| Glorious things: Akira The Don |
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| "politics and love and sex and matters of the soul, they’re all part of the same thing" |
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The chances are you might have come across Akira The Don, or AK Donovan, or A Zilla, or Adam Alphabet, or just Adam, in one of a number of places. I’m pretty sure I first came across him as one part of the London hip hop posse Crack Village, or perhaps I was reading his ramblings on PlayLouder before that, I can’t remember. It doesn’t really matter, because it is in his current guise that he has been garnering the most attention – though even then you might know Akira The Don for different reasons – for his almost legendary unofficial mix tapes, or his always on it website or, perhaps most importantly, his original music. ‘Clones’ was the first one that did it for me in that department, though as we speak I think ‘Patrick’ has the edge. Either way, pretty much everything I’ve heard from Akira to date has demanded the tag-line “quality” so, with his album ready to be unleashed in November and a new double a-side single out this week, now seemed as good a time as any to speak to the Don.
“It’s all been part of an evil master plan” he says, responding to my only slightly predictable ‘tell me your life story’ opener. “From the age of seven I decided I wanted to write about music, make cartoons and make noises. I was in London in the late 90s,” he continues, describing the master plan in action, “writing slanderous things for websites, and that’s when I ran into the Crack Village guys. We all wanted to do similar stuff, so we started working together”.
That ‘stuff’ quickly started to get noticed, albeit from a mainly grass roots audience, but despite some successes, Adam soon wanted out of the collective environment. Having figured out that producing music on a computer wasn’t anywhere near as hard as he’d thought, he decided to dedicate his new found production skills not to the band, but to his own solo aspirations. “There’s a lot of jealousy in a lot of bands,” he muses, “it’s been said before, but democracy doesn’t work in that kind of environment, you have too many egos slowing things down. Once I started making my own music on my computer I found I was writing eight songs in a weekend, together we were struggling to get together one in a week.”
“They’re doing cool now so perhaps I was hindering them,” he concedes, recognising his former collective’s recent success, “but”, he adds, “at the time you wonder if you’re just no good at working with other people, but I’ve successfully collaborated with loads of people since, so who knows what was going on?”
“So I was over in the States,” he continues, “seeing friends in Miami and New York, and I started playing in different clubs, rapping over whatever was playing, and I kept getting a really great reaction. So when I got back to London I got down properly to making my own music”.
And so, what became the Akira The Don sound began to emerge, with his first EP, ‘Akira The Don’s First EP’ (obviously) surfacing in 2004. Two other EPs have subsequently followed meaning that, despite the fact his debut long player is only now about to drop, Akira’s already been pretty prolific, and he is already renowned for making an interesting mix of tracks – some very personal, some very political, some just good fun.
“The themes come about pretty organically,” he says, “and yes, they do vary, although, you know, politics and love and sex and matters of the soul, they’re all part of the same thing,” he observes, with a hint of sarcasm in his voice, though at the same time I suspect it’s a genuine sentiment, if slightly pretentiously put. “Normally it’s a noise that sparks something in my brains,” he continues, describing his song making process, “you get this bass line in your head, and you have to shout it in your phone so you don’t lose it. You get home and replicate it on your PC, and the song comes together from there. There’s a billion things I want to talk about, so finding themes is easy – and then you find you’ve got a little pop song all of your own”.
It might seem odd that Adam got the initial motivation he required to go solo from an American audience, given the myth that UK hip hop doesn’t sell across he Atlantic because Americans don’t like to hear English voices rapping. “Mmm,” he ponders, “well, Southern hip hop was in vogue at the time, so for New Yorkers it was much easier to understand was I was rapping than to understand anything those guys were saying”.
“But I’m not sure Americans ever had a problem with English rappers,” he continues. “At the start hip hop was much more diverse than it is now. There were loads of successful English rappers, and female rappers too. Then MTV hi-jacked it all, and they were obsessed with this narrow branch of hip hop – male, American, all the bling – so that started to dominate, and the major labels started only releasing that stuff, so then you had British rappers trying to emulate the New York sound just to fit in. I don’t ever think the hip hop audience ever resisted British rap, it’s just MTV and the majors wouldn’t give it them”.
Is that changing? “Definitely, UK hip hop is exploding, over here and over there. Every kid I meet now is into hip hop, and wants to rap. And Americans are really excited by British hip hop too. They can’t get it from MTV or the major labels still, but if you go onto LimeWire you’ll find loads of British stuff being downloaded millions of times, by Americans.”
Will that persuade the majors and media to change? “I don’t know, the majors are a bit crap when it comes to hip hop. They’re crap at getting US hip hop releases out over here – half the time it takes so long to get a UK release of any decent American hip hop albums, anyone who wants it has already bought it on import or downloading it off the web by the time its officially out. And their crap at getting UK hip hop out there too. There is still an obsession in parts of the music industry for UK hip hop to be a replica of that one strand of American hip hop – even though that never works. Look at who’s been successful – The Streets, Dizzee Rascal – why are they successful? They do it their own way. They have an incredibly British sound.”
But given that he reckons UK hip hop is “exploding”, surely that means the record companies will have to adapt or, given the successes he references, are already adapting? “I’m not sure it matters any more. I know people without labels making money from doing adverts, or music for games. They press their own CDs and get them out there themselves. Labels are still useful for distribution, and a cash investment, obviously – but if you put together a decent business plan you can probably get the money from elsewhere, and probably get a better return too. And people can increasingly get their music out there on the net without any label’s assistance”.
Akira, of course, knows a lot about building a following on the net – his website being as well known in hip hop circles as his music. Aside from distributing and promoting his own tracks, akirathdon.com provides a forum for his writing, ranting and ponderings (“yeah, I’m still writing slanderous stuff for websites, it’s just my own website, so I don’t have to worry about someone losing their job because of something I wrote”) and, of particular note, a platform for the aforementioned mix tapes – completely unofficial mixes available to download for free. “Ironically, no”, he says when I ask if the major labels whose music features in those mixes have made any cease and decease type noises. “Only one person has ever complained, and that was an individual producer, and only because by being in the mix he got so much publicity he wanted to release the track himself. I think the label’s understand that having a bit of one of their tracks in a bigger mix, that’s not going to impact on the sales of the actual track, instead it’s free promotion. I do think they get that”. So, and even Akira concedes this, the record companies aren’t all bad then. Not all.
“We’ll be promoting the album, obviously,” he says, looking to the next year for Akira The Don, “and we’ve revamped the website, which is exciting. There’s another mixtape about to be put up there, and I’m working on two new albums. A second album proper, and a third based around Brit Pop songs. Then there’s a tour promoting the album. And I’ve got a cartoon in the works”.
Oh yes, Akira The Don has no intention of becoming any less prolific or productive in the coming years, which is no bad thing. However it is that you know Adam – there’s plenty to look forward to.
Some Akira The Don plugging:
Akira The Don's new single 'Oh! What A Glorious Thing' was released on 11 Sep, his debut album 'When We We're Young' is due out on 6 Nov, both on Something In Construction.
chris@unlimitedmedia.co.uk - published sep 2006
