Vadim is most probably one of the hardest working men in hip hop… and he has been for a very long time. He’s also been responsible for some absolute classic tracks in the past (Terrorist anyone?) and has recently embarked on a new musical journey alongside two long standing partners of his, Blu Rum and Yarah Bravo. Together they form One Self and have just released their new album, ‘Children of the Possibility’. They’ve also, in trademark Vadim fashion, embarked upon a massive European and worldwide tour, with DJ Woody in tow, that started back in May and is going to finish god knows when. And so for all these reasons and more we managed to get a hold of Woody back in May and arranged for a chat, as One Self prepared themselves to rock the stage at the Jazz Café for the ‘official’ start of their tour. After some delaying and time for the guys to get some much needed food in their stomachs, we sat down backstage with Vadim, Woody and Blu Rum (unfortunately Yarah was too busy putting the finishing touches to the band’s show) to find out where One Self comes from, where they’re going, what all the fuss about East Ham is and what their view of hip hop is today. By far one of the funniest and most interesting interviews we’ve done in a long time, be prepared for the possibilities of One Self…

First thing I wanted to ask was what you've been up to since finishing the album?

Vadim: Just been touring and doing shows...

Is this the official beginning of the tour?

V: I guess you could say today is the official launch of the project, even though as everyone can testify we've been doing this for quite a long time now. Doing shows in Switzerland, Spain, France... Kinda warming up for now but it's always been continuous... (to Woody) ever since I met you really isn't it?

Woody: Yep! (laughs)

So you looking forward to that then?

V: what the show?

Yeah and the rest of the tour... you've got forty odd dates or something haven't you?

V: Well we're doing 20 shows all around Europe, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Italy... that's just now and then we got festivals and to be honest the shows are countless… relentless.

Well you've always kind of been known to tour extensively regardless of what project you're doing...

V: Just trying to get out there really I suppose.

So how did One Self come together?

V: I'd say it's a culmination of all the tours myself, Blu Rum and Yarah have done. Just touring and doing so many Russian Percussion shows, recording with James (Blu Rum) for his LP, recording for my stuff, recording with Yarah for hers, and so we just decided to put the whole thing together from that really. Woody came on board through working with us on the Russian Percussion shows so he stayed here for the album and the group. Even though the name is new, the group isn't new. It's not like we've all suddenly found each other at a bus stop and decided to make a group! Even though I only met Woody 2 years ago, still we've probably already done 60 shows or something like that together, maybe more... with James it's hundreds, literally... maybe thousands! (laughs)

Blu Rum: Maybe... could possibly be that many...

As One Self you guys span quite a lot of ground geographically, 3 continents actually. Has that had an impact on how you made the album?

V: For me, I think distance is something that is in people's minds. The way I see it, some people think Manchester is a long way from London, some people in England have never been to London and think 'whoa that's well far', but then that's just how people see it. For me, I can fly to LA on a 12h flight and do a show the same day. Or go to Australia... the world is as big or small as you want to make it. And with the Internet, telephone and that kind of multimedia technology you're in contact with people from all over the world, so in that sense music has now become an international language… more than language itself. Especially hip hop. I would say that's a language in itself that you can communicate with. You can speak to Germans, French, Japanese who may not speak a word of English but you can communicate with them.

B: They all know 'Yes, yes, ya'll' though (laughs)

V: Like when you went to Yugoslavia you were surprised

B: That's what I'm saying, they know the phrases, the slang, so in a way they know exactly what you're saying and get the idea. As long as you put it in a hip hop context it's like a language.

V: When you're freestyling we could be in Yugoslavia and they could speak not a word of English, but if you're ripping it they know you are. In a sense it's weird because you might think they need to know what you're saying but I've seen you do freestyles on tour and you know people can't be clocking every word you say. It's like a second language for them but they cheer like it's the second coming of Christ.

B: Divine inspiration...

It breaks barriers down doesn't it? I also wanted to ask you what it was like for you to be working with just two people whereas normally you have quite a lot of guests on your albums and Russian Percussion has always had a fluid line up that changed regularly.

V: Well they all paid me a load of money just to stick with them... (laughs) They said please...

B: And we're still paying... (laughs)

V: I don't know… there are good and bad things. It's like we're in a relationship in a sense... so there are both good and bad things involved. It's good that you're there and musically we can all be on the same page, and readily available and willing to do it. When I was working with loads of people, sometimes you have to go and look for people, sometimes people are unreliable. Whereas with this project it's much more focused, it's there and you can see and understand it. Also now I think it brings the best out of everyone. I think I've worked harder, I definitely think James is spitting harder and Yarah as well. Sometimes if you just take an MC that you maybe never met before, it's not that they won't be good, but they might not give you their best. They might think 'shit there's a dude in London emailing me, I'll just give him some shitty rhymes I don't give a shit about'. Whereas here, with all of us in a group, you think that if you're going to be lazy it's going to reflect badly on you, because your name is on it. But if you put effort into it, people are going to see that. That's the good sides.

I guess having known each other and worked together for a while has also been a bonus...

