Features


NORTHERN EXPOSURE - EDINBURGH'S MOST HARDCORE

*Editor's note - This is a re-print of an article about Northern Exposure, one of Edinburgh's most inspiring hip-hop bands. I featured it on my MySpace blog nearly a year ago, so some of the info about NrnExpo's upcoming projects is not up to date. Check their MySpace for upcoming gigs and projects. I'm re-printing this here on Weaponizer because as rapper Sweet E says, she is a fighter: someone who truly knows that her Words Are Weapons. Also, check out the new videos on this page for the band's track 'Halal The Beef', and an experimental animation short starring Sweet E. Thanks to The Skinny, who commissioned the shorter article that this piece evolved from.

"Me, I'm a fighter, I'm one of them Braveheart type of people, you get me? I'm not gonna lie down and let anyone oppress me, or speak for me in terrible ways, and do bad things in my name. I cannot be part of a society that accepts terrorist and tyrannical behaviour… It's like the system is set up to weed out the genius and to exclude them, to destroy them, to force them to become criminals or outcasts." – Sweet E, Northern Exposure

Since the age of thirteen, Sweet E has been making hip-hop with her brother as Northern Exposure. Their first mixtape included many moments of unparalleled ghetto documentary – tracks like The Greed, The Grime ("The greed, the grime, the ghetto, the guns / My boy's smokin' crack with his heart-broken Mum") and Halal The Beef left listeners in no doubt as to Sweet E and Ibrahim's commitment to realism and spirituality. Their sole release to date, they have nonetheless been making moves for years, but rather than getting stuck in the studio, they simply toured and toured, making connections and collaborating live with Skinnyman and Blak Twang, and even US legends like Naughty By Nature and Mos Def.

Sweet E took time out from her busy schedule to talk about some new tracks she has been working on, but the brief interview spiralled into a wide-ranging discourse about hip-hop ethics, the slave trade, Scottish history and corrupt capitalism. Here is the full, un-expurgated version of our conversation.

So I understand you have been working on some new tracks? Tell us about what's going down.

"Basically, it's been hectic lately. Northern Exposure is quite different to a lot of other organisations because we can only tell people about what we're doing two or three days before it happens – because that's when we know ourselves. That's why we work so well with Skinnyman and the Mud Fam. For example, last week we were invited to do a show with Westwood and ?uestlove from The Roots, and we only knew about that a few days beforehand. Things are changing all the time. Recently I met up with a chap – he's a producer, but I don't want to say his name – who had seen us perform at a party for K-Swiss, and at the ICA in London, with the likes of Amy Winehouse, Terry Walker, and Estelle. He was really impressed by the fact we didn't even have an agent, but that is the level we were on, and that is the sort of parties we were being asked to play."

"At the time, I was being sponsored by Evisu and Puma Womenswear. That attracts a bit of attention in London, the fact I'd been chosen for these, but no-one had really heard of me. So straight away, there's a lot there for someone who has got a sound head in marketing and promotion to do a lot with us. So we started working with this chap – his first name is Chris – he's worked with a lot of the reggae greats. Toots & The Maytals, and some of the Studio One artists. He was wanting us to come together with some of the great reggae musicians, but he decided to see what we would do with some of his beats. We killed all the tracks he sent our way; we went on to do BBC Radio London and a few other big things, he also saw our connections in Japan with DJ Haruka and the Yao Cho clan, who have a residency at 93 Feet East and the 1001 Café in Brick Lane, in London. For the past year they have been saying to us, 'Come out to Japan, get some footage, get some stuff done…' But then, myself and my brother Ibrahim come from quite meagre backgrounds, so it has been quite a mission getting things together – whether it be footage, or recording or whatever. But the Northern Exposure philosophy, the Mud Fam philosophy is: you just keep going. But it turns out that a lot of the people Chris has been playing our music to, like Evisu, have been really liking it, so their idea is that we will go down to London soon, record the tracks that we sent them rough recordings of, and then they're going to engineer a podcast for us, where we'll be rocking some Evisu and Puma stuff – luxury items, tweed and so on. They were fascinated by us because we're black, we're Scottish, we write our own lyrics and make our own beats."

