Throughout 2021, RA will host a series of interviews in partnership with Black Minds Matter UK, an organisation whose mission is to connect Black individuals and families with free mental health services by professional Black therapists.

The interviews, which will be published as written features and audio RA Exchanges, focus on Black creatives working in electronic music at all levels. These conversations will touch on issues surrounding mental health, in keeping with Black Minds Matter UK's mission to "make mental health topics more relevant and accessible for all Black people in the UK, removing the stigma and remodelling the services to be relevant for the Black community."

Next up, Andrew Mensah speaks to Tony Nwachukwu, a producer, educator, CDR founder, and member of trip-hop trio Attica Blues.

This is a full transcript of this week's edition of the RA Exchange, edited slightly for length and clarity.

First of all, how was your weekend?

Pretty chill. [My son] Obie had a friend over. He had a sleepover which was... well, it was good to see him first and foremost, but as you can imagine, it was very noisy. And Obie's really got into music. We bought him some vinyl for his birthday, so he's just been hammering XXXTentacion all weekend.

Which is great. But I feel like, "Son, turn the music down." I sound like my parents. Do you know what I mean? It was quite weird.

So you bought him the record?

Yeah. He's got it on digital, but he wants to own some vinyl because we've got turntables here. So he just also wants to participate and experience, which is great actually because he can appreciate the fact that there's a sleeve and there's liner notes and all these kinds of things that you don't have with digital experiences. It's good that he appreciates that.

That's so funny that he's getting into music a little bit more. How much would you say you're consciously trying to influence him with your career?

That's a really good question. With my oldest, he's a proper music head. Once he realized what was on the wall... We've got a wall of vinyl here in the house. We've got some turntables, and every so often, we make a thing of going through the records and just playing them. So when he kind of realized what was on the wall and you've got this format that's much more physical, it's a different experience to streaming services. He really, really got into it and started buying records for himself. There's a whole wonderful process of finding records. Finding what he likes but then also when he was old enough, he was going to shops purposely to buy records. That's something I've grown up with, but for him, it was a journey of self-discovery. And going to the record shops in the West End, Sister Ray, going to Soul Jazz or whatever on his own terms. That was great and also something quite novel compared to his friends, who are all just streaming service heads.

It's great that he's had the opportunity to see the value of physical product, and it's passed on to his younger brother. And the fact that you own this vinyl, this physical artifact, that it's yours, and you take pride in it in a way you wouldn't necessarily if it was a digital artifact. It's great. And it's also a real form of identity. The fact that for all of us growing up, music is one of the first things that kind of differentiates us. Well, it brings us together in terms of finding like-minded human beings who share similar interests. But it's also probably one of the first things that defines us growing up, our taste in music that's different from our parents, that's different from our siblings. It's really good to see it played out with my sons.

I'd say, yeah, that rings true of myself as well. Like you suddenly realize as you gain more of your own opinion and form your way of thinking about the world, you suddenly realize there's been this whole process of permeation and osmosis as you've been growing up. All these things you've been listening to have kind of been helping shape what it is that you relate to. And from there, you then can kind of form your own identity as you say. Cool. I guess that kind of leads us quite well onto the topic of CDR. Can you tell us a bit about it?

Sure thing. So CDR, Create Define Release is an organization, but it has its roots in club space. It started as a knee-jerk reaction to some of my experiences as an artist and producer in the music industry. I was in a band, Attica Blues, which was signed initially to Mo'Wax and then to Higher Ground, a subsidiary of Sony Records. This is in the days of major industry before the internet, where being on a major label was a big thing because, for an independent artist, it meant that potentially you had the resources to take your career or your music to another level. In those days, it was really interesting because the industry was obviously full of some amazing independent labels, but equally, you had major labels who were invested in smaller independent labels, or they'd create a smaller imprint within this bigger machine.

