Image via Jawnino/Instagram
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When I saw Jawnino on a sheet grey day in early July, he sounded laconic as he suffered from the hangover blues: âI only had one hour of sleepâ he mumbled after a night of performing with Poundshop and COLD at Hyperlocal Festival in Peckham. Along with his friends, we headed to a Shake Shack where I bought an unsweetened iced tea for the smothering summer heat before shooting off to see the History of Grime exhibition at the Museum of London.
Thereâs a fading red star dyed on the temple of his head and heâs wearing a pink Supreme hoodie with the logo embossed in camo, navy blue cargo trousers and Nike air maxes. To the average eye, his fit seems pretty everyman for a young creative in the Big Smoke â encompassing the online streetwear styles taking over London â it makes him coalesce in the city he grew up in; the feng shui within is unfettered, the moneyâs coming in and he hasnât changed.
Inside, we walked past spaces detailing Londonâs rich history and a zone dedicated to Harry Kaneâs football career before we entered the Risky Roadz x Jammerâs curated exhibit. The room was covered in graffiti tags and a two-colour palette of bright yellow and pitch black on the walls, with cultural signposts of East London, hoisted on the ceilings. We took our time absorbing the information AND some of the material was familiar, revisiting old Risky Roadz footage of DJ Slimzee scaling the roof of a council tower and MCs with NYC fitted caps and trackies spitting with vim â some without sound â and some could be heard through a pair of display headphones.
Given how clandestine the genre was, there are always hidden easter eggs underneath the grit; new ones include the Eastendurz (2018) documentary, a modernised reflection on gentrification in East London, a mini-doc on Jammerâs familial upbringing in Waltham Forest, and a gritty Skepta-directed music video/skit for âDTIâ which dated back when he was affiliated with Meridian Crew and known as Scoopa Daniels. It was an informative look at the histories which built the infrastructure; the same cultural ecosystem current tastemakers, artists and enthusiasts interact with to this day.
Also, the exhibition closes in December 2022 and itâs free, so yeah, go see it.
âI liked it but I feel like the exhibit left some history out. Remember when BBK used to do those SIM cards? They didnât talk about that.â Jawnino can be funny without being goofy or too self-aware; and smart without being obnoxious. He elaborates on his point, speaking with an ancient cool: âThereâs a lot of sounds in which grime grew from during the internet age and the exhibit doesnât really clock that.â
I had to give some mercy to the exhibit, in regards to its size which was pushed into a corner of the bottom floor, it also holds the achievement of being the first grime exhibition in the Museum of London. We acknowledged it does a good job of documenting flag-bearers and familial underpinnings of the movement. Maybe this is something that wrecks most art installersâ minds because even with the most excellent curational eye, they run the risk of an artistâs fruitful legacy being reduced to a footnote with a âmore is moreâ approach. As we leave the museum, he chimes further, âWho knows, I might get my own little spot in the exhibition.â
For Jawnino and other Gen Z grime artists, most of the societal and institutional barriers such as Form 696 have been dismantled but there are still obstacles along the way; perhaps, on an intrinsic level, one that taps into what a grime artist should or shouldnât sound and act like.
This isnât to say Jawnino didnât put in his practice hours and waltzed onto the scene proclaiming to be an iconoclast. The only child in a two-parent household, his father showed him The Smiths, Scritti Politti and Mos Def when he was growing up. With his natural curiosity in music encouraged by his fatherâs adventurous music taste, he grew up listening to grime in secondary school. This fascination morphed into an obsession, as he listened to Logan Samaâs Rinse show at midnight every Monday. âI had to sneak this phat radio in my bed with my headphones, hoping my parents didnât catch me.â He reminisces on penning his first 16, spitting it on the playground, and basking in the glory before eventually dawning on him he needed more bars.
He continued to hone his craft by freestyling and writing bars as a teenager. He later met NTN member JP freestyling in a MacDonaldâs one day after college, declaring he was âcoldâ and both of them exercised bars together until they couldnât no longer. After releasing a handful of singles like âGhost in the Shellâ and âLady on a Trainâ, it was his 2019 single âItâs Cold Outâ which launched Jawnino through the stratosphere as if heâs trying to find his own galaxy to inhabit within the universe of British hip-hop. It turned classic Eski-boy sounds and flows and subverted them with a cryptically bizarre yet confessional pen and a stop-start flow skips over words or falls into non-sequiturs.
Listening to the Putney-born-and-raised artist felt like discovering a new moon near the grime galaxy and it was expanding as Jawnino soared into the gravities of avant-garde producers and musicians like Klein, JP, Poundshop, COLD, and BRBKO. Along with that expansion, came more activity and visibility, the still-reclusive enigma started to shed his metaphorical mask; slapping the image of a ballied-up enigma to the ascensive global collective Negropop. This year, he performed in the likes of the Barbican with Klein, Manchesterâs Soup Kitchen and Europe with NPop.
But the nexus of Jawninoâs music right now is his sophomore EP which he dropped this June. If âItâs Cold Outâ made you feel like you were endlessly stuck wandering the deep winters, then 4040 sounds like an escape â when the sun rises and stays up for longer â transporting you to the illdy early morning summers, catching yourself introspecting on drugs during a long walk home.
