Louis Theroux interview's British rapper, Headie One for The Louis Theroux Podcast which is available on Spotify now.
Louis talks to Headie One about his upbringing and ‘time inside’ and how this has affected his career. He also clears up where his rap name actually comes from…
HEADIE ONE SHARED WHERE HIS RAP NAME COMES FROM:
LT: It seems obligatory in interviews with you that we have to say that the name Headie came from the shape of your head being like a 50p piece… do you think that's really true?
HO: No, I feel like that's what’s online. But that's not actually how the name came about
LT: What would it have been then?
HO: The name came about because I had an older cousin. He's very playful, so when I was young, especially when I was a bit smaller, I had quite a big head for my age and he would just call me Headie, in the house
LT: And he was trying to wind you up, but maybe in an affectionate way?
HO: Yeah, just like siblings
LT: Yeah, like ginger, or specs. They used to call me glasses or specks
HO: In the house?
LT: Well yeah people in the area, sure
HO: (…) He would call me that and then my sister started calling me that over time, after that my family friends, just spreads out into the community and then it just stuck with me
HEADIE ONE REVEALS THAT HE IS ATTEMPTING TO MAKE MORE POSITIVE MUSIC:
My music can sometimes be very reflective and also come across quite negative in terms of the feel of it and the topics I cover, because the past hasn’t been very positive all the time. I feel like I want to turn over a new leaf musically and attempt to head into a more positive space in my views on things and the stuff that I speak about. But I highlight the word attempt because there are things that we can’t really control with how we feel, when we make music we just express ourselves but it’s definitely something I’m going to try and make a conscious effort to do
HEADIE ONE SHARES WHY HE WOULDN’T COLLABORATE WITH KENDRICK LAMAR:
LT: You did a collab with Drake a few years ago, he’s been in some hot water lately. People are saying that Kendrick [Lamar] has sort of punked him. Would you do a collab with Kendrick?
HO: I don’t think I would call it hot water and I wouldn’t really agree [that Kendrick has punked Drake]. I’ve never been the biggest fan of [Kendrick’s] music. I feel like he does music a bit differently from what I appreciated growing up like Biggie Smalls, who was a bit more fun and getting into flows and celebratory in what they talk about
HEADIE ONE COMMENTS ON THE ARGUMENT AROUND DRILL MUSIC GLAMOURISING CRIME:
LT: There’s a lot more reality in the music than what I used to think. I realise the stakes are very real, there’s often temptation to see rappers as characters in a movie. And you’ve even said in your new album you talk about ‘my life if it was a movie on Netflix, you wouldn’t believe it’ kind of thing. But at the same time people die for real, it’s not fictional
HO: It’s people expressing things that would already be happening even if there wasn’t that genre of music or that kind of music already. I see it as a way of telling a story, everyone’s speaking their truth about their experiences, so I feel like that’s what give the style of music a real feel and also makes it very emotional
LT: What do we say about whether or not drill glamourises crime, that’s what it comes down to
HO: I feel like it can come across like that it glamorises crime, but there’s two ways of looking at it. You can see that the crime is happening anyway, whether it’s being spoken about or not because before I ever knew how to rap a lyric or drill ever existed, there were extreme levels of violence and crime that I experienced, as young as being a toddler from the environment I grew up in. It can also be used a tool to bring attention to what is going on, and that is what has actually happened because like you said, there’s politicians that are actually speaking about the genre. So it’s just a way of people being heard and speaking about the environments they grew up in.