And what about an album? Is that something you see Northern Exposure working towards?

"It just depends on what your priorities are in life. If you want to make money at any cost, you basically just need to sell out. You just do whatever they want you to do, much like a fashion model or an actor. If you're prepared to do whatever these people want you to do to sell their product, sell this film, make this money – if you wanna do that, there's two ways you can go about it. You can send away your stuff – tracks, footage, whatever – to labels and A&Rs and say, 'Listen, what do you want me to do?' Or you can go on a program like X-Factor or Big Brother, something that's going to get you a lot of publicity, and from that you can go on to do a lot of other things. You've got to be hungry for it. A lot of artists are too stoosh, too up themselves. It doesn't matter if you've got fantastic production, or if you're a good rapper – it's the way they go on! I was in the situation where I was looking for junior brand ambassadors for K-Swiss, Trace Magazine, and Nike. I was meeting with a lot of up and coming rappers, and… one thing that being in the game teaches you is; you never know who you're talking to. It doesn't matter how they're dressed, they could be a boy, a girl, black, white whatever – if you're talking to anybody, and you don't come right, you're going to miss out on fantastic opportunities. I've seen people who supported us at shows, who I was telling to just do their thing, do it right, don't listen to people telling you what to do… next thing she's doing X Factor, and I don't even know what…"

"If you want to be famous, there are only a few quick routes to that destination. But if you're making music for another reason, such as to spread a message or to say something meaningful about life, then you have to realise it's a long hard road. You'll probably never make all that much money. It's going to take at least fifteen years to be at the point where you're making thirty to forty grand a year, you know? After that it will probably take you at least another five years to get your name respected up and down the UK. But if you do it properly – like Task Force, Skinnyman, Tommy Evans… or even Wiley and Dizzee and them guys, you know? From the street, from the hood – they got kids, and they're starting to build."

"That's one thing I like about working with Skinnyman and Mud Fam. There may not be many magazines or newspapers talking about Northern Exposure or Mud Fam, but when you go to certain cities, the reputation has already been built. Everyone knows in your in town. It's not about rushing things. I mean, if you put a track out, people are gonna hear it, right? For instance the Northern Exposure mixtape. The only reason that is even in circulation is that people have been begging us for like, ten years to give them some tracks! We only distributed 100 CDs, we weren't even trying to promote it – we even said that anyone who got a copy of the mixtape would get a free album when it comes out. I don't like to rush, you need to give things time to mature. People want proof, though. They put artists under enormous pressure to show what they can do – but you can understand why. There's a lot of blaggers in the game. There's a lot of people who talk the talk and even walk the walk, but if you put them onstage in Speaker's Corner at Hyde Park in London, or at Deal Real Records in Carnaby Street, they flop! You get me? They got nothing; they can't offer nothing unless they got like, ten people there!"

Your new tracks have a reggae influence and direction – is that a clash with your hip-hop roots?

"I'd like to classify Northern Exposure as world music. We work with a whole range of different artists – percussion, strings, reggae beats, hip-hop beats – any kind of beats, we'll do them. We're trying to get people to listen to the message, as opposed to just the beats that we're making. Obviously the beats are a huge part of it… The only thing I would say is; we can be quite selective about the beats we spit over. Especially now – we're not spitting on any epic strings or anything that's too mood altering, so to speak. We're trying to make music that's sincere – music that anybody can listen to. It's the opposite of what it probably should be – it's not necessarily the kind of track where people are going to be thinking, 'This is gonna be in the charts.' It's more about making music that is conscious, verging on political."

You grew up in a notoriously violent and crime-ridden area of Edinburgh – that seems to inform a lot of your lyrics. Is telling stories about your experiences at the heart of what you're trying to do?

