GRADUATE FASHION WEEK SHAY D PETER JENSEN FESTIVALS ALEX PRITCHARD

LADY OF GRIME
Shay D talks with LIBBY SKILTON
about women in grime, merking
and new album ‘Figure of Speech’.
“I can make a hot banger / Mash it up / But the fat boy on
the radio can never gas it up / They wanna give airtime to
accomplices / Who want to keep our people gassing minds that
are impoverished.”
In new track F The Radio, north London rapper Shay D tackles
head-on the hip hop hierarchy that gives rise to derogatory
and negative rivalries. It’s a subject that gets her fired up:
“Gatekeepers and programmers have made everyone relevant to
hip hop redundant - and all they are doing is making music for
12 year olds. Trying to prescribe to you what’s cool and what
isn’t by some middle class person that lives in, like, fucking
Hertfordshire.”
Shay believes the music that mainstream radio plays, promoting
violence and “shotting bags”, is just another way for the System
to eradicate anyone that doesn’t fit into the vision of London:
millionaire’s playground. “All these channels, all the hip hop
they put out, all the fucking Fire In Booth content. All this shit
that is about ‘yeah yeah yeah I merked this guy, yeah yeah yeah I
did that, yeah I shot this.’ You’re like ‘Bruv, are you working for
the fucking government?’ Because you are. You’re doing what
they want you to do.’”
Shay won’t let this stop her from trying to get her message out
though, putting on events and grinding. The 30-year-old has
put politics and social-consciousness at the heart of her tunes,
a mindful approach to music that has gained her a strong
and dedicated following. As part of the Lyrically Challenged
Collective - the group behind London’s Women in Hip Hop
nights - Shay is ensuring that female voices are being heard. She
is an advocate for “starting a dialogue” with music.
Shay D walks into the coffee shop Cafe Beam in Crouch End
with a warm smile and greets the staff, who clearly know her. “I
didn’t have internet for a little while so was in this coffee shop
everyday. They’re used to me now,” she laughs. Dressed casually
in a tie-dye sweater, parka, jeans and backpack she orders herself
a coffee and gets comfortable in one of the big ornate armchairs.
She has been crafting words since she was a little girl, and also
dabbles in spoken word: “I was the only child, it was just me
and my mum. So I had to entertain myself a lot. You have to be
creative when you’re an only child. I used to act out stories but
play every character; it’s so weird. I have stories that I’ve written,
stapled together and then illustrated them so they look like little
adventure books.”
Shay’s mum used to take her to the library everyday so she
could rest while Shay wrote stories and poems. In her last year
of secondary school she noticed how the boys were starting to
MC and being a tomboy herself she had to get in on the action.
“I used to hang around and listen and be like, I swear I can do
this as well. So I went home and started writing these little bars
and lyrics so next time it happened I could spit. It was like this
validation of, ‘I’m sick as well, it’s not just you guys’. There were
no other girls doing it, I got really competitive.”
Shay kept at it but was looking for other women in the game.
“When I discovered Da Brat I was like, Rahh! There are girls
doing this and they look cool. I can relate to them, they look
like how I dress, they sound like how I sound.” From then on
Shay knew what she wanted and that was to be a sick MC - but
she didn’t want to just make music for the club, she wanted to
convey something deeper.
Shay D’s new album ‘Figure Of Speech’ covers topics from
domestic violence to gentrification. “If my song can highlight
that problem for someone to talk about, maybe there might
be a little revolution in someone’s mind or their life, that’s
what I use hip hop for. My music needs to have a purpose or
a message. Otherwise I wouldn’t make it.” Unlike other artists
whose musical inspirations are typically other musicians, Shay
is more likely to be motivated by events going on around her,
or sounds themselves. Playing with her long thick hair she
explains: “Music influences me, like actual beats and sounds.
I’ll listen to James Blake and then he’ll do this really haunting
riff on something and I’m like ‘oh that’s just made me feel really
emotional about this.’ So I’ll write about that.”
The album itself was written partially on holiday. “I was writing,
I was going to work, doing gigs, rehearsing, going to studios. It
was really fragmented and when I had about six or seven songs,
I was like, ‘you know what, I’m never going to do this, I need to
go away somewhere.’ So I went to Cyprus for ten days.” Shay has
a defined idea of how she wants her music to sound. Although
she loves the new heavier sounds she thrives on a more “low
melancholic” vibe, which can be heard on tracks such as Get
Money and Bad Boy with Somali singer Faisal Salah, an artist
she adores. “He opens his mouth and everyone shuts the fuck
up. It’s almost like prayer song but he writes his own stuff. He’s
got a really husky sad sound.” It’s a voice that complements
her music. The whole album lends itself to a much more 90’s
infused style of hip hop, but this is something Shay loves - citing
artists like Mobb Deep and Tupac among her favourites.
The artwork of the album, produced by South London artist
JOYce Treasures, references Shay’s Iranian heritage. It’s a
portrait of the artist made up from her lyrics, traditional Middle
Eastern patterns and a poem she wrote, which was handwritten
and translated into Farsi by her mother. Explaining the cover
she says: “The top of my head is a Phoenix, that’s from Iranian
mythology, and the poem makes up the clothes. And around the
face it says Figure Of Speech into the hair. She [JOYce] put so
much thought into this, man, I really love it.”
Beyond the music Shay struggles with being the centre of
attention and asking a room of people to hear her speak. The
idea of making everything about her disturbs her soul. Screwing
her face up, her confident voice softens: “Sometimes I’m even
like, why am I doing this, who cares? It’s weird you have these
really dark places as an artist. Where you’re anxious because it’s
such an arrogant role to be in and it feels narcissistic. It’s really
weird, it’s such a weird medium.”
Moving forward, Shay plans to tour the album internationally,
has a booking in Athens and expects to play Norway, Switzerland
and Czech Republic. She is on the line-up for this summer’s
Boom Bap Festival in Suffolk, UK. As she gathers up her things
she reiterates her sentiment that she is here to make music
that spreads a message: “I try to go out of my way to have a
very human connection with an audience and try to be really
humble. I’m not perfect. I am not the best rapper in the world,
I am doing this for all of us, I really try to go out of my way to
be like that.”