4040 still reps Jawninoâs stoic stream-of-consciousness raps but itâs bookended by an impenetrable vigour in his timbre throughout the four songs. His voice modulates and stutters like an AI malfunctioning in âDanceâ over a 2/4 choppy drum pattern and female vocals. He raps at double-time with that deep-rooted pirate radio hunger in the second half of âFelt Less.â In the hook of the opening track âCanât Be,â he hauntingly sings with an alien remove. You feel like youâve landed on something special, as a new fan, youâll praise your lucky stars Spotify plugged you with an under-the-radar banger; as an old fan, youâll think âWait, is this Jawnino?â
With the sharp knowledge and passion for the genre and roles placed within it, Jawnino shows a penchant to dismantle those roles altogether in favour for shape-shifting discoveries. Only time will tell if Jawnino will accomplish his post-grime odyssey, as he tours across the UK, releasing projects and frequenting the radio stations of VICTORY LAP, NTS and PYRO. Witnessing Jawninoâs growth feels like a win for any artist trying to create music on their own terms and for any fan resonating with their artistic expressions.
Itâs the perfect timing as UK artists are getting their flowers globally whereas before they were encouraged to sound like Big C (because we either sound like a Guy Ritchie extra â or furthermore yeah â sound like Jamie from Top Boy) or go âpopâ with Chris Brown for overseas success. UK Musicians like Lancey Foux and Little Simz are respected as auteurs in their own sonical rabbit holes and it paves the way for less-established artists to truly be the orators of their sounds, if itâs gripping, people will come. Jawnino has a lot of potential to be placed in that category.
When I spoke to Jawnino in the break room of the studio, he had recovered from the lack of REM sleep, showing a familiar, warm comfort around me as we talked about the recording process of 4040, the city which inspired his latest EP, and the euphoria of raving.
Oliver Twist executively produced 4040 and contributed vocals to âFelt Less.â I remember you saying on socials that Oliver Twist pushed you into a different lane in 4040.
Jawnino: Oliverâs just a mad guy. Originally I heard about [Twist] from POUNDSHOPâs twitter and I thought to myself, âthis is what Iâm trying to do with grime.â I hit him up and asked if we wanted to do something. After âItâs Cold Outâ came out, it was a whole different sound, a few months later. I was in Amsterdam and Oliver just sent me these two beats; they became âChoongtingzâ and âCanât Beâ and I was like, âthese are insane.â I had no idea what I wanted to do with them but the stuff he was making is what I was trying to do. I needed to find my own producers, I couldâve done it myself but Iâm not in my producing bag yet so I needed to find someone on the same wavelength.
The rapper/producer combo you see in grime: Manga and Lewi B, and M.I.C. with Nammy Wams, you could see that with you and Twist. Feels like things came full circle considering Twist produced âEtherealâ which is what Poundshop and COLD remixed for you to create âItâs Cold Out.â
Jawnino: Itâs more of, like Iâm trying to get a whole team of producers: thereâs COLD, Poundshop, 3o, BRBKO and theyâre pushing the sound â theyâre not doing âgrimeâ, theyâre doing their own version of it â and thatâs what grime is in essence. It makes sense for me to be working around with them. They understand my sound and also want to make sick shit.
It has the same heartbeat as Negropop: taking something and adding your perspective.
Jawnino: When I was my younger self I wouldâve been overwhelmed. Itâs all just in the moment now, I donât care about guysâ approval too tough, I want to do my own thing, create things that inspire others and leave a message with my music. Negropop is more of a community, itâs not like a clique, we have rappers from the north like RenzNiro and Grim Jim.
If grime artists listened to what the garage elitists said back then; grime wouldnât be the genre that it is today. You have that bar in âK*rnâ: âMe and Kibo were spitting on grime before it was cool.â That sentiment kinda seeps throughout the grime community because you couldnât let the hate get to you.
Jawnino: Exactly, it just shows that we donât care, you can stay over there hating but youâre going to be left over there. Iâm with so many sick people who want to push the genre: BRBKO, Kibo, Virgil, SâM, JP, DEMI. For the longest time when I was young I was trying to find my sound. I was on trap beats before and it was cool. I could do it but I felt like it wasnât my sound. Ultimately, I was just looking for what I liked at the time. When BRBKO did âGhost in the Shellâ [with Secundus] and âLady on the Train,â that was what I was looking for at the time. âLady on the Trainâ was the beat I wanted. It was grime but not at the same time. I literally freestyled on that beat, thatâs how natural I felt.
Regarding your old stuff, what happened to âIan Beale Freestyle?â The beat on that was hard.
Jawnino: I erased it, itâs just old stuff. Manny Dubs produced the beat though.
Can I get a CDQ?
Jawnino: Iâll have to find it, the laptop I had it on got fried up.
I feel like you have a cultural catalogue in your head. If you had to make a moodboard for 4040, what would be in there?
Jawnino: I listen to a lot of American and British stuff, merge the grime with the supertrap. All of my influences really.
Iâm not too sure on supertrap.. is that like tread, the stuff workingondying make?
Jawnino: Yeah and like Yeatâs stuff, but thereâs a whole history behind it but I think it found its way into my music. Before I was a bit inspired by Sadboys/Drain Gang. Now Iâve found my 40 voice. When I was in Amsterdam, Oliver sent me those two beats. There were these blinds and you could control them with an iPad and I put on my Instagram that Iâm in 4040. Ok, 4040, whatever cool because I didnât record anything but I was reading this book which talks about that every second the brain can take in a million signals and only accepts forty and those forty signals are your reality so everybody can have a different reality. With the tape, youâre gonna go into yourself, itâll be explained more with the visuals. Weâre gonna release these sweets with it and an exhibition.
Instead of having your spot in the exhibition, create your own.
Jawnino: Yeah, exactly.
I thought 4040 was a flip on 2020, as a âthe future is nowâ type of statement.