"I would say that a large element of our music is to do with our experience, and that experience maturing as we got older. You grow up, and you think the world's a certain type of place. Then you go out into the world and you realise, okay, maybe a lot of the people in the capitalist, globalised West aren't in fact terrible people. Maybe they just don't realise a lot of the things that are going on in their society. So what we do is we try and take negative experiences and turn them into a positive reaction. We try and let people know about what is actually going on – what's going down, even in their own communities, their own societies, you know? A lot of people say to me, Northern Exposure have been in the game for like ten, twelve years. Yet we don't see you on TV, or on the radio a lot of the time. That's because we're not willing to sell out – we're not willing to compromise our message. It doesn't matter how much money you offer us. I used to work as a fashion model, and during that time people offered me the world… offered me so many zeroes, I can't even remember. All I needed to do was dance about in a short skirt, wear make up and hair extensions, and shake my ass. The people that have done that – and I'm not trying to slate anybody, I've got love for everybody, and I don't hold a grudge – well, take someone like Beyonce. When I was young she was coming out with tracks like Nasty Girl, you know: "Nasty put some clothes on." Now that I'm older, she's actually doing the opposite of that. It's very disheartening. I don't agree with this culture of forcing sex – basically negative behaviour, to a certain extent – and forcing it on the younger generation. To be honest, I'm quite upset. I'm quite disappointed in my peers and the people that came before me for not creating a more wholesome environment for me to come into. That's why when I look around at the people in my hood, or when I've travelled around to other hoods, or even not in the hoods, you know? When I see how impoverished they are in terms of their integrity, their morale – in terms of what they value in life, there's only a certain portion or percentage of that that I can say that they are responsible for."

What are the problems facing Scottish hip-hop?

"A lot of people, especially in Scotland, who are getting well known right now… they're not coming from the real. They don't understand what hip-hop's about. They don't understand where it comes from, why it was invented, what it's designed to say. To be honest, I have difficulty taking them seriously, no matter how good their beats or production are, because their content is so lacking. The sort of people I like to work with, a lot of the people in my crew, they're the underdogs, like. They come to you with a CD and maybe the beats are going off here, the vocals are coming in and out all wrong, but the content is serious. It's the type of thing that when you spit it, those people in the same situations understand it, they're feeling it, and they're inspired that someone's actually talking about their situation. I think a lot of people are too scared to talk about reality in front of their children. They'd rather invent some kind of fictional character or situation to explain reality, whereas if people just told each other what was real, I think we'd have a lot less problems in general. In LIFE, you see what I'm saying?"

"A lot of these middle class people who have come into the hip-hop game, loving it like everybody else, I feel like saying to them, why are you a rapper? Look at a football team – not everybody on a team can be the striker. So look at your situation – you're in a fantastic position, you've got money, you've got ability. People will trust you because of how you look and what background you're from. Why do they not take that blessing, that opportunity you've got to do charity and help people, and become a manager. Or set up a studio, and find someone that you think is leading man quality, and put them there. A lot of the problem I've had with getting into collaborations with other people in Scotland is that everyone wants to be the front man, to have a solo. But there's no I in team."

So what is real hip-hop then? There's a lot of talk about realness in the game, but what does it all boil down to?

"That's one of the main reasons why Northern Exposure is still in the game – just to show people the real. Northern Exposure were making hip-hop music in Scotland before anyone else was. We were making hip-hop in Scotland before people here even listened to it, you know what I mean? We made hip-hop because of suffering, because of pain, because we felt like we didn't have any other way to talk to people about what we were going through, and what we were seeing… We saw people who were fantastically talented reduced to nothing. Reduced to begging on the streets, sniffing gas, taking heroin, taking whatever. We were just like, 'Rah! Is this reality?' The juxtaposition with that is that I was sent to an upper-middle class school. I was there with the son of the Chief Inspector of Lothian & Borders. I played football with Craig Gordon. I was going into school with people who were coming in with jeeps on literally the day of their seventeenth birthday. Indoor pools, whatever, you get me? They didn't have a clue what was going on right in their own city. That extends into the music industry: there are too many people who are the gatekeepers to the industry who don't want to see real music being made, because it contradicts their version of reality. We need to be there for that reason. The audiences get complacent."