So the idea is that these smaller labels were doing what, say, an independent label could do, but if projects gained traction or notoriety, they had the backing to propel these artists with the resources they had. That was our thinking for being on a label like Higher Ground. They had bands like Leftfield and DJ Rap and a few other people. For us, what was potentially a fantastic situation ended being quite frustrating because when our second album came out, the thinking behind being on a label like that, we got the opposite. Saying, "you've got potential, but we don't see the potential your way." So essentially, we got dropped. For an artist who goes through that or a band, in some respects, it's humiliating. So you have to deal with that as a human being.

The first thing that comes to mind for you is that you're not good enough. [The label] thinks you're good based on your demos or how you perform live, and then you go through this process of making a record. After making a record, they change their minds, so you're immediately going to think, "Okay, well, this body of work I created, they're not into, or they don't see it the same way as us." It's disappointing. And the first thing you do is internalize those feelings when you go through that process. For me, I made the decision first and foremost that I wouldn't let anybody, any organization, dictate how I shape my music from that day on. I also felt it was really important to create a space where that wasn't an issue. Where artists, producers, music makers could have a platform to learn and grow in a safe environment without being tainted by the industry or without being tainted by journalists essentially.

In the band, I did a lot of the production work and put the band together, and worked on that side of things. I wasn't DJing, but at the tail end of it, I DJ'd more because opportunities presented themselves. It's a different experience being asked to DJ for a couple of hours in Zurich or Italy as opposed to being a band, which has lots of other prerequisites like rehearsals, equipment and all this kind of stuff. DJing was easy compared to playing live.

Not only was it easier in terms of the logistics of it, but it also meant that within a DJ set, you obviously can play a selection of music. And for me, it was a really good opportunity to road test tracks that I was working on. Every so often, it'd flunk, but by and large, I would maintain the dance floor. For me, it was really interesting that I'd maintain the dance floor, and the audience was just consuming what I was presenting.

So I immediately wanted to create an event that would provide an opportunity to present work in progress and the fact that as a producer, as a music maker, we're on this quest to not only make music and release it but also to refine our skills and get feedback.

At the same time, formats were changing. With CDRs, recordable CDs, you could have the tracks that you make on your computer and then burn them off and play them on CDJs. It feels like whatever now, but it was a big deal in the late '90s, early 2000s to be able to take music that you'd made at home on your computer and to be able to fast track that to the dance floor.

Suddenly your music or your ideas have become portable. And that for me was really, really interesting. This idea that artists can take ownership of their destiny. You could go from your computer to the dance floor seamlessly without gatekeepers, without labels, without people second-guessing your music. So that's where the name CDR came from.

[The night] started off at a club called The Embassy, a small club on Essex Road in Islington. It was a downstairs basement that held maybe 100 people. And I'll never forget the first session because I had no idea what to expect. I printed up a few square fliers the same size as a CD case, and I bought a bunch of CDs, and where people used to post fliers in record shops and stuff, we posted these fliers in a plastic sleeve with a blank CD, inviting people to burn a track.

The idea is that people come to a session, you bring the track you're working on on the CD, and you present it at the DJ booth. And that happens in the early part of the night. So as the night progresses, it becomes bigger. That pile of CDs is the DJ set.

I'll never forget the first event where I was literally queuing up tracks, just trying to understand what was there and assembling them into some kind of flow. It was brilliant. Because for me, something that would be usually scary was actually really exciting because we were all discovering this new music in this window of time. The playlist is unique to that event, that time, that window of opportunity never to be replicated again unless it's recorded. For example, the track that I brought, that's just a version, and it may change, it may not. A track that another producer brought down, it may be the same, it may not. Who knows? So for that window of time, the music that's playing is this state in history. And that was powerful to feel from that first session onwards.

That's a great summation of what CDR is and then some. I want to take it back slightly. Do you remember when it was that you realized you had a passion for music?

Yes. So a couple of things. First of all, my parents are Nigerian, and the idea of being a musician [to them] is something that's way, way low down in priority. It's all about a profession. You are raising children who are going to be the doctors and lawyers and engineers of the world. I knew I was interested in music from the age of 10 or 11, I grew up with pop music, but equally, in my house, we grew up with a wonderful mix of the Messiah on a Sunday, Jim Reeves, Fela Kuti and Soul Records and ABBA. I remember just being not only interested in the song but the detail. Like why do drums on a Fela record sound a particular way? What makes up the music?