V: For sure. If I'd met James and Yarah last week and said 'Let's make an album together, I've got some beats at home, come on', the album would have been totally different. Hopefully I think that when people hear the album, they'll be able to hear the maturity in it, it's not like a bubblegum...

W: Rent a rapper type situation

V: Yeah it's deeper than that. I think that people will understand and feel the kind of...

B: group at work...

V: yeah feel the labour.

(turning to Blu) I also wanted to ask if you guys had some themes and ideas for the lyrics before hand that you wanted to bring to the album or if you wrote mostly while making the music with Vadim and being inspired by the vibe?

B: Well we weren't really sure that we were making this album, while we were making this album so I would record a few tracks based on how I felt the music. The themes were those that came to me from the samples or the style of the beat that we were using. And same with Yarah, when it slowly became an album we started having more of a say in beginnings, endings, intro, outro, drops, which rhymes worked better than others, etc. I've worked in partnerships where you write the songs together at the same time, but that wasn't the case for this album.

And production wise was it similar to this process, did you all work together on creating the songs or was it more of a solo work?

V: I did all the songs myself but James might say 'why don't you flip that' or 'drop this', 'change that'. And the same with Yarah, so they have an input. Some sort. Most of the recording for this album happened before we even thought of being a group. We were just recording like James said. We didn't sit there thinking 'shit we're gonna be a group, let's record some tracks'.

B: We need a radio hit, an underground hit, something for the ladies... (laughs)

V: We just did it, and then later we started to think about things more and now we're starting to think about the second album. Because Ninja Tune have asked us for one. So now we're thinking about 'what are we going to do', bla, bla, bla. James and Yarah are thinking about how they're going to write it, so now for the second album it'll be interesting how that will be really different from the first one. Just simply because we feel it much more cohesively now than we did before .

It might be totally different to how you made the first one.

V: Yeah it's gonna be rave...

B: Either that or we break up... (laughs)

V: What about broken beat styles?

While we're talking about production, I was wondering how you worked on this album. Did you incorporate any live instrumentation?
I was also wondering about how you used the turntable this time round, as you've always managed to fit it in your productions in a way that was always quite unique in a sense.

V: For me this is just a progression of everything that I've done before. Some people have come up to me and said One Self is just unbelievably different to anything I've done before and they couldn't believe it, and I'm like well...

B: I didn't do that shit! (laughs)

V: Yeah I had a ghost producer. I'm like ‘no it is me’. If you listen to my very first album and compare it to what I've done now than maybe you can say that's a bit of a big leap, but if you go through all the albums I don't think that this is, music wise, that different to the album before. It's just another step. Whether it's a step forward or sideways, it's still a progression. I've used the same equipment, I've just got more of it. What I would say is that on this album I've tried to concentrate more on songs. As a DJ, producer, traveling the world I meet so many people who give me tapes or CDs of dope beats. There are loads of good producers around the world, loads of good bedroom producers who make really nice beats. But there's a difference between making a nice beat and making a good song. To make a good song you need to have a structure, chorus, an intro, an outro, strong lyrics, something to catch you with. It can't just be a two bar loop, you know? It's trying to incorporate everything, make it simple... this is the 8 bar scratch bridge, this is the vocal bridge, this is the intro, the outro. Trying to make it like a classic song, whoever you think is that makes classic songs. Like if you listen to a Beatles track or something classic like that, you can tell there is structure in places, there is some sort of overall classic approach. And I guess it's trying to take that and put it into a hip hop frame...

Which is unconventional...

V: Well hip hop is unconventional because sometimes people just have a two bar loop and rap for four minutes. But for me this whole album, part of the reason why it's called 'Children of the Possibility' is because hip hop is gone past that. I don't really wanna hear hip hop that just loops up James Brown over two bars for four minutes, and the same ahh, fresh scratching and the same guy rapping about why he's the best MC rapper, and how he's bitch-slapping everyone else. There are new ways of doing it, you know?

That's what hip hop is all about ultimately.

V: I'm not talking about re-inventing the wheel, but people like for example Black Thought have taken it to places where hip hop has never been. The Roots have. Jay Dee, Dr Dre, they both have. It's advanced hip hop and that's what I'm trying to do. Musically I try to progress. I still use samples and loops and stuff, but I try to replay a lot of stuff, try to make it in a musical way where you listen to the song and you don't think 'shit I'm bored of it' after a minute. You want to feel like the music is taking you somewhere. It's all different elements really... there you go.

I wanted to talk to you about East Ham... I read on your site that it had quite a lot of influence on how this album came out after you moved there, and I was just wondering if you could break that down for us a bit more really...

V: Yeah East Ham... that's a... You lived in Barking right?

Yeah, don't live there no more though...

V: Where are you now?

Down the road in Leyton.

V: Ah Leyton, I've been to Leyton as well. East Ham I think is very similar to Barking...

Definitely

V: It's loads of Asian people, but then you have Colombians, Lithuanians, Polish people, Ugadans, Angolans, some Caribbeans...

B: There are quite a few Caribbeans I found... I've probably walked around your yard more than you!

V: True, but it's not the same as Brixton for example.

