Artist Spotlight: Shay D

Shay D has many strings to her bow. The Londoner has just released her third album, ‘Speaking in Tongues’, which is a fiery yet introspective body of work. She also has her own show on Reprezent Radio, runs a youth project, and has vast experience hosting club nights and events. A larger-than-life but down to earth character, Shay’s personality carries over into her new project, with an eclectic array of tunes that portray her humour, humility, and social and cultural awareness. 

An artist not afraid to break away from convention and trend, Shay’s new album feels like an ode to classic sounds gone by, offering an old school grime flavour whilst upholding a fresh, invigorating aesthetic. The flows are snappy, the beats are well produced, and Shay commands the listeners attention with bountiful narration brimming with insight and references. 

I chatted with Shay about her new album, her youth work for Breakin Convention, and the societal problem with representation and image - both in music and beyond. 

How has the pandemic been for you? 

I discovered, during the first part of lockdown last year, that I’m not as extroverted as I thought I was. I was doing so much at the time, running the youth project, producing music, had my radio show, I was hosting a club night and putting on a spoken word and hip hop night, and I think it was just too much. So actually having to lock certain things off and just be at home and not see anyone, I really liked it! I didn’t miss as many things as I thought I’d miss. It had me look at so many things differently. It made me cherish just being okay. 

How about musically? Did it hinder creativity? 

I got stuck because I couldn’t go to the studio and at the time I didn’t have a home studio. There’s only one place I like going to record. I’ve been recording with this guy Gadget for like ten years. He’s a Croatian ex rock star with nothing to do with the rap scene, but I love recording with him because I’m just myself. He encourages me to be experimental and sing. So when I couldn’t go there and his studio was closed because of Covid, I was stuck creatively. So I invested in a sound card and a mic and was on YouTube tutorials learning logic, and taught myself. Then I started working on the album and started getting things ready for when the world opens up again. 

Did you have the plan there to do an album or was it spontaneous? 

I knew I was going to do a project - I’ve never not done projects - I knew all the music was going to go on an album. It’s weird with me… music is not my life or death. It’s something that I use for me. I only do music when it’s fun, as soon as it starts getting stressful I just go away from it and do my events and youth work etc. I can’t obsess over music, I’ve seen the effect it can have on people’s mental health. As soon as music does that, I feel like it’s a very dangerous place to be in. 

It’s interesting what you said about music taking over your life; the difference between a love for music and an obsession for music. It can definitely be unhealthy and have a negative impact on mental health. 

Yeah it really can. Especially as an independent artist, it’s so time consuming, there’s so much to do. Even if you have a manager, you still have to manage yourself. It can be so consuming, putting all your energy and money into it. The amount of money you spend on music, sometimes you’re like ‘rah, that could have been a house deposit’ and actually what did I get from it. If I deep it, I’ve never wanted to be famous, music is just something I can’t not do. 

Who has influenced you to become a musician and to make the music that you make? 

I don’t feel like a particular person has influenced me. I feel like life experiences pushed me in the direction of rapping. If I really deep it, I’ve have to say my older cousin, because he was just a roadman who used to listen to bare rap around me, and I’d listen to him and his boys rap and freestyle. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have delved into that world. Around me in school, everyone was spitting to grime, it was such a common way to express yourself. I feel like the female rappers in the 90s who were very tomboy, I could relate to them a lot because I grew up like that; string vests, baggy tracksuits, bandanas, lines in my eyebrow, I don’t know who I thought I was [laughs]. I think that was my main influence, rather than other artists.

What artists are you listening to now? 

Don’t judge me for this. I’m a massive D-Block Europe fan. If I go to my most played recently on Apple Music its DBE, 90s R&B, Kool & The Gang, then a lot of Dancehall, a lot of Bashment. I like J Cole a lot as well, I really want to see him live. 

Oh yeah 100% needs to happen. 

Who’s your top three people you wanna see live?

Slowthai, probably go Kendrick, and … Bob Dylan. 

Wait, is Bob Dylan alive?!

Yeah, just about. What’s your top three? 

I think I’d wanna see Kendrick as well. I’d love to see Mariah Carey, and I’ll go D-Block. 

When did you start rapping? 