I really began to take ownership of my listening from the age of 13 when I got a paper round, and I could use my own money to buy things. I immediately started buying records. At that time, it was the days of early hip-hop, electro funk as it used to be called. And I used to go to Groove Records in Soho, which was a fantastic independent record shop. They used to get imports fresh from the US on Sundays or Saturdays. Many of my early records were like Planet Rock and "Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)," Electric Kingdom, Newcleus. I was buying a lot of that music because I was obsessed with electronic music by then, which led me to be into records by Kraftwerk. Also, new wave bands like Human League and OMD, Depeche Mode, any bands that used synthesizers.

Looking back, I think the thing that got me excited about this music was, again, I felt at a bit of a disadvantage growing up because being a musician was bad in a Nigerian household. The fact that it used computers, I could justify being into computer-based music because there was a skill attached to something that's remotely attached to engineering. I could kind of wing it with my parents. And also, I was into computers at the time as well. I was into programming, and I bought myself a Sinclair Spectrum. I was into computing anyway.

There were these bands in the US making otherworldly music that was really excited, which started with drum machine-led records like "Electric Kingdom" [by Twilight 22] and stuff by Newcleus but then obviously segued into music that was rooted in using things like the E-Mu SP-12. Records on Cold Chillin'. Records produced by Marley Marl, DJ Premier. That kind of sample-based music. Early Run DMC. I got into that world. Again, because it felt possible, it felt doable making this music that was digital. Not that playing in a funk band isn't doable, but for me, it felt a lot more... I could trigger a sequence with an 808 drum machine pattern. Do you know what I mean? I could understand that. Even though I didn't have the equipment, it made complete sense to me.

I also was inspired by Brit funk, particularly people like Herbie Hancock. Herbie Hancock was immensely influential because he's an artist who has always embraced technology, whether using a phaser pedal on a Fender Rhodes or using turntablism on "Rockit." Also, on the back of many of his records you've got him sitting there with a kind of map of analog synthesizers. You've got Oberheims, Moogs, Fender Rhodes, Clavinets. That was like a map of what was possible in terms of instrumentation.

I knew that the music I was enjoying was Black music rooted in technology. Rooted in jazz and blues but manifested through technology.

At what point was it that you formed the band?

After university, I'm armed with a bunch of records. I'd bought a couple of synthesizers by then. Made a couple of demos. And also, because I did a degree in computers, I kind of had a bit of a technical background in this kind of stuff as well.

I bet that made the parents happy.

Most definitely. That justified the wad of records I had in my bedroom at the time as well as a couple of computers or whatever. I worked as a programmer for a while. I loved the idea of coding, but the environment wasn't my idea of being creative. So I got a job in a shop called Turnkey, a brilliant music shop in London in the West End.

The wage was very poor, but you were in this world of synthesizers and like-minded people. And for me, it was a real schooling because I met some amazing musicians. And because it was in Soho, you had the Soho music industry nearby and lots of labels, like Sony. We'd get people [in the shop] who would get signed, and you got an advance, you need a new drum machine or a 4-track or a microphone or whatever. I was particularly interested in people that looked like me coming into the store. Do you know what I mean? I developed a lot of friendships with artists who looked like me and had a similar outlook on life as me.

As well as selling them stuff, they would come in and check in every so often how their deal was going. "Oh, I just got signed to East West, or "I just got signed to Mute Records," or whatever." And you would get to see how they'd grow as artists. And I'd help them out. Because by then, my specialty was I was the go-to sample guy. That was my thing because I studied it and was obsessed with it.

And a lot of the time with some customers, you would help them out when they'd buy some equipment. They might buy like a 4-track, a computer, a sampler, and a KORG M1 or something. As part of the service, you would go and help them set it up. So I did that a few times with people. And from there, I met a guy called Mykaell Riley who was in this band, Steel Pulse, for years. Then he set up The Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra, and I set up his equipment. Immediately he kind of asked me, "Hey, I'm doing this album. Do you want to help out with the drums?" I was like, "Okay." And it turned out to be a remix album for Bob Marley that they were doing.