Jawnino: Originally I thought it kinda was but most things I say I feel like the meaning always comes to me more. Like I write a song and I listen to it and a week later, Iâll listen to it again and itâs like I didnât mean to say but I didnât know.
Your subconsciousness knows but you donât consciously understand.
Jawnino: Yeah. Itâs like a prophecy too.
In terms of the exhibit, what are you thinking of?
Jawnino: Iâm building a team for later down the line, I got plans for the sweets and things will make more sense.
How did âChoongtingzâ happen? Renz and Kibo is a crazy collaboration.
Jawnino: Twist sent me the beat, it was kinda old school grime but I didnât think I could do anything with it. The first bit I was like âthis oneâs for my girls all around the world.â My friend SâM basically had written that bar on a different song and he was singing it but it didnât get released. So I asked him if I could use it because it fit perfectly with the song but I added my own twist with âchoongtingz, around the world, you know theyâre feeling me.â Choongtingz felt right, it was like that old school grime.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
The rapper/producer combo you see in grime: Manga and Lewi B, and M.I.C. with Nammy Wams, you could see that with you and Twist. Feels like things came full circle considering Twist produced âEtherealâ which is what Poundshop and COLD remixed for you to create âItâs Cold Out.â
Jawnino: Itâs more of, like Iâm trying to get a whole team of producers: thereâs COLD, Poundshop, 3o, BRBKO and theyâre pushing the sound â theyâre not doing âgrimeâ, theyâre doing their own version of it â and thatâs what grime is in essence. It makes sense for me to be working around with them. They understand my sound and also want to make sick shit.
It has the same heartbeat as Negropop: taking something and adding your perspective.
Jawnino: When I was my younger self I wouldâve been overwhelmed. Itâs all just in the moment now, I donât care about guysâ approval too tough, I want to do my own thing, create things that inspire others and leave a message with my music. Negropop is more of a community, itâs not like a clique, we have rappers from the north like RenzNiro and Grim Jim.
If grime artists listened to what the garage elitists said back then; grime wouldnât be the genre that it is today. You have that bar in âK*rnâ: âMe and Kibo were spitting on grime before it was cool.â That sentiment kinda seeps throughout the grime community because you couldnât let the hate get to you.
Jawnino: Exactly, it just shows that we donât care, you can stay over there hating but youâre going to be left over there. Iâm with so many sick people who want to push the genre: BRBKO, Kibo, Virgil, SâM, JP, DEMI. For the longest time when I was young I was trying to find my sound. I was on trap beats before and it was cool. I could do it but I felt like it wasnât my sound. Ultimately, I was just looking for what I liked at the time. When BRBKO did âGhost in the Shellâ [with Secundus] and âLady on the Train,â that was what I was looking for at the time. âLady on the Trainâ was the beat I wanted. It was grime but not at the same time. I literally freestyled on that beat, thatâs how natural I felt.
Regarding your old stuff, what happened to âIan Beale Freestyle?â The beat on that was hard.
Jawnino: I erased it, itâs just old stuff. Manny Dubs produced the beat though.
Can I get a CDQ?
Jawnino: Iâll have to find it, the laptop I had it on got fried up.
I feel like you have a cultural catalogue in your head. If you had to make a moodboard for 4040, what would be in there?
Jawnino: I listen to a lot of American and British stuff, merge the grime with the supertrap. All of my influences really.
Iâm not too sure on supertrap.. is that like tread, the stuff workingondying make?
Jawnino: Yeah and like Yeatâs stuff, but thereâs a whole history behind it but I think it found its way into my music. Before I was a bit inspired by Sadboys/Drain Gang. Now Iâve found my 40 voice. When I was in Amsterdam, Oliver sent me those two beats. There were these blinds and you could control them with an iPad and I put on my Instagram that Iâm in 4040. Ok, 4040, whatever cool because I didnât record anything but I was reading this book which talks about that every second the brain can take in a million signals and only accepts forty and those forty signals are your reality so everybody can have a different reality. With the tape, youâre gonna go into yourself, itâll be explained more with the visuals. Weâre gonna release these sweets with it and an exhibition.
Instead of having your spot in the exhibition, create your own.
Jawnino: Yeah, exactly.
I thought 4040 was a flip on 2020, as a âthe future is nowâ type of statement.
Jawnino: Originally I thought it kinda was but most things I say I feel like the meaning always comes to me more. Like I write a song and I listen to it and a week later, Iâll listen to it again and itâs like I didnât mean to say but I didnât know.
Your subconsciousness knows but you donât consciously understand.
Jawnino: Yeah. Itâs like a prophecy too.
In terms of the exhibit, what are you thinking of?
Jawnino: Iâm building a team for later down the line, I got plans for the sweets and things will make more sense.
How did âChoongtingzâ happen? Renz and Kibo is a crazy collaboration.
Jawnino: Twist sent me the beat, it was kinda old school grime but I didnât think I could do anything with it. The first bit I was like âthis oneâs for my girls all around the world.â My friend SâM basically had written that bar on a different song and he was singing it but it didnât get released. So I asked him if I could use it because it fit perfectly with the song but I added my own twist with âchoongtingz, around the world, you know theyâre feeling me.â Choongtingz felt right, it was like that old school grime.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
It has the same heartbeat as Negropop: taking something and adding your perspective.
Jawnino: When I was my younger self I wouldâve been overwhelmed. Itâs all just in the moment now, I donât care about guysâ approval too tough, I want to do my own thing, create things that inspire others and leave a message with my music. Negropop is more of a community, itâs not like a clique, we have rappers from the north like RenzNiro and Grim Jim.