You can walk around East Ham and think it's all Asian, or think it's all African, depending on where you are.

V: Yeah, it's much more Jamaican than Suberton was (laughs). But say you go to Upton Park, that's much more Caribbean, while East Ham is much more Indian. So it depends which parts of Newham you go to. But of course seeing the people, hearing the sounds, eating the flavours… it kind of rubs off on you. You end up seeing the world as bigger than just yourself. It's like the whole world living on my block. All these countries, continents living right here. So you think 'how can my music touch them?'

Seeing as you've got Woody on the road with you, and having seen your setup on the way in, I was wondering how the DJ fits in the live shows?

V: This live show really all goes back to how I first started doing live shows with Russian Percussion. And so in a sense it's gone back to the basics really. When we first started doing Russian Percussion shows, the first line up was Blu Rum and Killa Kela on the mic, and myself and Mr Thing on four decks. And that was the first incarnation of Russian Percussion. The second incarnation was the same as the first except we added John Ellis, the keyboard player from Cinematic Orchestra. So that was five of us on stage. The third incarnation of Russian Percussion was like a live band. We had drums, keys, bass, Mr Thing and myself, then First Rate came in, and Yarah was on the mic, Killa Kela couldn't do it as he was doing his own thing. So it's always been like a collective of musicians then people would come in…

(Vadim’s phone goes off)

V: Where were we? Yeah we have people coming in like Bongo Pete on the percussions, people playing sax and flute, and Woody joined because... he's the best. Different people want to do different things and so the line up always changes. And for this tour, instead of having a big band like I had before, I've kind of gone back to the turntables, trying to recreate stuff from the turntables, with Woody. I've got a drum machine and sampler for all the sounds and stuff, and Woody will be chopping in different sounds, I'll be dropping in a kick and snare, and Yarah has got a little sampler as well for her own sounds, and James has got a little percussion set as well, while rapping. So we've have kind of gone back to the basics of centering things around the turntable.

I see what you mean. I should have clarified what I meant actually... I was thinking about how you were one of the few people who always placed the turntable as one of the center pieces at live shows, whereas some people might use the turntable in their productions in the studio, but won't necessarily showcase that on stage. Whereas you've always placed importance on the turntables in your studio and live work.

V: Thing is for me the DJ has always been the backbone of hip hop, there would be no hip hop without the DJ. The DJ was the person who introduced the MC to the stage 25 years ago. There would be no rappers if it wasn't for the DJ, if he wasn't spinning the breaks. Everything has changed now, where the DJ isn't so important for a lot of people. But for us, for me, I don't know for other people, but for me it's important to have that element in hip hop, because we're still doing a hip hop show. Even though we're One Self and that encompasses a sort of Blues feel, it's a little soulful, it's got an Asiatic vibe in places, it's still hip hop. We're still a hip hop group, we've still got two MCs blazing it on the mic, and we're still trying to crack up scratches. But in our own way. One Self isn't Mobb Deep, One Self isn't Snoop Dogg, whoever. Not that there is anything wrong with those, but we're trying to create our own thing, we're trying to create our own interpretation of hip hop.

Well the last question I had you've already partly answered, but you might want to add some more to it. I was wondering how you felt about hip hop today?

V: How do you feel about hip hop today James?

B: The hip hop I do today I enjoy, and a few select others. I mean I'm always gonna have my favourites, but the things I enjoy about hip hop music as a whole is that it always takes the liberty to re-invent itself. I may not like what's going on right now but I know I'll like it soon.

W: It's like what do you call the hip hop of now anyway? Stuff that's in the charts or the stuff that people are doing around the world, in every city you go to in the world there's people doing it. It's always a culture, and it's stronger then it's ever been.

It goes back to what you were saying, about how you can go anywhere in the world and touch people, link with them via the music, the culture of hip hop. It happens through what it means to everyone, what it means to you having grown up where you've grown up, and what it means to them having grown where they've grown up. And then how you share that link.

B: Yeah that's it.

W: I've done workshops in the middle of Soweto and kids walk in and start popping hand stand freezes, straight breaking moves that you've seen your boys do not two weeks ago in some club in England. It makes you realise how deep the culture goes, and how it's got everywhere.

(at this point Yarah has got stuck in the car, and so Vadim tells Woody how to go and let her out)

Any last words guys?

V: People should check out one-self.net, check out blurum13.com, check out djvadim.com, woodwurk.com and yarahbravo.com, for all dates, info, all of us are doing our own bits and pieces as well as One Self. So there's lots of information available, and other stuff out there for people to peep.

B: Word.

Many thanks to Vadim, Blu Rum and Woody for taking time out to do this interview before their show and to Laura at Ninja for her help. Which by the way is one show not to miss, so if One Self are coming to a town near you be sure to make a date for it. The album, ‘Children of the Possibility’ is out now on Ninja Tune and is also very worthy of your time. This is one of the albums of the year for us, so if you like what you read then go get a copy! You can find a review of the album here. Be sure to check all the above links for more info on the guys and the One Self project, and then go and check the second part of our One Self feature, with DJ Woody right here.