The Philharmonic?

Yeah. So I worked on that project. And because I'd had this kind of electronic background, by then, I was really into breaks and the whole aesthetic of sample-based hip-hop. We'd had the golden era, the days of A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. Not only did I know how to make those records, but I knew the breaks because I lived the culture. And definitely by the early '90s, using loops and breaks had permeated into pop music. I was in kind of the right place at the right time. I worked with Mykaell for a few years, and for me, that was a fantastic development in my career because not only did I work with someone who got it, who got what my skills were, but he also saw the potential of using loops and breaks and these kinds of sample artifacts within the music that he was producing. And I got to see how the industry works from a maker's point of view.

I'd have a sampler, M1, MPC, all digital stuff, and my job was as the beats person. But I got to work with engineers. I saw the ecosystem, how you make records with a team of people in this fantastic [studio] setting. The role of the engineer, the role of the producer, the role of the assistant, the role of the musicians coming in and out. The role that I had to play. What happens with my loops and breaks and samples once it's on tape and it's crafted by the engineer. I soaked it all in. I had such an inspiring time at that period in my life.

I could see how you can take a raw sample, and with some effects and positioning in the track, you can make it otherworldly. Or when you've got a whole bunch of strings, and you hear it multi-tracked and layered with other instruments and blended with other sauces, and then we come up with this world of sound. For me, that just really, really, really inspired me. And I took this experience to Attica Blues.

At the time with Attica, particularly in the early days, it was brilliant because we'd had this whole wave of heads who'd grown up with hip-hop and electronic music. On the dance floor, things went from 125 or whatever to 97 BPM. And when you take things down in tempo, things can become very spatial and minimal, and your focus is on the atmospheres.

That inspired me because on a very basic level if you take a break and tune it down five semitones or 12 semitones, it sounds amazing. For me, that was almost like I was a pig in doo because I just loved transposing samples and being able to be in a band where you could explore beats and sampling and digital music forms with vocals, with turntablism. And bring our take on it as African kids growing up in London. And particularly with the first record, for me, it was a really good way of contextualizing all these things that I grew up with—being very passionate about music from a young age, being very passionate about electronic music rooted in jazz but without being a player.

And seeing the power of how sound is transformed once it becomes digital, what the potential of that is, and being able to work with like-minded human beings, Charlie [Dark] and Roba [El-Essawy], and being on a label where we could explore and experiment. And unbeknownst to me, we were riding this crest of a wave. At the time, we had great music around, whether it was Massive Attack or Portishead or any bands that kind of embraced the hip-hop aesthetic, whether it's using breaks or using the production aesthetic or the mood and texture, the focus on drums. For me, it was like a really interesting journey of discovery.

Yeah. I love that. It feels like what CDR has become and particularly what it started as, the flagship CDR that you were talking about earlier, very much embodies this sense of community and is a continuation of that journey for you.

At a young age, I always used to go to a couple of record shops in the West End. There was kind of a secondhand store that sold loads of different kinds of music. There used to be this one particular section where you would get records where you're like, "Oh, I remember that artist. Last month they were on a billboard, on buses and now their records are here." They'd be like for a pound. It interested me in a twisted way. All these artists would get promoted well for, say, a month or two months, and suddenly they don't exist anymore, or they split up because they fall out over money, or they fall out over the lead singer getting all the glory or the drummer getting... Whatever, the focus on one person. Anyway, we're human beings, and the thing that disrupts development and disrupts progress is ego 90% of the time.

So I was like, whatever I'm involved in, I'm involved in for the long haul. I need to work out a way that I can navigate ego and the ego not become a disruptive force. Because I've seen it time and time again, and throughout history, ego destroys wonder. It always does.

Particularly when it comes to Black music or Black culture, it's complicated enough navigating this space as people of color, so to me, from an early age, this idea of maintaining and understanding one's ego and how you can still have an ego but the ego is not a disruptive force in what you're doing has been really important to me.