A really long time ago. I’d started like twelve years ago, but I never took it seriously. I never wanted to be a rapper, I was doing it for fun and to impress my cousin. I just liked the energy. About seven years ago, my friend MC Angel used to run a night called Lyrically Challenged and I ended up running the night with her. She kept booking me and inviting me to the open mics and getting me to host events with her. I used to not like performing in front of people, I was super shy, and she really brought that out of me. Then more girls began joining and we did a sold out event at jazz cafe, and I was like oh wow we are actually rapping and selling shows so am I a rapper now? I was getting boxed in, strangely, to UK Hip Hop and labelled as this conscious rapper. It was so weird because I used to have mad fiery grime tracks, but I would do a track about domestic violence or community, and suddenly I was a conscious rapper. So I came away and disassociated from that scene. I felt trapped, and I felt like I couldn’t experiment with other stuff. Then I was doing a lot of spoken word, and people said I was a spoken word poet… I didn’t want labels, I was just doing what I do. So yeah, the rapping was quite organic.

Yeah, there seems to be a constant battle between the artist and the industry trying to box them in. Other artists I’ve spoken to about genre have said they don’t see themselves, and don’t want to be seen, as one particular style or sound because they are so much more than a label of a genre. 

It’s true, it makes you feel like you can’t try something different and you pressure yourself into making the same thing. 

I want to touch on the youth project stuff, Breakin Convention. What does it involve?

I’m the education manager now which is cool, because I’ve been managing for like 5 years but I was just a youth worker but co-ordinating everything, raising like £25,000 a year fundraising. So it was nice to get promoted earlier this year. We basically run music youth projects for kids who are at risk, vulnerable, in care, excluded from school. Also just creative young people who are trying to stay off the street. So we run rap workshops, DJ /production work shops. The way we operate is that the young people come and tell us what they want to do and what their goals are, and then our job is to facilitate and making that opportunity happen, giving them tasks for them to do to reach those goals. We have artists on our roster, we do dance and hip hop theatre all the way to radio presenting and DJing. I have to book all the artists, manage the projects, outreach to young people and fundraise. Most of my time is spent with 14-21 year olds rapping, DJing, having discussions, taking them on trips. We volunteer a lot of our time as well. I’m part time but it’s impossible, they message me all the time, asking me for things. I love it. 

Amazing. It must be really rewarding. 

It is, seeing their progress is crazy! Like ten weeks ago, a group of them came to one of the projects and we said what do you want to do for two hours every Wednesday. They said we want to make a short film with a hip hop soundtrack. They wrote a script about life in quarantine with flashbacks etc, rehearsed, got someone to film it, made the set out of charity shop stuff, it was crazy. They made all the music with Jamz, Capo Lee. We’ve got the Everyman cinema screening it for them on the 25th for free. Seeing their progress is amazing, I take a lot of joy from people around me doing well, it really motivates me. 

How important is staying true to yourself through your music? As an outsider looking in, it feels like you aren’t swayed by musical convention and the project is the epitome of that. 

I’m glad you said the projects the epitome of that! I think its probably the most important thing to me. I can’t be any other way. I’m myself all the time. I don’t have an alter ego. There’s obviously certain things that I won’t talk about in my music, certain parts of me that I keep more private, but I’m very open and honest with everyone. 

I think listeners are drawn to that as well; wearing your heart on your sleeve, what you hear on the mic is how you are as a person. 

I can see how tempting it is to be a certain way in order to have a certain outcome that you want. For example, views on a video, or monetary gain, working with a brand that you don’t really like. Female rappers especially can use being a woman and selling sex, selling yourself to draw more male fans or spark controversy, but I can’t do that. How am I gonna tell my 14 year old sister why I’m in a thong in a video… what if my grandma sees it?!

It’s definitely a problem in modern music. Even if you take drill as an example; the glorification of violence is worrying. A lot of it seems like it’s for views because it gets… views 

100%. I work with these young drill artists and I know that they are messaging me worried about bare different things and then in the track they are on about drilling the hell out of your head if you look at them wrong. These are the same guys who are coming to a youth project getting worried about their video views and hiding their face, like they’ve never had a fight. When you ask them they say it’s what sounds good, and what drill fans expect to hear, so they are just into what the big channels are prescribing them - they want notoriety because they aren’t making any money out of doing it. All they care about is fame and notoriety and they are absolutely capping. 

So how can it change? Do you think it can?

