‘I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE AN ARC’TERYX JACKET WHEN I MADE THAT SONG’: GETTING TO KNOW YT

Photography by Charlie Blunden

Meet YT. The 21-year-old rapper and producer from North East London, who is steadily cementing himself as a figurehead within the ‘underground’ UK rap scene after his breakout track ‘Arc’teryx’. And with follow-up tracks like ‘Rent Free’ and ‘Maple Money’ along with frequent SoundCloud drops, he’s showing no signs of stopping. We caught up with him to discuss his musical inspirations, what he’s learnt from the music scene so far, the process behind ‘Arc’teryx’ and where he plans to go from here.

When did you first start playing around and creating music? And what inspired you to release your first tracks on SoundCloud back in 2016?

I first started making music using voice notes on my phone, I can’t lie; I was literally just bored in summer. I can’t remember what they were, but I was just searching ‘type beats’ on YouTube and rapping to them on voice memos and then I would just post them on my private story for fun.

These times I was only 15 and I didn’t have a laptop yet, I got my first one on my 16th birthday, so when my mum would go out, I’d steal hers, record stuff on her garage band, and then put it on my SoundCloud.

I was always an avid rap listener and I used to freestyle in school a lot just for jokes — from then I knew I had bars. I knew I had things to say, so I thought why not just start recording it.

After having been making music for over half a decade now, how would you describe the style and sound that you’ve evolved into?

People throw out words like alternative and underground to describe it, but those words are meaningless – they both just mean anything that isn’t mainstream, you know? It doesn’t describe a sound. 

I don’t know though… I sound like me. I guess I make a lot of ‘supertrap’ songs, dark ambient, plugg, pluggnb… there are certain genres of music that I make more than others but same time I mix it up a lot too so I never really know how to answer this question. I really don’t know what to call it. 

I’m not comparing myself to Kanye but it’s like saying “What’s Kanye’s sound?” – how the hell do you answer that? Kanye’s music is just Kanye’s music, you know?

Did you always have the support of the people around you when you first started? Going to a private school and being of African descent, rapping obviously isn’t a conventional dream to chase – how did your friends and family respond to your musical passion? 

Hell no. I was always bare shy about saying that I actually really liked making music just because it was always seen as a joke. I got made fun of for it in school. The only stuff that was cool was sports – any creative pursuit people hated on.

So, every time I dropped a track, people would be laughing at me, pointing at me around school and what not. I’d go into a classroom and people would have my music up on the whiteboard and play it in front of the teachers and try to take the piss. 

It’s funny because now the hate doesn’t really come from people that I know…now I just see random comments on TikTok or YouTube. But what’s even funnier to me is how the tables really turn – I see the same man who were violating me during my school days, now telling me, “Yo bro, I just saw your TikTok” or, “My little brother is listening to your song” and stuff.

Coming from an African household, my family are Christians as well, so I used to try and hide my music — that’s the reason why I don’t swear in any of my music. When I first started, I was scared that my parents would find it. Now I’m just in the habit of not doing it and I think it’s kind of cool that I don’t have to.

The first time they found out was because I got suspended for making a diss track on some older kids that went like school viral, and I was so shook because I thought that would be mad at me but they were just creasing, they found it so funny.

I don’t think they fully get it but they try to support me wherever they can, and they congratulate me when I hit a milestone or an achievement — so yeah, they’re cool with it, but they’re not too involved. They just want me to finish my studies first.

You’re clearly an intelligent guy, studying at Oxford right now, and we can see this talent shine in your music through the clever, sharp-witted punchlines in your lyrics. But how are you balancing the demands of Oxford and music? 

In my first year [of university] I didn’t take music seriously – I would just do it when I was bored. Stuff started getting tough in my second year when I really started making music. But even then, it still wasn’t too bad because it was lockdown. But still, I remember times when my friends in London would hit me up for studio sessions – I’d get the last train down from Oxford at 11pm get there for like 1am, be there until 5am, get the train back to Oxford, and make it in time for a lecture at 8am – no sleep. There would be times when I had an essay due but had a sudden inspiration and just had to record and I’d end up missing the deadline. 

I’m not too passionate about academics anymore so it doesn’t feel like I’m juggling. I really just do the minimum I need to do at uni and then do music. 

This last year, I’ve been on my year abroad and so I’ve had way more free time but as I go into my final year we’re gonna have to see how I handle it for real now.

What would you say is the biggest thing you have learnt so far through making music and navigating the ‘UK underground rap’ scene? 

I think talent and passion rises to the top more time. I’m not even speaking about myself like that but people ask me things like “Tola how do you start making music?”, “How did you grow your platform” etc. Nothing we’d done before this year had been too strategic. It all just came from being real and making authentic music and friendships. You can see the difference between the people who love the art and those who make music for other reasons.

So actually… I’ll change my answer to encompass all of that, the biggest thing I’ve learnt is just to be real.  All the people who you see me working with are my real friends who I’ve known for like two-plus years now. And there are even some people that I know well that I don’t have songs with even though we make music in the same scene, and people have been asking us to make songs, but that’s just not the priority – it’s all just being real, real friendships, real music. Be yourself and don’t force things.

Although the hype has somewhat died down now, we can’t go through this interview without talking about the song that put you on the map – ‘Arc’teryx’. Could you tell us a little bit about what the process was for creating the song? And did you ever think that it would become as popular as it has?

[Laughs] You know I’m a fraud because I didn’t even have an Arc’teryx jacket when I made that song, I only had a beanie. I was just in the shower blasting beats, humming, and freestyling to see what came to me. And I can’t even remember it that clearly, but I must have just been thinking about my one beanie and thought of the “Arc’teryx on me...” and then the “Patagonia…snowdonia” rhyme just came to me.

I had an essay due but once that idea had come into my head I went straight to my laptop, laid down that four bar and the rest of the song just flowed. Then I sent it to LAUZZA because we’d been planning to do a project together for like the last two years —and straight away he was like “this is the one”, and we got to work.

Then we shot the video over two days in the freezing cold in Surrey, with help from Past Down Vintage since – as I said before – I didn’t have any Arc’teryx jackets yet, so yeah shoutout them man always.  

When we dropped the video it got a couple of thousand views in just the first few days – which was insane to me at the time. Then Jude [who produced the video] sent it to the Arc’teryx media team, they got back to us saying they loved it, and they sent a load of free tees, beanies, hats and stuff which was so sick to see.

Then it was early December, when that girl on TikTok, shoutout @laulauchichi, posted the video wearing it in the shower which just took off — that video got like a few million views and from there the song followed. It went from 100k in November to one million by mid-January and now it’s on like three million which is crazy. We knew it had the potential to pop off but we definitely didn’t predict it happening on that scale.

And coming off your recent success how do you plan to move forward the rest of this year, what are your main goals? And do you have any upcoming projects that we should keep an eye out for?

Consistency. I also want to work with new people. I have a bunch of music videos coming out soon as well. I’m working on a tape titled ‘On My Own’. It’s probably going to be mostly, if not entirely plugg music. If so, then I want it to be the reference point for plugg in the UK.

I’m not really a target setter though. I don’t like setting goals; I just want to keep having fun and growing consistently — not even necessarily in terms of numbers but just improving in my craft and making better and better music — that’s what I want to do.