That just brought up some of the things that you were saying when it came to the roots behind how you created CDR and this idea of removing these barriers or obstacles, whether it be the industry or any sort of gatekeepers. The ego is actually one of these things, and I think what you have done is helped remove this, whether it was conscious or not. Because when you think about the way people share music these days, it's very much kind of like behind closed doors that you might send someone your demos. It's always going to be a very close circle of people who hear things in the early stages of this development or someone really close to you. Which is why CDR and those nights were quite special because, as you said, you are kind of challenging what this perception of finished is or what is fresh or what is new.

It just made me think about my experience of artists that I know who I've heard their work from in its development stage or its demo stage before being completed. And I feel like that's quite a key thing. And also what's really interesting is that it's done in such a communal but also safe way. You're able to share it with other people, and actually, I think that can be quite powerful.

I think that you're completely right. And I'm glad you've identified these traits of CDR because I think before... The great thing about CDR is that it existed in a physical space before the internet. And for a long time, that was a special thing because, as I said earlier, this window of sound, this playlist only exists in that place and whoever was there experienced it. Whether it's at The Embassy or whether it was at the Bridge and Tunnel or at Plastic People, which is where we stayed until it closed in 2012. And for me, the beautiful thing about it is that a lot of the time, for artists and producers, you're sharing something that you're not ready to. When you're developing music, sharing it with people is the last thing you want to do because you're going to immediately say, well, that's not right—still working on this—still working on this. And there's a space for that, of course. But equally, there's a space for sharing things when it's not ready because there's lots that comes from the emancipation of that. Just from letting go of the perception that it's not right yet.

And the really powerful thing about CDR apart from this is that it kind of demystifies what finished means. But it also allows someone who's working on music to hear the music in this context, where the sound system is top-notch with people who are a mix of people who you don't know. The space isn't about judgment, it's about listening and understanding, and it's a different consciousness.

And the release of that, both in terms of your emotions and your feelings about your music but also the other listeners in the space who also are privy to that world, it's an amazing experience. People will inquire. They'll be inquiries about what they've heard or the technical detail or your approach. You can have a conversation about the work, which in turn would inform where you go next. So this listening experience becomes a tool for the development of your music rather than being this hindrance because it's been shared in public.

Yeah. Of course. Totally. And I think it's amazing. You can't take away the role that putting people in a space together and sharing that experience of, as you say, emancipating your music and releasing it into a more public space plays.

You mentioned being a Black professional in the industry. I wanted to talk to you about your experience when it comes to reconciling the Black identity in the music industry. There have been a lot of conversations in recent years and last year, particularly about Blackness and music and how much the music industry has gained from Black music and the whole changing of the term of urban music to Black music. I just wanted to know what your experiences were of operating as a Black man in the industry.

Sure. Lots to pack in there. [laughter]

So first and foremost, I've grown up always knowing I was a minority. Whether it was in primary school being one of eight Black kids or being in secondary school, one of maybe 20 Black kids in a school of 600. So at a young age, I've always known I'm a minority, and between that and my parents saying to me, "You always have to be better than the white kids. You always have to work twice as hard." That was something I grew up with. And for a lot of kids in my generation, that was drummed into you at a young age. You have to work twice as hard. It was always that.

For me, the way I've solved that is to be independent. So taking ownership as much as I can of my destiny. Whether it's me buying records, going to West End myself, and developing my record collection at a young age, or whether it was at university setting up my club night Destination X with my mates. I will physically go to the club and negotiate the terms. I will physically book people myself. I will physically do the fliers myself. At least in the beginning. No one's stopping me. I'm going to do it because I'm going to do it. I've always been that kind of person. Knowledge is power.

And I think I've not allowed prejudice, I've not allowed oppression, to hinder my focus. Of course, there have been times when it's been challenging, and there have been times when I've had to handle racial incidents. Whether that's in a workplace or whether that's in a club environment. A lot of things that I won't talk about now, but what I will say is that I've chosen to focus on focusing. Empowering myself as much as I can. Finding like-minded people around me and celebrating that.