If grime artists listened to what the garage elitists said back then; grime wouldnât be the genre that it is today. You have that bar in âK*rnâ: âMe and Kibo were spitting on grime before it was cool.â That sentiment kinda seeps throughout the grime community because you couldnât let the hate get to you.
Jawnino: Exactly, it just shows that we donât care, you can stay over there hating but youâre going to be left over there. Iâm with so many sick people who want to push the genre: BRBKO, Kibo, Virgil, SâM, JP, DEMI. For the longest time when I was young I was trying to find my sound. I was on trap beats before and it was cool. I could do it but I felt like it wasnât my sound. Ultimately, I was just looking for what I liked at the time. When BRBKO did âGhost in the Shellâ [with Secundus] and âLady on the Train,â that was what I was looking for at the time. âLady on the Trainâ was the beat I wanted. It was grime but not at the same time. I literally freestyled on that beat, thatâs how natural I felt.
Regarding your old stuff, what happened to âIan Beale Freestyle?â The beat on that was hard.
Jawnino: I erased it, itâs just old stuff. Manny Dubs produced the beat though.
Can I get a CDQ?
Jawnino: Iâll have to find it, the laptop I had it on got fried up.
I feel like you have a cultural catalogue in your head. If you had to make a moodboard for 4040, what would be in there?
Jawnino: I listen to a lot of American and British stuff, merge the grime with the supertrap. All of my influences really.
Iâm not too sure on supertrap.. is that like tread, the stuff workingondying make?
Jawnino: Yeah and like Yeatâs stuff, but thereâs a whole history behind it but I think it found its way into my music. Before I was a bit inspired by Sadboys/Drain Gang. Now Iâve found my 40 voice. When I was in Amsterdam, Oliver sent me those two beats. There were these blinds and you could control them with an iPad and I put on my Instagram that Iâm in 4040. Ok, 4040, whatever cool because I didnât record anything but I was reading this book which talks about that every second the brain can take in a million signals and only accepts forty and those forty signals are your reality so everybody can have a different reality. With the tape, youâre gonna go into yourself, itâll be explained more with the visuals. Weâre gonna release these sweets with it and an exhibition.
Instead of having your spot in the exhibition, create your own.
Jawnino: Yeah, exactly.
I thought 4040 was a flip on 2020, as a âthe future is nowâ type of statement.
Jawnino: Originally I thought it kinda was but most things I say I feel like the meaning always comes to me more. Like I write a song and I listen to it and a week later, Iâll listen to it again and itâs like I didnât mean to say but I didnât know.
Your subconsciousness knows but you donât consciously understand.
Jawnino: Yeah. Itâs like a prophecy too.
In terms of the exhibit, what are you thinking of?
Jawnino: Iâm building a team for later down the line, I got plans for the sweets and things will make more sense.
How did âChoongtingzâ happen? Renz and Kibo is a crazy collaboration.
Jawnino: Twist sent me the beat, it was kinda old school grime but I didnât think I could do anything with it. The first bit I was like âthis oneâs for my girls all around the world.â My friend SâM basically had written that bar on a different song and he was singing it but it didnât get released. So I asked him if I could use it because it fit perfectly with the song but I added my own twist with âchoongtingz, around the world, you know theyâre feeling me.â Choongtingz felt right, it was like that old school grime.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
If grime artists listened to what the garage elitists said back then; grime wouldnât be the genre that it is today. You have that bar in âK*rnâ: âMe and Kibo were spitting on grime before it was cool.â That sentiment kinda seeps throughout the grime community because you couldnât let the hate get to you.
Jawnino: Exactly, it just shows that we donât care, you can stay over there hating but youâre going to be left over there. Iâm with so many sick people who want to push the genre: BRBKO, Kibo, Virgil, SâM, JP, DEMI. For the longest time when I was young I was trying to find my sound. I was on trap beats before and it was cool. I could do it but I felt like it wasnât my sound. Ultimately, I was just looking for what I liked at the time. When BRBKO did âGhost in the Shellâ [with Secundus] and âLady on the Train,â that was what I was looking for at the time. âLady on the Trainâ was the beat I wanted. It was grime but not at the same time. I literally freestyled on that beat, thatâs how natural I felt.
Regarding your old stuff, what happened to âIan Beale Freestyle?â The beat on that was hard.
Jawnino: I erased it, itâs just old stuff. Manny Dubs produced the beat though.
Can I get a CDQ?
Jawnino: Iâll have to find it, the laptop I had it on got fried up.
I feel like you have a cultural catalogue in your head. If you had to make a moodboard for 4040, what would be in there?
Jawnino: I listen to a lot of American and British stuff, merge the grime with the supertrap. All of my influences really.
Iâm not too sure on supertrap.. is that like tread, the stuff workingondying make?
Jawnino: Yeah and like Yeatâs stuff, but thereâs a whole history behind it but I think it found its way into my music. Before I was a bit inspired by Sadboys/Drain Gang. Now Iâve found my 40 voice. When I was in Amsterdam, Oliver sent me those two beats. There were these blinds and you could control them with an iPad and I put on my Instagram that Iâm in 4040. Ok, 4040, whatever cool because I didnât record anything but I was reading this book which talks about that every second the brain can take in a million signals and only accepts forty and those forty signals are your reality so everybody can have a different reality. With the tape, youâre gonna go into yourself, itâll be explained more with the visuals. Weâre gonna release these sweets with it and an exhibition.
Instead of having your spot in the exhibition, create your own.
Jawnino: Yeah, exactly.