I don’t think it’s going to change. In music and entertainment it’s important to have genre and have criteria to fit into that genre. It’s like going on a Netflix menu and browsing; you’re going to have your genres. A lot of the big channels do take advantage of the young artists. They’re charging them crazy amounts of money to even play their tune on radio. I’ve had so many young MC’s message me asking how much I charge for a feature on Reprezent. These massive channels that put on drill videos that get 50k overnight, it’s going to be very tempting for a young mind who wants to make quick money and be famous, looking at big artists and seeing Rolex’s etc and they think the views equal that. Until those channels and the big DJ’s that play the violent drill start spending time with the artists or stepping out onto road and seeing flowers and blood on the pavement in the street, they aren’t going to sympathise with that, and they’re just going to carry on playing the tunes because they get exposure and traffic to the channel from it. So unless they stop playing it, it’s not going to stop.

It’s only going to get worse as well, with drill becoming more mainstream, all the major labels will see this now and see how well it’s selling and will push it even harder. 

They aren’t around that life. They play the tune, get the followers and go home to their house and do their thing. They don’t care.

On a brighter note, the album! I love it, really diverse and throwback sound. How has the process been? 

I’ve really enjoyed it. I feel like I would probably have liked to spend a little bit more time on it, but I got to the point where I was like, if I don’t stop now, I don’t know when I’m going to. I’m not a perfectionist, I’d rather just get something out and over and done with. I might have wanted to add a tune, or change a couple things but I just had fun and if I carry on the funs going to stop. I did a few last minute tunes that I’m so glad I did, a mystery track. The P Money feature… I recorded ‘Slice of a Pie’ like six months before and it was already mastered, but I suddenly thought P Money might sound cold on this but he won’t say yes, and I DM’d him and said he would come studio and record on it. So we recorded it and remastered it again. So there was changes like that. 

What themes and motifs are present in the album? 

Strangely, I feel like there’s a lot of songs about personal relationships and connections with people, whether it’s a break up song or a love song. Also a lot of songs about progress, motivation and achievement. Even ‘No Make Up Day’, which I wrote for my little sister who is thirteen, and her and her friends are obsessed with TikTok and what they look like and I wrote it for her. That’s an anthem for women, whereas others are motivation anthems. 

Why did you opt to have features and why these features?

The reason I had features is because on my last two albums I didn’t have any. I’ve only ever had someone sing a hook for me. So I wanted features, and I wanted to have fun. I wanted to invite my friends on a track with me. So Isaiah Dreads, I know him. Capo Lee is one of my best friends, Lioness and Dibo I vibe with all the time, RoxXxan’s a friend. These are just my people’s on a track. People ask me how much for a feature and i’ve just started saying I don’t do that. If someone sets me up with someone because they’ve got loads of followers and I’m being paid to collaborate with them I don’t really feel like that’s real. I don’t care how many followers I’m going to get from it, I’m not going to do it. 

What’s your favourite track on the album? 

[Ponders for ages] I’ve got a top three… maybe actually top five. I really like ‘Bullseye’, I really love ‘Slice of the Pie’. ‘Celebrate Life’ is a banger, ‘Talk of the Town’ is cold. Those two are on the same level. I really love ‘Talkin to Me’ - the track with Capo Lee, it’s just so summery. 

I’m not happy with five, I feel like you have to say one. I’m going to count down from three and you gotta say one. Three…two…one.

Slice of the Pie.

There we go. If you are introducing someone that has never heard of you before to your music, what song are you playing them? 

I’d probably say ‘Talk of the Town’ because I feel like it’s in the middle. They’ll be able to hear that I can go IN and it’s got a lot of multi-rhymes and wordplay so they can hear the skill side, but also it’s quite bouncy. 

What’s next? A Tour? 

I feel like I’m still not comfortable to have loads of people in a space where they may feel uncomfortable so I won’t have the right energy for a show. What we are thinking of doing is when the vinyl comes out in a couple of weeks, we might have a small listening party with a couple of performances at Rough Trade or something. A bit more chilled. Then I’m straight working on an EP. I got the PRS, the women make music fund, and I’m going to make an EP called ‘The Persian’, which is basically going to be using a lot of samples and influences from the Middle East. I’m doing that with Nutty P. 

When will you try drop that, this year or next? 

If I get it done by the end of the year I’ll drop, but if not it’ll be early next year.