Bashy has spoken to NME about ‘Being Poor Is Expensive’ – his first studio album in 15 years.
Last week, the Kensal Rise-raised star has made his return to music after taking a break to pursue an acting career. Bashy – real name Ashley Thomas – initially rose to fame by being an emerging star in the then-burgeoning grime scene back in the early 2000s. He put out his seminal ‘Chupa Chups’ mixtape in 2007 and his debut album ‘Catch Me If You Can’ in 2009 – both deemed as UK underground classics.
Now, 15 years after he dropped the latter, Thomas wanted to make a “very honest and raw” record about northwest London “in the same way Kendrick Lamar will talk about Compton or Nas is talking about New York”. He also stated that watching his friend Kano create the 2016 Mercury Prize-nominated album ‘Made in the Manor’ made him want to show the “vibes and culture” of “Nart Wes'”.
Bashy explained to NME why he took a long hiatus from the rap world. Having gone to the coveted BRIT School to study theatre, Thomas said he “always considered” himself an actor.
The rapper-turned-actor made his film debut in the British dystopian film Shank with Kedar Williams-Stirling (Sex Education) in the early 2010s. Despite making the move after solidifying himself as one of London’s most noteworthy grime acts, Bashy didn’t find the career change “daunting”. Thomas has since starred in seminal television shows such as the critically acclaimed Top Boy and the Lena Waithe-directed Them – the latter saw him be nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in 2022.
“I love and I’m glad that I’m embraced in America and [am] fortunate to have that side to my career,” he said. However, he also wished he could do more shows on his home soil, especially after being a part of Top Boy, which was “culturally important to British culture”.
When talking about making his return to rapping, Bashy told NME; “I was acting and I am focused on that aspect of my career. But music, I’ll always love music ’til the day I perish.”
“I’ve put in over 10,000 hours in music,” he continued. “I did music for free for years just for the passion of it. I was paying to do music: paying to go on pirate radio and stuff like that, pay your little subs. So yeah, I always love music and have an affinity for it, so this is a special album to me.”
However, he revealed, “I didn’t know whether I was ever going to release music again as an artist”.
He went on to say that the only reason he decided to make his second studio album was because he “had something to say in this moment”. He cited UK producers Toddla T and Progression as two people who motivated him to get back in the studio: “They called me and were essentially telling me who I am and what my voice means and could mean and I was brushed it off.
“Maybe that planted a small seed in my mind,” he continued. “I wanted to talk about my environment where I came from. And then, for me, it became quite therapeutic because I started to address things that I’d left unaddressed. I started to explore feelings that I didn’t even know existed, things that I’d buried in the past. I had to unpack all of that in order to tell the truth on this album.”
The rapper also wanted to immortalise his heritage as being a third-generation West Indian in his music. On ‘Being Poor Is Expensive’, he does so by sampling the iconic lover’s rock song ‘Let Me Down Easy’ by Dennis Brown on the titular track. He told NME he wanted to include seminal songs from his culture “in the same way that, in America, some of my favourite rappers – Nas, Jay-Z – would incorporate soul and R&B samples”. He added that by “sampling lover’s rock and reggae and fusing that with grime and hip-hop and jungle,” he created a “distinctly Black British” sound.
He, too, highlighted the influence of the Windrush generation on the heart-warming ‘Made In Britain’ – in which Bashy’s grandma recited a prayer about her hopes for her bloodline. The rapper didn’t record the prayer specifically for the album, instead she said it while he was interviewing her – explaining: “I always wanted to have her voice and I feel like that generation, the Windrush generation, is slowly dying”.
He had no expectations for ‘Being Poor Is Expensive’, saying: “It’s a different time. I’m an independent artist. I’ve invested in myself my whole career. It’s always been me so to be able to have those moments… it’s just progression. I wanted to make an album and invested in this piece of art that I’m proud of so.”
In the last five years, grime legends such as Stormzy, Ghetts, Skepta and more have made timeless classics and are revered across the world. This comes after a period in time when many people questioned whether the scene was dead after the subsequent rise of UK drill.
“Grime is forever,” Bashy said, explaining how the scene survived after over 30 years in the limelight. “If you’re from the school of grime, it’s dope. You can go and do other things, but that essence is always there for a lot of us, especially ones that come from that [early] era. I think grime is one of the early sounds of London. Yeah, man, grime is forever, man.”
Arguably, Bashy’s powerful 2007 song ‘Black Boys’ is his most important hit and is widely regarded as a seminal song. Looking back at the song and its legacy, he said: “That song is like bigger than me and it’s got a message. It wasn’t anything to do with money, it wasn’t anything to do with commercial success, it wasn’t anything to do with any of that. But it struck a chord with the people.”
He further explained that the song did “what it was intended to do; uplift people that looked like me at the time” and Thomas is proud it continues to do so. “It shows my heart and my intentions,” he went on, “I was a 21-year-old man when I wrote ‘Black Boys’, and – if you listen to my art now – it’s different, but the nucleus and the essence of it has that [motivating quality] in it.”
Thomas said that the pensive ‘How Black Men Lose Their Smile’ from ‘Being Poor Is Expensive’ runs in the same vein as ‘Black Boys’: “I’m an older guy, but the soul is the same.”
The 39-year-old performed for the first time in a while in an intimate launch event with the BBC last month. Reflecting on the performance, Thomas said he “was nervous” because he hasn’t “stood on a stage for 10 years and rapped”. However, he said that “it felt good to share that music with my close friends and family” and called it a “bucket-list” level moment.
The positive feedback was “encouraging”, according to Bashy, and he now looks forward to his headline show later this year. He said, “Hopefully people listen to the album, it resonates with them, then they can come and hear it live and we can share that album together.”
Thomas has yet to announce the date and venue of his huge comeback concert, but he will be doing two small shows at both UNDR in Ladbroke Grove on July 12 and HMV Oxford Street on July 15.
‘Being Poor Is Expensive’ is out now via Bish Bash Bosh Music. You can listen to the album here.
In other news, Bashy teamed up with journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge, Kano, fellow rapper Enny and GRM Daily founder Posty to start The Reasoning – a four-part series where they discuss their respective life experiences as Londoners.