I've been able to differentiate between Black enterprise and mainstream enterprise. And what I mean by that is, I've always had a lot of love for those aunties or uncles who would go to Nigeria and buy crayfish or okra or stockfish from the markets in the village and bring it back in suitcases and open it up on a Sunday and open a stink at the house. Do you know what I mean?

Yep.

That's entrepreneurship from day one. That's community entrepreneurship. It may not have the bells and whistles of a brand with a logo and a van, but that's entrepreneurship. And what's beautiful about that entrepreneurship is it's for the community. It's saying that we are providing a service to our people. We need these foodstuffs because it's not readily available in local supermarkets or it's really expensive, so we're going to make it happen.

And a lot of the time, they'll either give it away or sell it at cost. It wasn't about making a huge buck. It was serving the community. And I've really, really been inspired by this. Whether it's uncles and aunties with their cases of food goods or whether it's the local barber in your neighborhood where you're cutting afro hair, and there's a culture around that, and there's an enterprise to that. Again, it's not about making a barber incorporated and making a multinational empire. It's about the one or two in your ends serving the people, and that's it. Nice and simple.

So I've taken inspiration from these kinds of Black enterprises that exist for the community. And you could extend that into record labels like Greensleeves in the early days. A lot of these kinds of reggae labels or soul record labels, or early hip-hop record labels were created because there wasn't a place for that music in mainstream companies. They weren't interested in that music. So you set up these labels to channel those artists and producers but then also to serve a community. Whatever the genre is, whether it's soul, reggae, dub, lover's rock.

Yeah.

So to me, it's been really important seeing that and knowing that, of course, one wants an organization to grow. You want to be able to be sustainable. But there are different ways of being sustainable. And it doesn't always have to be grandiose. If you focus on sustainability and focus on maintaining your mission as your organization or your business and each to their own in terms of whatever profit means. There are different forms of profit, different forms of wealth. For me, cultural wealth and maintaining wealth within a community are a priority in whatever I do.

It's really interesting because you've done so much, coming from a position of being the creator with Attica specifically and having this journey with them and then the label and then going on to do CDR, and you're an educator as well. It feels like you're very much about sharing and empowering other people. It was so interesting that you had this analogy of bringing back foods and selling them or providing a service for the community in another space. This idea of it all tying in together, being independent, and doing your thing for your people. I really like that. I just wanted to say that.

Thank you. I've had a broad view about these things for a long time in my life. Just asking myself anything from how artists become successful for a while and then not. How scenes are so powerful at the beginning, then they get destroyed. Or how genres evolve. What's the key to keeping things sustainable? What's the key to maintaining? And that's always something that's puzzled me for a lot of my years.

And yeah, I'm in the business of empowerment and independence and helping human beings create and live to their best potential and enabling friction-free access to knowledge and friction-free access to development. I think particularly because of the lens of music that I'm interested in and the lens of music that I'm interested in pursuing, I believe that's the best approach for me.

It's interesting because being part of Attica has been and continues to be an amazing experience in terms of the period when we were really productive and the period of time in history, but one could argue that it would have been fantastic to have had a hit record. Do you know what I mean? Or live off a licensing deal or live off the fruits of third-party exploitation. That would have been wonderful and may still be possible.

That's one way that many of my peers have sustained themselves. And that has a particular pathway. But for every fantastic licensing opportunity or celebrated, notable DJ career, there's going to be some kind of thing that has to offset that, right? And I think for me, it's been trying to work out a balance. It hasn't always been easy. CDR's been fantastic, and it's maintained this thinking for 20 years because I've been very stalwart and stubborn about what this space needs to be, come rain or shine. Opportunities that could have steered it in a particular direction for personal gain or profit, I've chosen not to take those paths purely and simply because I've had the bandwidth to see where they can lead.

And I'm not saying I've got all the answers. I'm not saying I've got all the solutions. But what I can say is that the vision for CDR and also the vision for how I live my life as an educator, as a music maker, as a producer is that, particularly with the lens of music that I'm interested in, for me, it's all about creating a space where people feel welcome and feel that they can live to their potential. You know?

