Elijah Interview (10/07/2012)

So the day of the Butterz event at cable was also the release for Champion’s Crystal Meth E.P. on Elijah’s label. So, I picked up my camera and headed down to BM Soho to try catch a set or two from the likes of Elijah And Skilliam, along others like Swindle and Champion. Elijah was cool and made everyone feel welcome at the launch party, and tried to engage with all of his attendees. Thankfully Elijah has a past of blogs and hosting interviews, so maybe thats why he was so casj with granting me one.

Champion – Crystal Meth [BR011]

[audio:https://www.thepurplebay.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/01-champion-crystal_meth.mp3]

“Oi fam, that one was a definite reload bruv”

Arti: When did you start the Butterz Label?
Elijah: I started the Butterz Label in 2010. Before that it was a blog which I started in 2007. So the name/logo has been about for 5 years.

Arti: When it started in 2007 what was it about then?
Elijah: It was just a blog about Grime, interviewing people, covering events, doing random stuff. I was out all the time so it was easy for me just to take pictures of nights and stuff, then post it up on the internet; on my blog. Not a lot of people were doing it at the time.

Arti:When was your first show for rinse and how did you get it?
Elijah: My pilot show was in 2008, in November. I’ll never forget. They emailed me on a Thursday to do a pilot on a Saturday. Did that, never got any feedback. Then I did cover shows for 5-6 months. Then I joined in April 2009 and been there in the same slot since.

Arti: What made you start a label?
Elijah: It was very natural. I was playing a lot of music from people that weren’t releasing or didn’t have a home for it. So it made sense to make a home for all that music. Then I had a wider ambition of having nights, merchandise and I’ve got a good design eye. I was at a point in my life where I could eit
her get a job or start Butterz and I decided to do Butterz. Well, I was pretty much forced to do Butterz because I couldn’t get a job.

Arti: With your releases you also do nights. So what was the first night that you hosted?
Elijah: First night was in east village November 2010. I had Terror Danjah, Kode9 and a whole load of people. It was Sick. Then we wanted to scale it up, have a proper rave at the weekend. We took it to cable last August and we did the first one there and the second one in March just gone. The third one is tonight.

A long long time ago…

Arti: What do you think about Grime and how it has evolved since 2004?
Elijah: I don’t know; obviously it’s produced some of the country’s biggest acts in general, regardless of whether they do Grime now. You’ve got acts that come from the scene that are now massive, people that are gonna go on and hopefully change the landscape of music, you know? On the underground music topic; there’s been no consistent money involved with it. The creativity has always been strong people always coming in and out so you have producers that were about in 2004 are not the same as the ones that are about today so you have constant change that’s happening every couple of years. So it’s a sick genre to follow.

Arti: So compared to the past do you think the scene is strong at the moment?
Elijah: The scene as it was has dissolved. There’s Grime in a bit of everything, that’s how I feel right now. I don’t think there’s like a scene. A lot of people that do Grime don’t know who I am and a lot of people that originated from Grime don’t think what we do is Grime.. It’s more like a mind set than a scene to me.

Elijah (Cont..):Maybe it’s dissolved to a point already where we’re doing something completely different; our interpretation of something. Or I go to different places like spain, I was in spain last week and their interpretation is completely different and they call their music Grime. I go to America and the same things happened.

Arti: What do you think about selling out? When we were talking about Grime artists that have moved on a lot of people think that it’s selling out. Do you think that it’s a progression that artists need to take?
Elijah: I dunno, don’t care. It’s got nothing to do with me.

Arti: As you were saying; Grime doesn’t make a lot of money. Do you think it should find some sort of method to try and monetise?
Elijah: Anybody that takes it seriously will find a way to monetise what they’re doing. If you don’t; it’ll be easier for you to stop now.

Arti: And where do you want Butterz to go? Have you got any plans?
Elijah: It’s a loose meaning, it’s a loose ambition; we say Butterz is a label but even that is a loose, you can see people wearing Butterz tshirts, but people weren’t doing things like that, but even that’s basic to me.

Arti: Yeahhh, how did you sort out your tshirt’s, did they approach you or did you approach them?
Elijah: You kinda meet in the middle, like when your putting out good stuff, people come to you. Like I used to wear a lot of Carhatt and ive done stuff with them, and ive done stuff with Nike. I dunno, I never really out to beg to work with people like “please”, its just natural which is what I like about the whole thing, its not forced.

All in all it was cool catching up with Elijah and seeing about his thoughts on the scene, probably because he was in a similar-ish position I find myself in now. And I can’t forget to mention, the night at Butterz was big big big, with a few juicy guest appearances.

Champion – Crystal Meth:

junodownload – Amazon (UK) (UK Vinyl) (US)