I thought 4040 was a flip on 2020, as a âthe future is nowâ type of statement.
Jawnino: Originally I thought it kinda was but most things I say I feel like the meaning always comes to me more. Like I write a song and I listen to it and a week later, Iâll listen to it again and itâs like I didnât mean to say but I didnât know.
Your subconsciousness knows but you donât consciously understand.
Jawnino: Yeah. Itâs like a prophecy too.
In terms of the exhibit, what are you thinking of?
Jawnino: Iâm building a team for later down the line, I got plans for the sweets and things will make more sense.
How did âChoongtingzâ happen? Renz and Kibo is a crazy collaboration.
Jawnino: Twist sent me the beat, it was kinda old school grime but I didnât think I could do anything with it. The first bit I was like âthis oneâs for my girls all around the world.â My friend SâM basically had written that bar on a different song and he was singing it but it didnât get released. So I asked him if I could use it because it fit perfectly with the song but I added my own twist with âchoongtingz, around the world, you know theyâre feeling me.â Choongtingz felt right, it was like that old school grime.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
Regarding your old stuff, what happened to âIan Beale Freestyle?â The beat on that was hard.
Jawnino: I erased it, itâs just old stuff. Manny Dubs produced the beat though.
Can I get a CDQ?
Jawnino: Iâll have to find it, the laptop I had it on got fried up.
I feel like you have a cultural catalogue in your head. If you had to make a moodboard for 4040, what would be in there?
Jawnino: I listen to a lot of American and British stuff, merge the grime with the supertrap. All of my influences really.
Iâm not too sure on supertrap.. is that like tread, the stuff workingondying make?
Jawnino: Yeah and like Yeatâs stuff, but thereâs a whole history behind it but I think it found its way into my music. Before I was a bit inspired by Sadboys/Drain Gang. Now Iâve found my 40 voice. When I was in Amsterdam, Oliver sent me those two beats. There were these blinds and you could control them with an iPad and I put on my Instagram that Iâm in 4040. Ok, 4040, whatever cool because I didnât record anything but I was reading this book which talks about that every second the brain can take in a million signals and only accepts forty and those forty signals are your reality so everybody can have a different reality. With the tape, youâre gonna go into yourself, itâll be explained more with the visuals. Weâre gonna release these sweets with it and an exhibition.
Instead of having your spot in the exhibition, create your own.
Jawnino: Yeah, exactly.
I thought 4040 was a flip on 2020, as a âthe future is nowâ type of statement.
Jawnino: Originally I thought it kinda was but most things I say I feel like the meaning always comes to me more. Like I write a song and I listen to it and a week later, Iâll listen to it again and itâs like I didnât mean to say but I didnât know.
Your subconsciousness knows but you donât consciously understand.
Jawnino: Yeah. Itâs like a prophecy too.
In terms of the exhibit, what are you thinking of?
Jawnino: Iâm building a team for later down the line, I got plans for the sweets and things will make more sense.
How did âChoongtingzâ happen? Renz and Kibo is a crazy collaboration.
Jawnino: Twist sent me the beat, it was kinda old school grime but I didnât think I could do anything with it. The first bit I was like âthis oneâs for my girls all around the world.â My friend SâM basically had written that bar on a different song and he was singing it but it didnât get released. So I asked him if I could use it because it fit perfectly with the song but I added my own twist with âchoongtingz, around the world, you know theyâre feeling me.â Choongtingz felt right, it was like that old school grime.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
Can I get a CDQ?
Jawnino: Iâll have to find it, the laptop I had it on got fried up.
I feel like you have a cultural catalogue in your head. If you had to make a moodboard for 4040, what would be in there?
Jawnino: I listen to a lot of American and British stuff, merge the grime with the supertrap. All of my influences really.
Iâm not too sure on supertrap.. is that like tread, the stuff workingondying make?
Jawnino: Yeah and like Yeatâs stuff, but thereâs a whole history behind it but I think it found its way into my music. Before I was a bit inspired by Sadboys/Drain Gang. Now Iâve found my 40 voice. When I was in Amsterdam, Oliver sent me those two beats. There were these blinds and you could control them with an iPad and I put on my Instagram that Iâm in 4040. Ok, 4040, whatever cool because I didnât record anything but I was reading this book which talks about that every second the brain can take in a million signals and only accepts forty and those forty signals are your reality so everybody can have a different reality. With the tape, youâre gonna go into yourself, itâll be explained more with the visuals. Weâre gonna release these sweets with it and an exhibition.
Instead of having your spot in the exhibition, create your own.
Jawnino: Yeah, exactly.
I thought 4040 was a flip on 2020, as a âthe future is nowâ type of statement.
Jawnino: Originally I thought it kinda was but most things I say I feel like the meaning always comes to me more. Like I write a song and I listen to it and a week later, Iâll listen to it again and itâs like I didnât mean to say but I didnât know.
Your subconsciousness knows but you donât consciously understand.
Jawnino: Yeah. Itâs like a prophecy too.
In terms of the exhibit, what are you thinking of?
Jawnino: Iâm building a team for later down the line, I got plans for the sweets and things will make more sense.
How did âChoongtingzâ happen? Renz and Kibo is a crazy collaboration.
Jawnino: Twist sent me the beat, it was kinda old school grime but I didnât think I could do anything with it. The first bit I was like âthis oneâs for my girls all around the world.â My friend SâM basically had written that bar on a different song and he was singing it but it didnât get released. So I asked him if I could use it because it fit perfectly with the song but I added my own twist with âchoongtingz, around the world, you know theyâre feeling me.â Choongtingz felt right, it was like that old school grime.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
I feel like you have a cultural catalogue in your head. If you had to make a moodboard for 4040, what would be in there?