Yep.

And I believe the more you create spaces for this and the more you can demonstrate its worth, that potentially this way of thinking can offset any environments where you can't be authentic or where the realms of profit or the realms of... That perspective is less of a narrative if that makes sense.

Yeah. Totally.

I just wanted to touch on the topic of mental health as well. How much of an impact has mental health had on your career or not? Is it something that you've had challenges with at all in the past?

That's a great question. I'm glad you've asked that. Because it's only something that I've thought about recently in terms of my own personal mental health. For years, I've often thought about why the industry doesn't support, won't support artists on their journey. And what I mean by that is from my own experience, I talked to you a little bit about one day we were signed to Sony, and everything's hunky-dory. And then, a while later, it's the opposite. Like tumbleweed. Now, as a human being, you have to process that, right? And I know full well there are lots of artists who have not been able to handle that. The transition from one day you've got lots of attention, lots of notoriety, and for whatever reason, that notoriety doesn't get converted into gain. Whatever the gain is. Whether it's financial gain or otherwise. That artist, they have to deal with that. And a lot of artists go into depression. It affects their mental health because they haven't had the support or advice or the insight into how to handle the industry trajectory, right?

Mm-hmm

How to handle being, one day you're in your bedroom making music on your terms, playing it to your mates, the next minute everyone's talking about you, and then you're the center of attention, and then sometime later, you're not. People deal with that in different ways. So I believe there needs to be something in place to support that. And as you know, someone who's creative, it's this complex journey of personal self-discovery, personal ambition, dealing with life, this kind of complex tapestry of stuff when you're making work, and you're sharing it with the world. I'm not saying it all has to be rosy but what I'm saying is a part of that tapestry. There needs to be some education around the outcomes of what's going to happen. Do you know what I mean?

Totally. Yeah.

Because a lot of the time, if your record doesn't do well, whatever well means, or you don't reach a particular goal, the first thing you're going to do is internalize it. I'm not good enough. I'm rubbish. Unless you've got people around you, or you can understand why it didn't perform. Do you know what I mean?

And even if it didn't perform because it was, I don't know, for whatever reason, there should be a way of us as human beings learning how to process disappointment.

Yeah. Because people always react to things in different ways, as you say. I feel like you were able to channel that disappointment in some shape or form, but not everyone can do that.

Yeah. Exactly. I think for me, being dropped by Sony was a real turning point. And for sure, I was down for a while. Particularly because up until that point, we were doing well. As in, we were committed to the records we were making. We'd had notoriety, of course. But this particular group of people in this building decided the opposite to that. So without a shadow of a doubt, I had a period where I felt disappointed and felt... Not agreed that I agreed with them, but surely they're saying something right because they dropped us.

But that was short-lived. I decided not to let that rule me. I evaluated myself as a human being. Am I committed to the music I make or the music I create? I evaluated my capability, not just as a human being but also as a band member. Although we didn't make another record, our ability manifested itself in different ways. Mine manifested itself in creating CDR. For Charlie [Dark], it manifested itself in running Run Dem Crew. So I think that there's a defiance that's really important. I think the thing to learn from setbacks or disappointment is to evaluate, learn from it, try and not take it personally, and move forward.

Because throughout history, particularly with Black music, particularly with Black enterprise, there are countless examples of people who have been underestimated, put down. And it's that determination that has brought through wonderful bodies of work or wonderful enterprise. So that's the thing to remember.

Did you feel at the time, in the wake of the disappointment, that you had peers you could talk to about this? Or conversely, do you feel like there are people you can talk to about this sort of thing now who come across, not necessarily the same sort of disappointment, but who are going through something and need that extra support?

