New music
When I catch up with Bashy, he’s still riding the high from returning to London’s famous Notting Hill Carnival the day before. “I’d obviously missed it and didn’t realise how much,” says the veteran MC. “You know, it’s been 15 years – maybe a bit more – since I’ve really been going carnival like that.”
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Back then, he was making waves in the UK’s fledgling rap scene. In the decade and a half since, Bashy AKA Ashley Thomas has transitioned from music to the world of acting, starring roles in Oscar award-winning film Skin as well as beloved TV series 24, TopBoy and Them. But in July of this year he made his long-awaited return to music, releasing his first album in 15 years and sure-fire Album of the year candidate, ‘Being Poor Is Expensive’. Carnival revellers and UK Rap fans alike have hailed Bashy upon his return.
“I’m walking through the [carnival] crowd and trying to hold it down so that it’s not making too much of a scene, and people like cutting through the crowd to come say hello, and how I’ve inspired them, or what the album means to them – it’s like fucking hell man! This carnival was perfect. It’s given me my love back.”
‘Being Poor Is Expensive’ unfolds as an origin story, set on the very same west London streets that host carnival, as well as the northwest London streets of Harlesden. Throughout the album’s 12 tracks, we get the visuals, the sounds, the paranoia, the perilous machismo and the sense of violence never too far away, that characterised Bashy’s environment when he stepped onto the streets outside of his home. We’re also given view of his family unit and of the soil in which his roots are embedded; recollections of his grandparent’s plight as members of the Windrush generation, vignettes of his father becoming more jaded over time, pressures of the world dimming his light. These “tales of the hood”, given colour by the brilliance of Bashy’s storytelling abilities, are also provided texture by a host of samples reflecting the music of Bashy’s upbringing.
“Dennis Brown’s on there. Linton Kwesi Johnson, Aswad, Soul 2 Soul, Jazzy B, Wookie, Lain…” Bashy pauses from listing names of artists sampled on the album, begins to mull over how their invocation creates a portal to the London of his youth. “Yeah I like that. That’s good man… Linton Kwesi Johnson! You know about Linton Kwesi Johnson? When you finish this conversation, please, go and listen to him. He’s a dub poet -, some of the instrumental for ‘How Black Men Lose Their Smile’ is sampled from his song, called ‘Time Come’, and Linton Kwesi Johnson is… I can’t even compare myself to him, but he’s just an inspiration. He came before all of us [British rappers]; charting our community’s story in his art. He’s just one of the G.O.A.Ts, me and Toddla talk about him all the time.”
“But yeah, I grew up listening to lovers rock and dancehall music, garage and jungle and grime, so that’s what I’m gonna utilise and work with. Those are in my toolbox. And that gives it something that’s very unique to the UK, right? So with that, I think a lot of people in the UK relate to it. Or if you want to understand what it’s like to live in London, in particular, from North West London and West London, then you could listen to this album. I’ll say in every interview, Kano – who’s a good friend of mine – helped to inspire that as well. He did [the 2016 album] ‘Made In The Manor’ speaking about East London, and he and I are very close. I was around him when he was recording that in the studio so I think there was some inspiration there as well.”
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At this point Bashy’s passion spikes, his current sentence spilling into the next – “I love that about music; when I want to be put in a certain place, if I can put on that artist and get a vision of where they’re from, I think that’s cool. I think it’s good when everyone inspires each other from different areas, but my personal taste [places value in] the specificity, and that specificity is what allows and encourages people to listen and relate even more because it’s not vague, so it allows people to relate. That’s what I believe anyway – fuck knows if it’s true, but that’s what I think.”
At age 39, Bashy has already lived an extraordinary life – not many make trade Harlesden for the hills of Hollywood. But it was his ordinary beginnings that laid the foundation. ‘Being Poor Is Expensive’ probes around in the basement of Bashy’s house of memories, uncovering experiences that many Black Brits can relate to. “It’s all honest, innit. The album; it has no embellishment, no exaggeration, just real and true to the core, inspired by west London and north west London. So I really tried to pour that in. I wanted to be proud of the project. I wanted my community to be proud of the record, and feel seen and heard,” Bashy explains.