Jawnino: I listen to a lot of American and British stuff, merge the grime with the supertrap. All of my influences really.
Iâm not too sure on supertrap.. is that like tread, the stuff workingondying make?
Jawnino: Yeah and like Yeatâs stuff, but thereâs a whole history behind it but I think it found its way into my music. Before I was a bit inspired by Sadboys/Drain Gang. Now Iâve found my 40 voice. When I was in Amsterdam, Oliver sent me those two beats. There were these blinds and you could control them with an iPad and I put on my Instagram that Iâm in 4040. Ok, 4040, whatever cool because I didnât record anything but I was reading this book which talks about that every second the brain can take in a million signals and only accepts forty and those forty signals are your reality so everybody can have a different reality. With the tape, youâre gonna go into yourself, itâll be explained more with the visuals. Weâre gonna release these sweets with it and an exhibition.
Instead of having your spot in the exhibition, create your own.
Jawnino: Yeah, exactly.
I thought 4040 was a flip on 2020, as a âthe future is nowâ type of statement.
Jawnino: Originally I thought it kinda was but most things I say I feel like the meaning always comes to me more. Like I write a song and I listen to it and a week later, Iâll listen to it again and itâs like I didnât mean to say but I didnât know.
Your subconsciousness knows but you donât consciously understand.
Jawnino: Yeah. Itâs like a prophecy too.
In terms of the exhibit, what are you thinking of?
Jawnino: Iâm building a team for later down the line, I got plans for the sweets and things will make more sense.
How did âChoongtingzâ happen? Renz and Kibo is a crazy collaboration.
Jawnino: Twist sent me the beat, it was kinda old school grime but I didnât think I could do anything with it. The first bit I was like âthis oneâs for my girls all around the world.â My friend SâM basically had written that bar on a different song and he was singing it but it didnât get released. So I asked him if I could use it because it fit perfectly with the song but I added my own twist with âchoongtingz, around the world, you know theyâre feeling me.â Choongtingz felt right, it was like that old school grime.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
Iâm not too sure on supertrap.. is that like tread, the stuff workingondying make?
Jawnino: Yeah and like Yeatâs stuff, but thereâs a whole history behind it but I think it found its way into my music. Before I was a bit inspired by Sadboys/Drain Gang. Now Iâve found my 40 voice. When I was in Amsterdam, Oliver sent me those two beats. There were these blinds and you could control them with an iPad and I put on my Instagram that Iâm in 4040. Ok, 4040, whatever cool because I didnât record anything but I was reading this book which talks about that every second the brain can take in a million signals and only accepts forty and those forty signals are your reality so everybody can have a different reality. With the tape, youâre gonna go into yourself, itâll be explained more with the visuals. Weâre gonna release these sweets with it and an exhibition.
Instead of having your spot in the exhibition, create your own.
Jawnino: Yeah, exactly.
I thought 4040 was a flip on 2020, as a âthe future is nowâ type of statement.
Jawnino: Originally I thought it kinda was but most things I say I feel like the meaning always comes to me more. Like I write a song and I listen to it and a week later, Iâll listen to it again and itâs like I didnât mean to say but I didnât know.
Your subconsciousness knows but you donât consciously understand.
Jawnino: Yeah. Itâs like a prophecy too.
In terms of the exhibit, what are you thinking of?
Jawnino: Iâm building a team for later down the line, I got plans for the sweets and things will make more sense.
How did âChoongtingzâ happen? Renz and Kibo is a crazy collaboration.
Jawnino: Twist sent me the beat, it was kinda old school grime but I didnât think I could do anything with it. The first bit I was like âthis oneâs for my girls all around the world.â My friend SâM basically had written that bar on a different song and he was singing it but it didnât get released. So I asked him if I could use it because it fit perfectly with the song but I added my own twist with âchoongtingz, around the world, you know theyâre feeling me.â Choongtingz felt right, it was like that old school grime.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
Instead of having your spot in the exhibition, create your own.
Jawnino: Yeah, exactly.
I thought 4040 was a flip on 2020, as a âthe future is nowâ type of statement.
Jawnino: Originally I thought it kinda was but most things I say I feel like the meaning always comes to me more. Like I write a song and I listen to it and a week later, Iâll listen to it again and itâs like I didnât mean to say but I didnât know.
Your subconsciousness knows but you donât consciously understand.
Jawnino: Yeah. Itâs like a prophecy too.
In terms of the exhibit, what are you thinking of?
Jawnino: Iâm building a team for later down the line, I got plans for the sweets and things will make more sense.
How did âChoongtingzâ happen? Renz and Kibo is a crazy collaboration.
Jawnino: Twist sent me the beat, it was kinda old school grime but I didnât think I could do anything with it. The first bit I was like âthis oneâs for my girls all around the world.â My friend SâM basically had written that bar on a different song and he was singing it but it didnât get released. So I asked him if I could use it because it fit perfectly with the song but I added my own twist with âchoongtingz, around the world, you know theyâre feeling me.â Choongtingz felt right, it was like that old school grime.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
I thought 4040 was a flip on 2020, as a âthe future is nowâ type of statement.
Jawnino: Originally I thought it kinda was but most things I say I feel like the meaning always comes to me more. Like I write a song and I listen to it and a week later, Iâll listen to it again and itâs like I didnât mean to say but I didnât know.
Your subconsciousness knows but you donât consciously understand.
