After rubberstamping his place as one of the UK’s most influential, ambitious rappers with 2021 album ‘Conflict of Interest’, Ghetts is determined to push himself even further. Exploring socio-political themes and conceptual ideas that would stump many of his peers, the 39-year-old rapper and songwriter’s new record ‘On Purpose, With Purpose’ delivers a sharp, targeted brand of social commentary against a vibrant sonic atmosphere that melds hip-hop, rap, dancehall, afrobeats, and soul.
Fresh from winning the Pioneer Award at the 2024 MOBOs, Ghetts sat down with NME at his east London studio to discuss building on the success of ‘Conflict of Interest’, discovering a calmer vocal style, and pushing against the “safe space” UK rap has found itself in. Read the interview below, or watch the full conversation above.
Congratulations on your MOBO Pioneer Award win. What was that moment like?
“It felt like a landmark. It felt like a checkpoint in my career. It felt like something inspiring to leap off, towards something else. I was gonna go up [to collect the award] by myself, but I just looked at my parents and went “Mum, do you wanna come up?” I knew that maybe if my mum didn’t come up with me, I would regret that later in life. That’s gonna be something amazing to look back on.”
We’re here today to talk about your new album ‘On Purpose, With Purpose’. The sequencing of the album seems significant – why did you structure it the way you did?
“I always want the music to feel like a movie, to provide the listener with a unique understanding of my thought processes, or what’s going on in my life. Once again, I got a longtime collaborator and friend TJ Amadi on the sequencing… he has a unique understanding of me as a person that goes beyond music, and I think that’s important when we’re collaborating, because sometimes we work off presumptions or assumptions of how somebody may be, but sometimes it’s quite far from the truth.”
The first eight tracks seem like a continuation of ‘Conflict of Interest’, but then things veer off in a different direction. How do you view the relationship between the two albums?
“There definitely is a relationship between the two, because I never stopped recording after ‘Conflict of Interest’. I was in the studio when it was at Number 2, working on new music. [I was] being fearless in terms of not trying to recreate ‘Conflict of Interest’, but doing something that was different and told a different story and was sonically different. When you feel like you’ve got something right and the masses identify with it, it’s easy to be in the realm of ‘Let’s do something like that, it worked’, but I think creatively that’s a dangerous place to be.”
How important is it for you to work with producers and collaborators you trust?
“It’s always a conversation. There’s all this stuff about people’s attention span being lower, and I guess when you’re not a creative, and you’re more on the business side, these questions come into play. But for myself and the creatives I work with, we’re more like: ‘Does it feel right? Is it eight minutes? Did you realise it was eight minutes when were you listening to it, though? Or did you just enjoy it?'”
Where do you think your drive to create cohesive bodies of work that comes from?
“Listening to great projects before I got started in my own career. The album was the biggest thing, before the singles era took over, it was all about building a cohesive body of work that showed different emotions and different sides to the individual. Dr Dre’s ‘The Chronic’, or 50 Cent’s ‘Get Rich or Die Trying’, or Jay Z’s ‘The Blueprint’.”
The album closes with two deep, emotively powerful tracks, ‘Street Politics’ ft. Tiggs da Author and ‘Jonah’s Safety’ ft. Pip Millet, an exploration of postnatal depression. Could you tell me about the story behind the latter track?
“I was going from room to room at this studio one day. Reiss Nicholas, a long-time collaborator and friend, was like ‘I’ve got a loop for you’. Within the first minute, I had the first two lines. I was like ‘Within those two lines is a powerful concept that needs further research, I’m gonna leave it right there.’ I wanted to be respectful, because it’s hard being a man to have a well-rounded view of what a woman might go through — postnatal depression. I’m probably just scratching the surface, as much as a male could understand…”
“I definitely wanted to push my writing to a new place that I haven’t been before. I was looking at rap, and feeling like for the last few years… it’s been in a very safe space… ‘This is cool, this is what we’re gonna rap about, this works’. I wanted to be more fearless. Let’s talk about something real but without making it sound super preachy or boring.”
‘Double Standards’ is another track where you strike that balance well. One particularly striking line is “Steve Jobs won’t let his children use an iPad / And my kids think that I’m bad, mad”. It’s a comic line, but it captures the idea of raising children in a difficult, unjust world. How do you try and prepare them for that world?
“I’m still learning. With my 11-year-old, I try and conversate with her, not tell her stuff. I like to tell her why I think this, and see what she thinks about this, and we conversate, because children are much brighter than we think they are, much more alert. Their brains are like sponges way more than ours are, they can take in different things.”
You recently donated the video budget for ‘Laps’ ft. Moonchild Sanelly to your local athletics club in Newham. How has the area changed since you were growing up in Newham?
“Newham’s changed a lot. Apart from aesthetically, the vibes even just changed, it’s a much darker place than when I was growing up there. If I’m in a position to help and I can, I wanna help. We all need to have this attitude. The system’s only broken to us, the system’s working for who the system’s meant to work for. We’ve been divided by race and we’ve been divided by religion and we spend most of our days arguing amongst ourselves while those who are meant to get rich are just cracking on. My thing is just ‘Let’s help ourselves’.”
You’ve spoken before about the strangeness of only gaining widespread appreciation for your music 15 or 16 years into your career. What are the benefits of that wait?
“The saying ‘the cream will always rise to the top’, I think my career is testament to that, and to the power of consistency. Maybe I was just a little bit ahead at a time, and people just needed time, and that’s fine because everything is as it should be, and everything will be how it’s meant to be.”
Over that time, one thing that’s really marked you out as an artist is your use of your voice as an instrument. When did you first recognise that ability and how did you work on that skill?
“It was from studying a lot of great singers and instrumentalists, looking at my tool and thinking how I could push it. Just like a singer will be able to change key, why can’t I do that? I have studio sessions where I’m pushing myself, I’ll do a verse 100 times, and I’m not doing it 100 times because it’s not good, I’m doing it 100 times because within that verse, there’s about 1000 ways I could say this that the listener could appreciate.”
On that note, one thing that does strike me on the new album is that you’re calmer. You’re not going into Ghetto Mode!
“It’s true. My tone kinda changed… so I’m just working with my new tone, going through the gears. I feel like I’m gonna find a new version of Ghetto at some point, in terms of the rage, but where it sounds beautiful, sonically. But I’m still tryna explain it and work it out. I think ‘Laps’ is as close as I got there on this album — it’s got that energy but is still sonically pleasing on the ear. What used to really irritate me was I used to have all this sick wordplay and all these things I was doing, and people kinda referred to me as the energy guy. That used to really bother me. Then I realised there’s a way to do that, and there’s a when to do it, and a how to do it.”
You’re heading on tour at the end of March. How are you feeling about it?
“I’m just getting around to thinking about that now, and putting together a show in my head. I’m gonna get with my brother and we’re gonna make it amazing. But we’ve got big shoes to fill, because Roundhouse on the last tour was mind-blowing. But we’re gonna do it, definitely, it’s gonna be amazing, I know that because of the time we’re gonna put into it.”
Ghetts’ new album ‘On Purpose, With Purpose’ is out now.