"We went to play a show, we were supporting Fatman Scoop. The crowd only really got off their arses when Fatman Scoop came on. And I mean, he's not a rapper! He's not an artist. All he did was shout over somebody else's tracks, but so many people came to show love and support. I just looked at that and thought, 'Well, if that's the way it's gonna be…' I mean, that's not setting a path for anyone to come after, it's not supporting an indigenous culture. It's selling out on the audience's part, because they'd rather spend money on an American artist for ten, fifteen quid than support a local artist. But at the same time, I can see where a lot of people are coming from. Because a lot of the local hip-hop that's been produced is not real. It's something that has to be real if people are going to buy into it."

What's your point of view on the commodification of hip-hop into the mainstream, particularly with regard to American hip-hop?

"For me, with my African heritage, there's this concept which applies which is called 'In-house Slave, Out-house Slave.' By commodifying hip-hop, what they've done is taken control of people through the black man. The black man has always been fascinating to Western people, because they always like to look at spectacle. They like to look at things that are different. The black man's sitting their thinking, well why shouldn't I wear diamonds? Ain't no diamonds in this part of the world, ain't no gold, no rubies. But they don't realise they're being used to influence other people into behaving like that. And all the people that are watching the video, they don't have a clue about how the media industry works. All those girls in the music videos are rented, all those jewels are rented – everything's paid for. The artist doesn't own any of them people – the artist's in more debt. The label's like a glorified bank, you get me? Five albums just to pay back what they spent in the first year!"

Arguably the mixtapes being made by the Dirty South Artists and the New York DJs are more representative of the true hip-hop culture, because they are still made at ground level, not in some expensive, uptown studio. Would you agree? How would that apply to our own, local scene?

"That's how hip-hop rolls. Hip-hop's still a subculture, especially here in Scotland. I think a lot of the people that have got big money and can get access to the big shows, they aren't showing enough love. Hip-hop's about showing love! There's a lot of big shows popping off in Scotland, but people need to be on the phone, be like, 'Rah! I'm bringing this artist. Bring your people, bring your voices, get on the mic, let's do this.' But instead they do it all individually, they invite only their friends, and the show isn't even a proper show. It's about collaboration! We need to be collaborating, showing love to each other, and then together we're going to be able to make something happen. But if people keep going on about 'I' and 'Me' then we're never going to get anywhere. It has to be a 'we' thing. And people who are doing hip-hop, if they aren't down with the heart of it, then they need to choose a different genre. Hip-hop is serious – it's about knowledge, it's about educating yourself. Ninety-nine percent of hip-hop artists – apart from many of the recent ones – have been bringing serious knowledge. They've been telling people to go back to their history. To think about colonialism, and why it happened. Think about capitalism, that we're now entrenched and embedded in, and think about how we got there."

"Hip-hop has African roots. Even with jazz musicians, the white jazz musicians – who were some of the people who contributed the most to the civil rights movement – even though they were so educated, they came and they humbled themselves to play alongside the black musicians of that time. There was no ego, there was no: 'We've got all the money, the studios, the instruments.' They recognised the fact that these people were experts."

You're not alone in perceiving a lot of Western culture as being corrupt – from a historical perspective as well as a political one. How did you come to this way of thinking – what's the background?

"Capitalism has certain values that it needs to instil. It provides you with false needs instead of true needs - true needs being food, water, shelter, maybe some love. Capitalism's goal is to make people passive, consuming vessels. It wants to make people individuals, who do not care about their brother, their sister, their grandparents, their mother. It wants to make them the opposite of everything spiritual. It's the opposite of hip-hop too, because they don't want you to think of people suffering, people crying, people dying. They just want you to concentrate on working for their system. It's almost a type of slavery. It's definitely interesting, the way things are going down. Sometimes I'll be in the studio and I'll put down a track and people will be tripping out, laughing, saying like: 'You're gonna get us shot, man. FBI, MI5, Scotland Yard gonna take us out!' You get me, because we talk about the realities of life. One of the fundamental ways you can be against it is by talking about it, is by conversing. Even that itself is against the society we're being controlled by."