I'll say now, in 2021, for sure. I think that there are people in my life who I can confide with. People confide in me. The good thing about talking about mental health and the mental side of being creative is... it's a lot more part of people's vocabulary nowadays. And if you've lived through the creative process, whatever it is, music, pottery, graphic design, you learn what these peaks and troughs are. And if you're able to share them with your peers, I think it becomes less taboo, and it's really important to be able to have people around you who you can share these feelings and perspectives with because it helps push through. It could be as simple as being able to share how you feel with someone close to you and someone just listening in the first instance. And having the fact out of your body in the world is super powerful rather than it being cooped up in yourself.

In the earlier part of my career, I think I was broad-sighted enough to take empowerment from artists who were dropped and then rose again or artists who were dropped and then did something else—and being able to remind myself that this particular institution rejected me, more for them. Do you know what I mean?

And that's the way to kind of look at these things. I think the great thing about where we are in the world is that there are different measures of success, different ways of growing and evolving as an enterprise. And don't get me wrong, some people want high levels of notoriety and the fruits of that. That's fine. I want that to a certain extent. But what I will not do is compromise my integrity to get that. And I think that the great thing about where we are in the world, particularly with what's happened with Covid and what's happened post-George Floyd, a lot of what was unsaid or not explored or lacked a public arena to talk about these things without...

Fear of judgment.

Yes. Yeah. That's been blown out of the water. And that is really, really exciting. The conversation has transformed in many respects, although it has regressed in others when it comes to recent government reports, but that's another conversation. You'd like to think the conversation around mental health is much more fruitful nowadays. People are a lot more conscious of mental health than they ever were in history. And that is really positive. There's still a lot of work to be done, of course. But the fact that it's not a taboo subject anymore and you can talk about depression or anxiety or other forms of mental health in a sentence and not be judged, quite the opposite, it's a conversation that can build and grow into support.

Yeah. I completely agree. I think that the conversation has moved on leaps and bounds as it needs to. As you say, there's definitely more work that needs to be done, but I think that there have been drastic improvements, and I guess this is a testament to that as well.

I just wanted to ask you one last question about what you've got coming up for CDR. What is there to look forward to? Anything that you can share at the moment?

Sure. Before I answer that question, I need to just say that part of my growth and development as a human being in this space is the evolution from one to many. And what I mean by that is I was in a band, as you know. Attica Blues. A trio. I had band members. That was a group of people. And then CDR, I started it with a good friend, Gavin Alexander, for a long time. And I've always had this vision for this concept to be much bigger than one person. But at times, it was just me. In the days when it had to be lean and mean. What's been interesting is that what got me into everything that I do is my love for music, my love for bringing people together, and my love for learning. Particularly with CDR, I didn't come into it thinking, "All right, I've got a startup now, and this startup is going to be a unicorn." I didn't come as a business person.

Most creative people have to learn how to evolve as someone who is a craftsperson, someone who makes work, to then articulate that work into an organizational framework. And that journey is different for different kinds of people. And I know for me it was an organic process. It began with my idea for this event, which then had Gavin on board, and then we had other people on board who became part of the organization—and seeing where it goes. I had to learn early on that to grow an organization, you need to go from something that's a cultural phenomenon into a structure. If you've got this creative idea, it needs an infrastructure. It needs to get out of your brain into the world, and it needs to be understood by other people.

Particularly in the last few years, it's been really exciting for CDR to be in existence for this long. It's 20 years next year. To me, what's been beautiful, is the main seed of CDR has been constant throughout. And that's obviously through my doing. But it wouldn't be possible without the people who have been part of CDR's growth and evolution.

So to me, as we enter this phase of CDR, which is about growth and about having a robust program, building on the years that CDR's been around, but maintaining its values and thinking and mindset and bringing that to more people, and that mindset being articulated in different kinds of ways. Whether it's in a school setting or whether it's in an academic setting, or whether it's a label setting or in a partnership with a like-minded organization.

These are really interesting perspectives that we're just continuing to grow and expand. It's been a really interesting ride the last few years and seeing how that's manifested itself, particularly in times of trauma, particularly in these times of Covid and how that's affected us as an organization that prides itself on creating physical experiences. And the future's really exciting. Just taking CDR's thinking and approach to community and approach to music creation and sharing it with more people.