Strolling down Camden’s iconic Chalk Farm Road, JD Cliffe exudes that boisterous cheeky-chap confidence you only find from a North West Londoner. When NME meets him, he’s about to play to a sold-out crowd in the prestigious Camden Assembly. With a bounce in his step and his blinding sterling grin on show, the 29-year-old is a colourful character against the thunderous rainclouds above.
With Camden being his old stomping grounds, Cliffe finds it “sick” that he can play in a venue so close to his heart. “I feel like I’m getting closer to what I envisioned for myself,” he says candidly, tucked into a cushioned booth at the back of the restaurant. He also shares that his next goal is to “build up” to performing huge shows in other prestigious venues in the area like Electric Ballroom and the Roundhouse – the latter being “a dream for man.”
But recently, Cliffe has proven he’s not a follower in the UK rap world, but more so a nonconformist with ‘Buss Ur Head’ – a wondrously boisterous track that has pushed him to new heights. Switching out the frenetic 808s and trippy synths for more thrashing guitar leads and bombastic drums, he uses his undeniable confidence to weld grime and indie rock together and make a unique sound with that same patriotic feel as the ‘90s Britpop stars. They were rebellious, raw, and authentic: all words that characterise Cliffe.
“The reception behind ‘Buss Ur Head’ has been mad, for real. To be honest, I didn’t expect it to be this crazy,” he shares with NME, sipping his Magnum-spiked rum punch. “I didn’t know what to expect. I just put music out and try not to focus on what it’s gonna bring. And [to think] I wrote that in like 20 minutes and the producer [Maths Time Joy] made it in like 40 minutes. It was only a week after I made the track that I realised I liked it and put it out. But, in the session, it felt like another day.”
Cliffe has been making music ever since he can remember, freestyling on the back of the bus to and from secondary school. Soon, he and his friends upgraded to a studio at their local youth club, ripping free trap-style beats from YouTube to rap over and putting them out on SoundCloud hoping that the right person would listen. And he did have brief success with that: he made his COLORS debut back in 2018, performing the ambient ‘Certi’ with producer Kai-A.
But it’s Cliffe’s unexpected turn to indie rock which has caught the attention of hundreds of thousands on TikTok, including the likes of Sam Tompkins, with many comparing him to Bloc Party. He says he “always had that passion” for the genre but hasn’t been open about it. “I never pushed it out there,” he explains. “It’ll be something I listen to in my earphones. But, as of late, I just woke up and said, ‘You’ve got to express yourself in whatever way you want,’ so I merged them two together.”
He attributes his delivery to those of grime titans like Skepta, Wiley, Dizzee Rascal, Roll Deep, Kano and more: all artists he would discover via his brother, who was a “grime head”. One of his biggest influences was local hero Bashy. The fellow North Londoner’s ‘Chuppa Chups Mixtape’ helped him fall in love with the technicality of grime and made it seem “cool to just talk about life”.
“Sometimes grime can be very rudimentary and then they’ll be talking about stuff [just to] get the wheel up. Man was just talking about life. That was the project I heard where he’s talking about a wider aspect of things. He ain’t going, ‘Ah! I’m the hardest on the mic,’ or ‘I’ll get the wheel-up’. He made it seem cool to talk about anything,” he reveals.
But Cliffe admits he has “gone against the grain with everything” in his life and, in turn, has fostered this quintessentially British sound by blending one of the nation’s purest genres with another: Britpop. Although it “took him a minute” to discover classics like Arctic Monkeys, The Kooks, Blur and more, they inspire his “rebellious spirit”: “These men have in their way, whether they be just talking and doing that rockstar stuff. I have it in my way, coming from my ends. It’s still the same spirit, just in a different way.”
He confesses that his new sound was born out of “frustration” towards the “samey” music being created in the UK rap scene. “No one was doing anything new. Everyone’s on the same drill track. Everyone’s doing the same UK rap track. I wanted to hear something different, so I just did it,” he says. And that frustration was “100 per cent” the attitude Cliffe had while making ‘Buss Ur Head’. “There wasn’t really a formula or nothing. I was just having fun with it and just seeing what works.”
“Everyone’s doing the same UK rap track. I wanted to hear something different, so I did it”
Although he currently makes indie rock, Cliffe still refers to himself as a UK rapper. “I’m UK indie as well, but I feel like – because I come from a UK rap background – UK rap is my bread and butter,” he says.
“I wasn’t making UK indie three years ago, I was making rap and I’ve always been making rap,” he continues. “Even now I’m making rap, it’s just the production has changed. Deep it, I’m still rapping the same way I [was] rapping. Maybe I’ve got some hooks where I’m singing [and are] more catchy but I’m still doing me. That’s why I feel like it’s still UK rap because I ain’t really changed what I’m doing.”
Cliffe also notes that “UK rap is so versatile” and people think that being called a UK rapper is “boxing them in”. However, he says “that’s just what I am in it” and “it’s just about expanding on the sound within UK rap”.
So, Cliffe sees himself as a part of the bubbling UK underground rap scene – a far-reaching and adventurous group of go-getters transforming the norms of UK rap. He agrees that the current group of renegades – led by Felixthe1st, Fimiguerrero and Len – is “doing so many crazy and creative things” right now and needs to “become what’s popping” in the mainstream. He feels that pop-rap throughout the nation is due for a major “shake-up” because “it’s getting very stale”.
“You know what’s weird, yeah? Because of the music I’m making right now, I don’t really feel like I’m part of the underground in that way,” Cliffe realises. “I’m an underground artist, innit, but I just feel like the community aren’t making [much] rock-rap. I don’t know. I like all them man that are doing it, but I feel like a world away from them.”
JD Cliffe hopes to find that middle ground on his third project, where he wants to “bring everyone into his world”. Although it is “all indie rock”, it’ll show all the “different layers” of his artistry – he even teases that he has an R&B-rock song on there.
“It’s important to showcase that I’m more than just one gimmick – that’s the worst thing for me,” Cliffe says while explaining what people can expect from the currently untitled project. “I can’t have someone thinking that I’m just a one-track guy. It’s important to showcase that I am a musician, I am an actual creative, and there’s a wider world I want to bring people to through music. It’s not the same song you’re gonna get every time.”
He also says there’s an “importance” to him being “a Black British man doing indie rock” in the same vein of breakouts like Master Peace. “I want to be a signpost for Black kids or [whoever], they can do whatever they want,” he says. “You don’t have to be boxed in to drill, you don’t have to be boxed in to any type of music. You can just do whatever. I want a Black boy to listen to this project and be like, ‘I’m going to make indie rock too’.”
Cliffe keeps his future plans close to his chest when NME asks him to share some details, but one thing is for sure. “When it’s all said and done, I’m trying to be the best artist of all time,” he says. “Maybe not coming for Mozart, Michael Jackson and them man but, undeniably, I want to make the best music. I want to get to the point where I’ve done all I could and be like, ‘Yeah, I done that’.”
JD Cliffe’s ‘Bad Company’ is out now