"I mean, I was born in the UK, but I feel like I'm living under some kind of totalitarian regime. If I don't wanna go out in a short skirt, show off my breasts, look pretty and work in New Look or Harvey Nicks, then there's something wrong with me. Nah man! I thought this was supposed to be a democracy – freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom to be however I want to be. Never before has there been a country where they've got the system so perfected – people putting their own family into prison, putting their grandparents into homes. Whereas in my culture, my granny is 109. Actually she's probably 111, but she says she's 106. So I say she's 109. She always takes a few years off her age. In my village in Africa, I don't get to talk a lot. I'm allowed to ask questions. Because my grandmother doesn't consider anyone under the age of 50 old enough to even talk. It's so beautiful, because you're in this house where you've got your grandmother who is the source of all the other people in your family, children and so on… your little cousins, one's like seven, she's cooking and cleaning. You've got your older cousins, you've got your Mum, her Mum… you learn so much from your grandparents, your elders. Because the thing is, nobody is an expert at being a parent, or being a leader on this planet. If you look at animals like elephants, they've got this huge herd and the great grandmother is taken care of, because she is the only one who knows how to cross this river. People that come after might have never encountered it, but she knows exactly how to cross it."

"So to go back to capitalism, if you make people individuals and divide mother from father, brother from sister, you have a catastrophic situation – an apocalyptic situation. But me, I'm a fighter, I'm one of them Braveheart type of people, you get me? I'm not gonna lie down and let anyone oppress me, or speak for me in terrible ways, and do bad things in my name. I cannot be part of a society that accepts terrorist and tyrannical behaviour. The people at the top of the triangle that David Icke likes to talk about, they are terrorists, they terrorise us into thinking we can't be free, that we have to work sixty-five years of our lives, that we have to pay for food that comes from the ground and water that falls free from the sky. We have to operate within the system, go to school; raise our hands when we want to talk. It's like the system is set up to weed out the genius and to exclude them, to destroy them, to force them to become criminals or outcasts."

"Northern Exposure, we believe in God. Now God, or Allah or whatever you want to call him, one of the things he teaches is that we are all unique. My brain is not the same as my Mum, or my Dad, or my brother. I have free will to do what I want on this planet. But the way things are going right now, it's like we have taken the power away from God. We've decided we'll be God, we'll decide how people behave, and even God didn't do that to us! Even God gave us free will. If you look at the animals, they don't have free will. As soon as it hits dawn, the birds must get up to pray. The bird is awake: he's praying, singing. He's got no choice, it's enjoined on them on an instinctual level that they will get up and pray. Now human beings, we can stay in bed chillin', we can do what we want. Now you've got some people in society with serious power issues, serious self-infatuation issues, who think that they've got the biggest and best brain, and they think therefore they should decide how people should behave and what they should do. But the reality is, you cannot control people."

"If I wanted to bring a knife to this interview and stab you, I could do it. Police can't do nothing. They can come after, and react to the situation, and maybe try and catch me, but they can do nothing at the time. So we should put more precedent on being good to people."

Clearly your African heritage is important to you – do you feel like the UK is still a place where racism exists, and have you experienced it?

"Yes, absolutely. It's like people are trying to make me ashamed of who I am. Ashamed because I'm from the hood, I'm black, and I wanna do hip-hop. Trying to make me feel like I'm commercial, lower, not couture, not upper class, you get me? One thing I've learned, though - Britain is a class-caste system, it's not even about the colour of your skin. I've been in situations with cats where they'd rather have me at the table than one of their own, working-class people at the table! Because to them I'm African, I have a particular pedigree, I'm no mongrel. That's deep, when you think about it."

Do you think the trading of Africans as slaves still has an effect on people's mentalities today?

