Music > Interviews

Rudimental

by Lizzoutline

27/04/15

You must have been living under a rock for the last few years if you’ve not heard any of this Hackney quartet’s chartbusting tunes. They’ve collaborated with Emeli Sande, Ella Eyre and even Steely Dan and Nas, and their second album is about ready to drop. But before that, they’re going to give us a sneaky preview at the Big Weekend as headliners on the In New Music We Trust Stage. I spoke to Leon aka DJ Lockmith about how it feels to be thrown into a whirlpool of fame and champagne.

How did Rudimental first begin?

We grew up together as kids from when we were about five, but came together as Rudimental eight years ago. We were on the underground scene making tracks but also working every day jobs and eventually Feel The Love opened up some doors for us; we had a number one record and now here I am speaking to you today!

You’ve won and been nominated for so many prestigious awards like the Mercury, a Brit Award and a MOBO. How does it feel to be recognised in this way?

It’s amazing! We like to think of ourselves as everyday, Average Joe kind of boys who have a passion for music and fortunately we’ve done well with it. Some of us still live with our mums; the whole fame side of it we’re not really into. We’re more into projecting our music to our audiences. We couldn’t have dreamt of winning or even being nominated for some of those awards, and now we’re just looking to finish our second album, get the songs out there and continue our journey.

Will your second album be along the same tracks as the first or are you taking things in a different direction?

Well, we’ve kept things very true to ourselves with the work we’ve done so far. We’re really proud of how we’ve grown together as we’ve been in this whirlwind of craziness. The music is still on the same wavelength, still soulful with a feel-good factor, like the music that we’ve been influenced by, not only growing up on the streets of London but also Michael Jackson, Lauren Hill and Marvin Gaye. We’ve mixed it with the music of our generation; grime, dance, drum ‘n’ bass, old school garage and jungle and we’ve fused it all together. Luckily enough it worked on our last album and I think it sounds even better on the new album!

I understand you’ve worked with Nas, Steely Dan and George Clinton for the new album. What was that experience like?

Amazing, especially with George Clinton. It was so mad, because one of our best friend’s mum was really good friends with George Clinton. She passed away many years ago. We went to see him and there was an immediate connection between us and we knew from then that we would be stuck to the hip for a long while. We made a track together and we also went to see him just the other day. Steely Dan make amazing music and we’re massively influenced by their funk sound. You know when people get to the stage that we have done in our careers, people might expect you to start working with Beyonce or someone like that, but we kinda wanna work with the ones that our mum’s and dad’s are fans of that they passed down to us.

Your number one album Home had loads of collaborators like Emeli Sande, MNEK and Foxes. How did you go about finding the right people to work with?

With Home, we stumbled across some of the singers; like we were having a drink in a pub and heard a guy singing called John Newman and thought “Oh he’d sound good on that track we wrote last week”. We wanted to keep that philosophy so we built a team through management around us who thought the same way as us. We find vocalists through the Internet, through seeing them singing live at shows…we really love the concept of finding unknown, untouched talent. Just the other day I was at The Breakfast Club in London and the waitress told me she sang. I got everyone to shhh and she sang and she was amazing! I Now we’re hoping to work together. So we love to grab those kind of opportunities, as at one time we were unknown and couldn’t even get a cup of tea at most record labels. Now they offer us bottle of champagne!

You used to work with kids in Hackney; at what point were you confident enough to leave the day job behind and really feel like you’d made it in music as a career?

I was working as a mentor in a secondary school and my son had just been born; I had just decided to leave my job, finish university and become a teacher and better myself. The day after I quit my job we got signed! So it was the luck of the draw really, and I sighed a breath of relief that that happened. The music industry is a hard one. You make no money for the first year, grinding away wondering where those pay-checks are going to come from.

You played a couple years ago at the Big Weekend in Hackney, so what was it like to return to your old stomping grounds?

The funny thing is, that was only our second ever live show! We did our first live show the day before. Nervous? I should have been wearing nappies! It was an incredible experience. I lived next door to Hackney Marshes, it’s where we used to play football and we had a lot of memories from there. 8,500 people turned up to see us on the strength of one song. I’ll never forget it.

Is there one song in particular that you look forward to performing live?

Yeah, all four of us have our own personal favourite. For me I think it’s Not Giving In. It’s such a dynamic songs and takes you on a journey but it also had such a strong meaning for us. One of our best friends was struggling at the time, and almost suicidal and we wrote that song for him. So every time that we play it live we go completely crazy. Thankfully he came out the other side and is totally fine now.

How do you get hyped up for your shows as onstage you have so much energy? Do you have any pre show rituals?

It’s funny, we’re all very different and have our own rituals. Because we have so much energy when we’re on stage people think we must go through some crazy thing backstage, but actually we’re really boring! We were all doing our own bits; one guy’s on his iPad checking the Arsenal scores, I just zone out, but then there’s a moment two or three minutes before we go on stage and we play a song that we’ve been listening to as a group and we transform into something and we become Rudimental. All the stresses we have through the week get released on stage and we let ourselves go.

Will you be bringing any special guests on stage at the Big Weekend in Norwich?

We’ve been working on our new stage show, and it has so many new elements to it; not only music-wise but production as well. There will be a lot to blow you away, especially some new guests who feature on our new album but I’ll keep that a secret for now!

You can see Rudimental headlining the In New Music We Trust Stage on Saturday night at Radio 1’s Big Weekend.