Foreign Beggars interview
Since releasing their debut album, Asylum Speakers, in 2003, Foreign Beggars have constantly bought new sounds, styles and personas to UK hip hop. HUCK speaks to them about collaborations, comedy and their new album, United Colours of Beggattron.
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HUCK: So, are you happy with the new album?
Metropolis: Fucking gutted man. It didn’t come out the way we wanted it to come out at all. We feel like it’s been a complete flop. Nah, not at all! We are really, really happy with it, it really came together. I think it is the most cohesive project we have done so far. I think Stray Point Agenda sounded a lot more like a themed album because it was similar all the way through but I prefer this one because it’s a lot more out there and really lighthearted which is something that we really wanted to do.
Like with the comedy skits?
DJ Nonames: We don’t take ourselves too fucking seriously and the skits are always a little bit of humour in there. Each album is a bit of a journey. We want to make it a story instead of just a bunch of tracks thrown together. We think really hard about the track order, how the tracks fit together and what works well together. There are a lot of cool tracks that didn’t make the album, because they didn’t work as well with what else was going on.
Since your first album, Asylum Seekers, you have been all about collaboration. Does that make it difficult to create a cohesive Foreign Beggars sound?
Metropolis: Not really. It just means there are more to pick from. I think a lot of the collaborations are just because there are so many artists out there that we love to work with. So we always look at it as an opportunity to reach out to different crowds. I think that only kind of helps to add to the flavour of the album.
DJ Nonames: Dag produced all the beats on the first album and then cos of the amount of touring we did and new people we met all over the world, naturally we kind of outed producers and new styles and Dag still does like all the beats on the new album but worked with Ghosttown and Noisia along the way.
Does that make choosing what you do and who you work with more democratic?
Metropolis: No, it’s totally organic. We will be in the studio and then like for example, with the Guilty Simpson track, we heard that Guilty was coming to play nearby at Cargo. So he literally finished the show at Cargo and we carted him off to our studio. We sat him in the studio with Ghosttown beats; he picked the beat, wrote the verse and recorded it. I felt bad for the guy because he had just murked the show completely and came back to our studio to be surrounded by sweaty man fans. But it’s good, it always works out like that. It’s never really like ‘oh man we really need to get this dude down on the album.’ It’s more like we just keep making tracks and then once the tracks are made and they fit in there, we’re like, this works.
Have there been any problems with the creative process?
Metropolis: Hell yeah. Not with other people - with ourselves. We are all into different styles of music. Pav (Orifice Vulgatron) comes from a more death metal, drum and bass kind of background than I necessarily do. He’s got that hype mentality. He is a lot more of a kind of poet in the group.
DJ Nonames: We all see music differently, at the end of the day I’m a DJ, I produce the skits on the album. Creatively, blatantly Metropolis and Orifice are driving the song writing side of things. If there weren’t any disagreements the album would probably be a lot more controlled. We have quite conflicting styles and we’re always pushing and pulling against each other, I think what gives our music a certain shine is that when we are in conflict, we find a middle ground.
Is illegal downloading a problem for you guys?
Metropolis: Yeah that was a painful moment man, that was actually true. We were out at a show and we finished a set and we were trying to sell some stuff and this one guy was like ‘can you give me a free CD’ and I was like, “Bro, I can’t. We make a living off this.” He was going on for ages and then he was like, “I’ve already downloaded this shit.” I am down to make music for free as long as people don’t mind paying three times as much for tickets, that’s my perspective. I love the fact that people can access our music, however, whenever, I think that’s a beautiful thing. I think a lot of people download our stuff and then will come to a show and they love it so much they’ll buy a CD and support it anyway. I think it’s a double-edged kind of thing you know, it works well on certain levels and then on other levels makes it tough to keep going.
Orifice: I think it’s cool you know. I mean there are other avenues for making revenue, it’s not as easy as it was ten years ago but things are getting harder and tougher for everyone.
You released Hit that Gash a while ago, how did that go down?
Orifice: A lot of people hated it, but fuck it. I went to France to meet these guys who are into all this fucking mad bullshit. And they asked me to make a tune, so we made it as a joke. It was a freestyle, I literally made it up on the spot you know but Disiz La Peste is a massive rapper he’s smashing it, Grems is you know, they’re all weighty people on the track. It’s just fun. The only place it became an issue, is because it’s a good tune we wanna put it out but the level we’re at we can’t just like put out a half-hearted thing. We have to publicise our shit because otherwise it’s gonna devalue everything we’ve built up and our reputation, so if we put out something, we put it out properly. But I have an issue with putting something out that was a pisstake and a joke, I like that shit, it’s funny, but it isn’t the be all and end all of everything we are. People who don’t take that on board are being close minded. At the end of the day it’s fucking entertainment. You don’t hear people complaining about Eddie Murphy ‘Delirious’ or some shit, so if you don’t like it, shut the fuck up.
Metropolis: The most reaction we had for that track was from the girls and they were loving it man. Intelligent, decent girls and well-educated people can get the joke.
Orifice: Gash is such a horrible word. And for two years I was just like ‘I ain’t using that shit’ then it just became part of language you know.
Ultimately, what are you aiming for as a group?
Metropolis: Put out music, keep doing ill shit, keep surprising people and make a decent living from it. Become known all over the world and people appreciating us for that and us being able to support support ourselves from doing what we really love.
Orifice: The music industry’s changed now. Even if you write a million dollar pop song, you can write that number one hit but unless you have about 50 grand and a fucking plan that tune is not gonna blow anymore. If you want to get that song on the radio, you have to know people and you have to pay people. It’s just plain business, you know what I’m saying. You know someone asked me ‘Could you see yourself doing the same shit as Tinchy Stryder?’ And I’m like ‘I rate Tinchy Stryder because he’s keeping it real and he’s a big selling grime artist but Foreign Beggars don’t make pop shit like that.’ We can make pop music but we’re not going to go down the Barbie Doll house route.
United Colours of Beggattron is out now on Dented Records.
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Foreign Beggars interview (text) by Ed Andrews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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