"It's like the Western world has decided to move on, but the people that were oppressed, they can't move on. Every day they walk down the street they're reminded of it. Like, when I walk past the back of Waverly and see the Fleshmarket… maybe the average Scottish person doesn't think: 'This is where my brothers and sisters were murdered.' But this is what I think. And it adds insult to injury when you realise that the government know that those slave owners have gone on to set up banks and large institutions in society. But the government can't apologise for slavery because then they have to take responsibility, and then they would have to pay compensation. But I think the rise of the BNP, I think the problem that they have with black people is envy, it is jealousy. It goes back a long time. They came to African and they looked at us and they were like, 'Rah! How can these people be so tall, so beautiful, so efficient.' But people don't know their history. Even Scotland, where people pride themselves on knowing their history, they don't know it. I'm even thinking about renouncing my own Scottish-ness, because people don't know that the Scots were among the first slaves, even before there were black slaves. When you go places like Jamaica, which were slave repositories – places where slaves were basically left to die – that's when you start seeing the similarities. You meet a Jamaican with ginger hair, and he's talking about his Mammie, you know, using all these Scottish words. That's why it's so important for us to communicate, and that's what Northern Exposure is trying to do, to open up history, to get people to talk to each other, so that we can see these similarities and realise that we are all actually fighting the same enemy."

"One thing I think about the world is, the lighter you are, the younger you are, in terms of the planet. The darker you are, the older your genetic code is. All the nations of the West, they're young nations. America, New Zealand, Australia – they're very new. Because of their newness, and because of how far away they are from where things began, they have a lot of insecurities and paranoia. They've got a lot of curiosity, but they don't show the older societies enough respect. So they have to basically start again from zero. They have to rediscover the sea, the sky, their bodies, how to eat, how to be with each other. That's why history is so important. Not that we should wallow in the past and quote it all the time, but we need to look at it to see what not to do again. I think the only reason me and my brother survived in Scotland – which has a real gangster history – is because we learned from a lot of other people's mistakes. In the West nowadays it's about doing things for yourself, seeing things for yourself. But that's a mistake. I'm not going to tell anyone I love to try cigarettes or alcohol because they're very dangerous, you know what I'm saying?"

To take it back to hip-hop once again, let's talk some more about the local scene. Do you think Scottish artists need to produce more records to get more attention?

"Some of my favourite artists, be they signed to a label or not, they've only released like, one or two albums. I think that's what a lot of new artist get confused about, especially in relatively new sites like Scotland, they think you need to have new stuff out every week. Nah man, you need to think carefully about why it is you want to do this music, what it is you want to achieve, and then go forward from that. They're doing music, but they don't know why. Either you want to do music, you want to do charity for people, or you do music, you want to teach people… but if you're going to choose hip-hop, you need to get on it. Because you're going to meet a lot of people, especially people of African descent, and if you want them to take you seriously, you've got to come right. I meet a lot of people and they don't want to listen to what I have to say, and I'm like – what are you doing hip-hop for? If you're serious about doing hip-hop, I'm one of the best people for you to meet."

"Hip-hop is a life thing. It's good. It's out there; it's in opposition to other ideologies. But it's important not to get lost in hip-hop, because at the end of the day it comes from suffering. It's important not to let that suffering grip you. Once you've touched it and felt it, use it as a vehicle to propel you, but don't get caught up in that sadness, in that pain, use it as a fuel to go forward. Use it to help you to come to knowledge. The people who are in the oligarchy don't want you to be knowledgeable. That's why they translated the bible – they didn't want people reading eloquently in Greek and Latin and Arabic, in these ancient, beautiful languages. They want you to be a layman that they have to explain things to."

INFO

Check www.myspace.com/nrnxpo for more info about Northern Exposure's upcoming shows and releases. Their production company also has a bit of information: www.enigpromo.nr. They have an EP due out in the next few months, self-releases, accompanied by a DVD of their tour with Skinnyman and the Mud Fam.

Also due for release in 2007 a film about Scotland's refugee society, called Trouble Sleeping, for which Sweet E was assistant director. The soundtrack will also feature new material from the band. An article about the film can be read here.



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