With guitar riffs humming over drill beats and tongue-in-cheek humour packed into punchlines, Hashtagobi brings something unique to the table. The 25-year-old artist and producer from East London just released his new EP ‘My Second Summer’. The project takes listeners into the rapper’s conceptual playground where his diverse musical influences spring to life. Whether it’s battling the ‘Jumbled Thoughts’ that come with a quarter-life crisis or looking for ‘Freedom’ away from ends, Hashtagobi always raps about the world around him with a splash of colour. His refreshing outlook and fluid style has seen the artist collaborate with R&B vocalist BINA. Hashtagobi talks about the ideas behind the tracks on ‘My Second Summer’, future musical experiments as well as the time he got chatting with JME.

Kaeshelle: What strikes me about you is your super playful lyrics, can you tell me about your songwriting process and sources of inspiration?

Hashtagobi: I think it's going off a particular emotion, and that emotion is normally what I'm feeling or what I want to feel. With some of my older stuff I would sit down to write something and it was more like therapy. So I was writing what I needed to hear, whether that was a motivating voice, something funny, or even a comforting voice because when I listened back I could hear those voices coming out. It needed to be something that was helpful.

Nowadays it has evolved. People are listening and I hear their feedback. I'm trying to write things that are not necessarily relatable, but when I write I need to incorporate the fact that it might help someone else. So whether it's 'Jumbled Thoughts', that feeling of being in your early 20s and you don't know you're going, or 'John Boyega', which was more self affirmation like, “Cool, I know I'm the one.”

Who is your core fanbase and what kinds of people do you see coming to your shows?

I don't know if you've been to Lame Fest before, but I'd say probably the people there. It's a festival full of 'alternative' people. It was one of the first shows I went to that I felt like, "Oh, this is my tribe". Well, not necessarily my tribe, but I liked that people were very open and didn't really care about what anyone else around them was thinking. Because when I go to UK rap shows, they feel super macho with people like, "I go to the gym", and "I don't cry on Tuesdays", that's not real enough.

So Childish Gambino and Tyler, the Creator are some of your influences, what are your favourite tracks by them?

Recently, from Gambino probably ‘53.49’ from his last project that came out last year. It was unexpected, there’s no names for the songs. On the last song, the chorus goes, “I did what I wanted to”, I love that. My Spotify Wrapped showed that I played it 50 times in one day. And for Tyler, I’d say ‘I THINK’ from ‘IGOR’, it’s just got such a good groove and that little solo at the end is really nice.

And other than Tyler and Gambino?

Definitely Kendrick Lamar because he pours his soul and his heart—unadulterated—into everything and anything he produces. I’m also inspired by Hans Zimmer. I actually like a lot of film composers for their cinematic arrangements. I saw Hans Zimmer live, I was supposed to go with my sister, but she snaked it, so I went on my ones… it was so good, though. There was a huge 100-piece orchestra on the stage. It was almost like a rock concert, and he was playing guitar at one point.

Another one is JME, I have this picture from 2019 where he did this free show, you just had to get a ticket online. London was sold out within seconds, so the only place left was Brighton. At the end, some people were asking some weird questions, but no one really hung around, so I was just there chatting to JME—it felt surreal. I walked into the venue and he was at the front. He asked me, “Do you want a picture?”, while I was still trying to process meeting JME, who I had been listening to for years. When I was in school a lot of the music was, again, super macho, but this guy was chatting about cartoonish violence and other stuff I could relate to.

Let’s talk about ‘My Second Summer’. With the production on ‘Running the Block’, it sounds like you put a drill beat and rock anthem in the blender. The end product is so smooth, what did you want to explore with this track?

I was thinking back to school and how everyone was on badness. It was so weird going from primary to secondary school where everyone was showing me their little pocket knives. I had a strict African upbringing and there were many others like that, but they still ended up going in the other direction. On ‘Running the Block’, I was exploring the life of one of my friends who went from a “good youte” to getting excluded every 5 seconds. It was interesting because we had a similar upbringing, so I asked myself, “Was it peer pressure?” or “Was it inevitable?”.

The first verse is written from his perspective of things and the second is from mine. I have a bar that goes, “I ain’t bad like those other boys / Family’s prayers protect me from the devil on road / From stares turned to altercations”. I’m from Leyton, my area was a lot more wild, walking home from school was a long ting. The smooth bit towards the end actually represents a utopia.

What about the production?

I don’t know why people don’t blend heavy guitar into drill. That’s one of my experiments and I want to do more of that because guitars and rock are just so in your face. Drill is also very much an in your face genre. The end of the track is smooth with electric piano and nice chords.

What other projects are you working on this year?

I want to drop another EP, but what I’m really focusing on now is consistency with what I’m doing. ‘My Second Summer’ was supposed to drop last year, but it didn’t. I was working with bare different engineers and getting annoyed, so I lost some energy. But after sitting on it for a while, I realised the work I had put it in, it had to come out, so I released it cathartically.

Now, I’m trying to drop a single every month and later a new EP. Recently, I’ve been getting into funk and want to incorporate that as well as just connect with different people. I’ve been speaking to people in Denmark and got on to a Danish playlist. There are a lot of Afro-Danes and it’s been interesting to hear their experiences, including on racism. But yeah, I want to explore new sounds. It’s hard to pierce through because I feel like the UK is very much on drill, afrobeats and grime, maybe—as opposed to other sounds. I think it’s difficult for R&B too.

Finally, tell me about this single that you’ve just released?

It’s a shortened version of ‘John Boyega’ from the EP, but I’ve really changed it up. There’s now a guitar solo. I think it’s one of the best songs on ‘My Second Summer’ and I wanted to get it out in a single format so that more people get to hear it.

Artist Spotlight: Hashtagobi