to what I'm doing. Which I think gives everything a little bit more weight when you're making things, which I love. I’d say I think it's changed my life in pretty much every way, in a good way. And I hope this next one will change my life further.

In England, you guys have just voted out an austerity, conservative government. In New Zealand we have quite sadly voted in an austerity government, they're already scapegoating beneficiaries and stuff like that. You rapped about "generation no hope" — is it looking any better yet in England with the new government, or is it too early to say?

I think it's too early to say. Generally I'm of the thing that... it's two sides of the same coin in my life and I've not really seen much difference between either of those sides. I think a lot of the time it's bases put in place to make people shut up. I don't know, I'm yet to see a government that really does what they should do for the people. I hope that I will one day in my life, but since this has come in, so far not yet. But hopefully maybe they turn that around. Because I think we could all do with that a little bit more. It's crazy times in the world.

Your song that you put out earlier this year 'Total 90', has that absolutely gigantic Blur sample from 'Song 2'. What's the process like getting something like that cleared and how did you come up with that in the first place?

It's really long. We made the song kind of like as a joke, we were just messing around. I'd finished the album and we just wanted to make something fun. I don't really sample songs a lot, at least not songs like that. So we thought it was something new to try. We made it, I never thought it would come out, because I never thought it would get cleared. You have to go through the whole process of — you have to have every member of Blur individually clear the sample. Which I also didn't think they would, but they did. Which was pretty big because they fuck with what I did with the song. Which is amazing. They're so great, Damon Albarn, what he done with Blur and Gorillaz and everything. Even for him to hear that and give it his stamp of approval was big for me. It was cool, but honestly I never thought it would ever come out... It was a happy surprise.

You mentioned that you are working on a new album at the moment. Who have you been working with?

Yeah. There's a lot of friends and collaborators. My good friends from home, like Elijah Waters and Fredwave... Jonah, JD Reid also, who's really amazing. He’s done a lot of work on the album. It was a very collaborative process. So I'll be in the room with four or five different producers, all throwing things against the wall trying out ideas. That's generally how we work across it on most of the songs. There's a load of production credits, it's been a very collaborative process with loads of amazing people. There's some features on there that I'm excited by. This girl called LEILAH. She's on a couple of songs, she's incredible... loads of people throwing ideas to make something very beautiful.

Do you have a title that you can share for that yet?

There is a title and I love the title, but I'm not going to say it yet. But it will be shared soon. But the next single... called 'HURRICANE' is out (now). We've done this really amazing video I worked on with these directors. I'm hyped, it's one of my favourite songs off the record so I'm excited to put it out.

The song is produced by Jonah, who I've collaborate with quite a lot. We actually made the song in LA, which is quite funny because... the one song I made in LA that's going on the album, I made with my boy from London. We only made it because both of our sessions got cancelled that day. So we just linked up and we ended up making one of my favourite songs I've ever made. Then worked on a video with *UNCANNY, they're amazing directors and it's kind of like just this visual clusterfuck. Me getting my acting on — being a weatherman and a TV salesman and also riding around in like a stormtrooper car, chasing tornadoes and hurricanes. It's really fun and it's quite a mental video.

Tying it back to your show in Auckland with Next Wave. Your support is an amazing songwriter and rapper called Greatsouth, who's one of our finest rising talents. What can we look forward to from JESHI’s first ever performance in New Zealand?

It's going to be very unhinged. Over the last few months we've moved the show into more of a live capacity. So even songs that people know are reimagined. It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience in a way, where it's not just me up there playing the songs. I don't know what's gonna happen. You don’t know what's gonna happen. It's going to be great.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.