Jawnino: Yeah. Itâs like a prophecy too.
In terms of the exhibit, what are you thinking of?
Jawnino: Iâm building a team for later down the line, I got plans for the sweets and things will make more sense.
How did âChoongtingzâ happen? Renz and Kibo is a crazy collaboration.
Jawnino: Twist sent me the beat, it was kinda old school grime but I didnât think I could do anything with it. The first bit I was like âthis oneâs for my girls all around the world.â My friend SâM basically had written that bar on a different song and he was singing it but it didnât get released. So I asked him if I could use it because it fit perfectly with the song but I added my own twist with âchoongtingz, around the world, you know theyâre feeling me.â Choongtingz felt right, it was like that old school grime.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
Your subconsciousness knows but you donât consciously understand.
Jawnino: Yeah. Itâs like a prophecy too.
In terms of the exhibit, what are you thinking of?
Jawnino: Iâm building a team for later down the line, I got plans for the sweets and things will make more sense.
How did âChoongtingzâ happen? Renz and Kibo is a crazy collaboration.
Jawnino: Twist sent me the beat, it was kinda old school grime but I didnât think I could do anything with it. The first bit I was like âthis oneâs for my girls all around the world.â My friend SâM basically had written that bar on a different song and he was singing it but it didnât get released. So I asked him if I could use it because it fit perfectly with the song but I added my own twist with âchoongtingz, around the world, you know theyâre feeling me.â Choongtingz felt right, it was like that old school grime.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
In terms of the exhibit, what are you thinking of?
Jawnino: Iâm building a team for later down the line, I got plans for the sweets and things will make more sense.
How did âChoongtingzâ happen? Renz and Kibo is a crazy collaboration.
Jawnino: Twist sent me the beat, it was kinda old school grime but I didnât think I could do anything with it. The first bit I was like âthis oneâs for my girls all around the world.â My friend SâM basically had written that bar on a different song and he was singing it but it didnât get released. So I asked him if I could use it because it fit perfectly with the song but I added my own twist with âchoongtingz, around the world, you know theyâre feeling me.â Choongtingz felt right, it was like that old school grime.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
How did âChoongtingzâ happen? Renz and Kibo is a crazy collaboration.
Jawnino: Twist sent me the beat, it was kinda old school grime but I didnât think I could do anything with it. The first bit I was like âthis oneâs for my girls all around the world.â My friend SâM basically had written that bar on a different song and he was singing it but it didnât get released. So I asked him if I could use it because it fit perfectly with the song but I added my own twist with âchoongtingz, around the world, you know theyâre feeling me.â Choongtingz felt right, it was like that old school grime.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
Yeah, like Nang?
Jawnino: Yeah yeah, it was an old school grime beat. Kibo and Renz are my favourite Grime MCâs and I feel like they were from two different worlds and I wanted to bring them together. I feel like they wouldnât have worked together but I wanted to hear it. I want to do that kind of stuff with different artists in the future, putting artists together whoâll sound sick on a track together but probably wonât cross paths unless thereâs a middle man. I want to be the mediator because thereâs a lot of talent in this generation.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
Yeah, you can hear in the structure too: hook, Kiboâs verse, hook, Renzâs verse, hook â youâre the glue connecting those two disparate artists together. You see that level of experimentation with âDanceâ too â itâs kinda like a PC-music influenced take on tech house. What was your mindset with that song?
Jawnino: After Twist sent me the beat for âFelt Less,â which was co-produced by COLD, it stood out to me the most and itâs my favourite song on the EP. I go back to London and I recorded everything at 3oâs house. Me and 3o have made D&B and dance tracks before. Twistâs the guy with the melodies and 3o is the guy with the drums, and I said âif you two work together, itâll be sick.â I did want a dance track as the outro and I left them to do their thing and two weeks after, I heard the song and it was insane. The first vocal I thought of was like âWe was all outside shrubzinââ and then I thought why not chop some vocals up because I didnât want to do just a simple rapping thing and it just worked.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
Yeah, like you really thought about what makes a dance song. You couldâve just turned on the grime mode and go all mad on a dance track.
Jawnino: I just like to make music I can listen to.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
And dance as well.
Jawnino: For me, thereâs a deeper meaning.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
Whatâs that meaning?
Jawnino: For me, itâs about gentrification, how the whole dance scene and clubbing scene got gentrified and dun out. Itâs too controlled. One place I give ratings to is the White Hotel in Manchester. You can have a good time, regardless, itâs freeing. London, itâs too controlling, itâs losing it.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
Controlled from a nepotistic âyou-canât-sit-with-usâ perspective or like a systemic racist perspective, considering itâs about gentrification?
Jawnino: Like both. Like things have to end at a certain time, the levels you can play music. We need more 24 hour clubs.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
You need squat raves but people get too carried away and they forget Sergeant Walker is on socials, getting all of the details to lock it off.
Jawnino: Everytime I go to one they always get locked off. You can ask 3o on this. Itâs so monitored.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
In the glory of squat raves in the 1990s, it was different, there were no smartphones. You had to know who knew someone or listen to those underground radio shows and wait at a spot in hopes of getting that green light â if you didnât get the green light, then no squat rave but if you did â itâll be like miles deep in some woods or abandoned building and nobody knew unless they knew directly. Now the word spreads too quickly and leaves too many trails.
Jawnino: We were planning on throwing one during lockdown but everyone was depressed. We had the building and everything but didnât go through it. We outside now though.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
Fuck COVID.