On ‘How Black Men Lose Their Smile’ Bashy best gives light to the condition of his people. The last verse sees him take flight, batting out the isms and schism designed to strip black men of their joy with a visceral fire in his voice, before landing on the resolve that has had them withstand it all. Back in 2007, Bashy stood as the voice of the scene by releasing the cult classic track ‘Black Boys’, so perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s taken to the podium in this way again. In title, spirit, and significance ‘Black Boys’ and ‘How Black Men Lose Their Smile’ seem to be linked, so I ask Bashy if there was any intention behind their likeness. “Nah, not really. Not at all actually. It’s only afterwards that the comparisons have been drawn. A few people have said, “oh this is like the sequel, this is like the maturation of ‘Black Boys’”.
“I wrote ‘Black Boys’ at 21. I think it has the hope of a 21-year-old. It has that feeling like, ‘one day we’re gonna make it’. And then ‘How Black Men Lose Their Smile’, is like after that black boy has lived, right? But it’s still not a sad song. For me it’s a triumphant song, and that last verse is sort of like getting everything out, that sort of release I feel. It’s saying everything so that you understand me, you understand me, you feel me, you see what I’m going through. This is what I’m dealing with… and still! Still I’m gonna cut through and do my thing.”
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A few years after the celebration of the UK rap scene that is ‘Black Boys’, the scene found itself in dire straits. Between 2009 and 2013, many of rap and grime’s most talented acts were searching for a way to make a sustained living from music – which led many to signing to major labels and making what sounds to modern ears as grotesque attempts at commercially viable crossover records. When I ask Bashy if it was the state of the scene that led him to leave music behind, or if it was more so a loss of love for music, a lack of long term career prospects, or a natural course correction back to his first love of acting. He answers in a solemn tone, and you get a scope of how much departing from music pained him.
“You’ve answered it. All of it, everything you said, is what contributed to that distance from music”, he says. “Where I’m at now as an artist, with ‘Being Poor Is Expensive’, with the way that I create and make art, this has always been in me I believe. [Over time] I don’t think I change much; I just become more and more me. More and more myself every day, with everything that I do in life but also in my art.”
“And at that time I felt – this is how I felt, it’s not necessarily true – that I was having to fit into this mould that everyone else was doing, and that’s never really been me. I’ve always just done my own thing however I wanted to do it, win or fail. That’s just how I’ve done it. So when I had to do that, I just wasn’t enjoying it. I think there’s little moments, like with ‘Black Boys’ or ‘Kidulthood To Adulthood’. It’s like these moments, these little flashes of… my true self. But then I’m trying to get out the hood man. It’s like, ‘what? Them lot are doing this to get the money? Well I gotta get out! If that’s working, boom, I want to do it’. But then it just never really had my full essence in it, you know?”
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“And the scene was in a mad place. There wasn’t really much money. It was becoming a real struggle man, and I wasn’t enjoying it. I wasn’t enjoying the process and just the difficulty of it. And then everyone had record deals at the time, so I felt like I was almost at a disadvantage as well. Now, in hindsight, yeah I could have just stayed on the [independent] tip that I’m on now, and just stayed who I am to cut through. But, you know, financial difficulty made it difficult. I was having some family problems… so music? I couldn’t put myself in the headspace to do that.”
“I’m blessed, man. Really, I’m truly fucking blessed to have an acting career and have that respect in film and television that allowed me the freedom to be able to [create on his own terms]. I’ve got something to say now and I don’t have to compromise, and I don’t have to wait on anyone to do anything. Toddla’s a super hard work, a super grinder. He stayed working hard in the studio, helping me to get this project together the way that I want to do it, and he and I executive produced the album together, and we’re just, we’re just going for it! And distributing it ourselves. I’ve paid for everything, my team has done it together with no outside [stakeholders]. Just the team that we put together. And so that has been the way that I would reactivate again in the music space. I don’t want to play the games, I don’t want to do anything like that. I just want to create and talk to my community and represent my community as much as I can in a positive way, and present the art the way I would like to do it.”
Bashy has been blessed with an inherent storytelling ability that spans across mediums. In the acting realm; Ashley Thomas has and will continue to add to the enclave of black Brits making waves on our big and small screens. “Yeah, I have a TV series coming out on Netflix next year opposite Suran Jones. It’s called The Choice. And I’m about to start shooting a series for Channel Four.” In the acting realm, Ashley Thomas has built a reputation for telling the story of characters quite brilliantly. But UK music is infinitely better of for Bashy telling his own.
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‘Being Poor is Expensive’ is out now. Catch Bashy at London’s Bush Hall on November 13th.
Words: Dwayne Wilks
Photography: Dennis Morris
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