Jawnino: Yeah, it was a mad time but I needed [the lockdowns]. It gave me time to self-reflect, made me think about a lot of things; who I am, it changed me as a person â I wasnât this person before. I was always going with the flow, didnât know what my purpose was, I was lost. âItâs Cold Outâ dropped before the lockdowns, and with that single, I didnât know what I was doing, I was just trying something new but ultimately thatâs the sound I want to run. It was meant to happen, as I said before, sometimes I donât know what Iâm saying but I do â but then you realise itâs meant to happen.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
You have an existential ecstasy in your music, you have that lyric: âWeâre here for a better time, we ainât here to better timeâ in âCanât Be.â I think your music encapsulates that hopelessness a lot of Gen Z feel: politically, things are looking sticky, climate change looms over our heads and increasing prices? But then we forget about it and dance our anxieties away.
Jawnino: I remember I had some meeting that day and afterwards I went to Trafalgar Square and sat on the stairs where the screens are and I wrote âCanât Beâ till 3 in the morning and thatâs when I felt like I needed to do this EP.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.
Was that the first song you wrote for the EP?
Jawnino: Yeah, besides the hook in âChoongtingzâ from SâM, âCanât Beâ was the first song I wrote.
I noticed in âFelt Less,â you have a bar that says âFrom Putney Bridge to Peckham Rye, though Iâll give it another try,â is that a Babyfather reference?
Jawnino: Nah, not even.
Ahh, I was thinking of that bar where DJ Escrow says âSouthside samurai, blacked out ninja from Putney to Peckham Rye.â
Jawnino: Swear down? Youâre lying.
Itâs on the song âDeep,â co-produced by Arca â I think with references, itâs more like a happy accident. Itâs one of my favourite songs by them.
Jawnino: Did he really say that? This is what I mean about saying things and later on I find out.
Iâll play it right now.
*plays Babyfather ft Arca â âDeepâ*
*Jawnino and Kiboâs minds explode.*
Kibo [visibly ecstatic and was present during this segment of the interview]: Do you think itâs a subconscious thing?
Jawnino [also very visibly ecstatic]: Thatâs crazy, Iâve never listened to this. Oh my god. But âFelt Lessâ does reference âItâs Too Lateâ by The Streets. I tried to make a 4040 version out of that.. Why did Babyfather even mention Putney? Big up them.
Itâs a small world in London.
Jawnino: Iâm really spun.
You need to listen to the album. Itâs really interesting, a bit unlistenable because theyâre mimicking a pirate radio session so thereâs white noise, phone beeps, a lot of repetition but itâs an album you need to listen to from start to finish, especially for the first time.
Jawnino: I will, Iâve heard this tape.
*shows me 419 and plays âFreedom Dubâ*
When I was in Berlin, I did a little freestyle over this.
Thinking about it, you and The Streets share similarities.
Jawnino: The Streets is such a big inspiration â the way he talks about things on dance riddims.
You both have that weathered flow as if life is giving you all of these lessons and they hurt but you learn to roll with it.
Jawnino: Yeah, I think Iâm trying to take that to the grime side.
Have you dropped the mask you used to wear a lot? Now youâre trying out the distorted face. Are you thinking of bringing the mask or are you thinking of doing like a MF Doom/M Huncho type of thing?
Jawnino: My thing was that itâs going to be different; some shows Iâll wear a mask, some shows Iâll be baitface with glasses and some shows Iâll have graphics with a blank face that my friend Zak does. Itâs like an evolution with masks, I got one that my friend made which Iâm gonna start wearing in shows.
It reminds me of that Japanese adage: every person has three masks; one they show to the world, the second is for close friends and family, and the third is for you and your conscience.
Jawnino: Yeah thatâs cold. I can relate to that because everyone wears a mask.
Also what is NTN about? I remember asking JP about it years ago and he shut it down.
Jawnino: If you know what NTN is, then you know. I feel like somebody knows, you have to go back to all of the old radio sets. Itâs still a secret but itâs like with the mask, some people know what I look like now, but itâs calm. If I donât want to be perceived then Iâll wear a mask. CASISDEAD has kept it really tight with the face protection. Thereâs people who think âah, Iâve seen him in old school Meridian videos,â comparing the colour of his hands with random dudes. Heâs also another rapper whoâs taking it to bigger heights. Heâs an inspiration to me.
From you rapping on radio sets, your voice being modulated by Klein in âSkyfallâ and you start singing on 4040. Your voice has also changed as well â itâs way more expressive â what motivated that impetus behind that shift?
Jawnino: I think itâs working with different producers, getting out my shell and not being scared of perceptions. 3oâs helped me a lot and encouraged me to do a lot of things. Itâs just freedom. After I did âK*rnâ in JMEâs studio and I called BRBKO saying I finished this session and Iâm heading to you right now and I had this kinda grime beat playing in my head and I went crazy on it; I had high-pitched vocals, I was singing, I was on autotune and it was like, this is how I see the genre progressing.
I remember in âItâs Cold Out,â you say âlive by Joga or die by the law.â Are there any other koans you keep close to your heart?
Jawnino: Iâm still living by Joga.
Whatâs Joga for the uneducated?
Jawnino: Itâs a beautiful game, football is art, art is football, they reflect each other and everything I do, itâs in a beautiful way. The Jawnino name, Jawn means anything â in America, a jawn could be a girl, it could be your shoes and Nino has that Brazilian flavour to it, they have a flair with the game. Jawnino, to me, means anything with flair â Joga works hand-in-hand â and the best players like Pele, Ronaldinho, and Ronaldo are Brazilian.
Connecting two separate things together seems to be your flair.
Jawnino: Itâs just natural, man.