Young Fathers: ‘Everybody has a dark side. We’re all complicit…’

Award-winning Edinburgh hip-hop trio Young Fathers on ‘bad men’, shadow-boxing with portraits, and their new album, Cocoa Sugar

On a cold Sunday night at the end of January, a rapt audience at London’s Barbican Centre is watching a new film called Fetish, showing a naked black man walking through the streets of New York. It is an evening of audio-visual art marking the end of Boom for Real, last year’s monumental exhibition of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Directed by Topher Campbell, the film is a commentary on the black male body, vulnerability and “othering”, and it is scored live by the Scottish band Young Fathers, powerfully matching the video’s growing sense of dread leading up to a euphoric release.

It’s hard to imagine many other bands in the country who could pull this off, or even attempt to. Back in 2014, as relative unknowns, Young Fathers beat favourite FKA twigs to win the Mercury prize with their debut album Dead, a mesmerising mix of genres that sounded like nothing else around. They quickly followed it up with White Men Are Black Men Too, a disconcerting, occasionally abrasive but captivating second album. They have toured the world, collaborated with Massive Attack, and Danny Boyle liked them so much he included six of their songs in last year’s T2: Trainspotting. They are, it is generally accepted, a critical success if not a mainstream one.

Their new album, Cocoa Sugar, might not make them Glastonbury headliners quite yet, but it does contain some of the catchiest music they’ve ever released. The album is the result of a long, tortuous time in the studio which brought on something of a crisis of faith. After two albums of weird, experimental music, the trio attempted, as a challenge, to sound more “normal”. “We get bored really quickly,” says Graham “G” Hastings, producer and vocalist, when I meet the band in an east London hotel the day after the Basquiat show. “So it was like, what can we do to push us again? You have to upset the rhythm, put yourself into an uncomfortable place.”

So they tried out more linear structures, beats and choruses, and a vestige of these efforts is apparent in the final sound: it’s more immediately accessible than their previous albums and full of satisfying melodies – recent single In My View has a hook that is virtually impossible to dislodge from your brain – but it’s not exactly dinner party music. It’s still on the avant garde end of the spectrum: discordant notes are juxtaposed with pulsing disco synths and tribal percussion, ghostly disembodied voices contrast with spoken-word verses and gospel choirs.

“I didn’t think that this whole ‘wanting to be more normal’ thing was going to work,” says Kayus Bankole. “It was mission impossible.” It did provide inspiration, though. The band’s third member, Alloysious “Ally” Massaquoi, always believed that their uniqueness would come through: “If we try and put ourselves in a box, it’s gonna end up with spikes coming out.”

The group dynamic is unconventional too: there is no de facto frontman, and all three write and do vocals (Hastings makes the music, with co-producer Tim London). In person, it is clear that they all bring different energies to the group. Massaquoi, dressed in head-to-toe black, tall even sitting down, has a quiet seriousness about him, and veers with equal intensity between glowering at his phone and unwavering eye contact. Hastings is open and professional, often taking the initiative in answering questions, which he does thoughtfully; he somehow emanates calm. Bankole – dreadlocks, nose ring, crinkly velvet voice – is warm and welcoming; he talks less than the others but is quickest to crack jokes, and laughs often. In conversation they are eager and engaging, like students in a seminar.

There is a suggestion of occasional brotherly squabbles in the studio. “It was a bit more of a struggle for me and Kayus,” says Hastings. “Ally is completely the opposite – I think he can see the bigger picture in the future…” Bankole interjects: “…in the now. Some people thrive in those situations, where you feel exposed, and some people don’t.” Throughout this, Massaquoi is staring across the table with an inscrutable expression. You get the impression he’d be an accomplished poker player.

Watch the video for Lord by Young Fathers.

This exchange aside, there’s no tension on show today: they exude a palpably strong bond, casually finishing each other’s sentences. All three mention how fortunate they are to have found each other. “The differences in us are very, very vast,” says Bankole, “but we still feel lucky to have those differences and say: ‘OK, they think differently from me, and I don’t like this, but I trust them.’” Massaquoi adds: “We all want the same thing: you want it to be good. It’s like, Graham’s not trying to make a beat for it to be shite [they laugh]. No one’s trying to do anything to make it bad.”

Working in other studios made them realise that what they have together is rare: they work instinctively, quickly, there is a connection between them. “It’s down to a secret sauce,” jokes Massaquoi. The trio – all aged 30 – met at an under-16s hip-hop night in Edinburgh called Bongo Club, but they bonded by rejecting that scene. “We weren’t so crazy about being ‘real’,” says Hastings. “We liked pop songs and hooks and sweet things as well as the hard stuff.” At the club’s open mic nights, he remembers, other people would have rap battles, while they would show up with three-and-a-half minute pop songs they’d written in their bedroom that week, “with dance moves and everything, so we pissed that whole crowd off. We just wanted to be who we were.”

Who they are, it turns out, is not easy to pinpoint. Whoever had the thankless task of describing them in the Barbican brochure settled for “alternative lo-fi R&B trio”; one review said they “melt throbbing dub and roots reggae, righteously angry punk refrains, west African polyrhythms, and soulful R&B crooning into a floating miasma of trip-hop production”. I read out a YouTube comment that describes their sound as “if Frank Ocean and Death Grips had a baby”. “Oh my God... that’s another one to add to the list,” says Hastings. Bankole, meanwhile, is cracking up: “It would be nice to watch how the baby-making process happens.”

Their own creative process is not something they seem inclined to dissect or analyse, but discussing Basquiat’s work provides an oblique way in. “We’ve always had a problem with saying that we’re influenced by this person, and that person,” says Massaquoi. “The only one who comes close, who explains us in a way, would be Basquiat, in terms of how he does his art in the very instant. It’s very DIY, but then it can be finessed into something else.” The way they work has some points in common with his techniques: they write spontaneously, without overthinking things, using free association. “When we’re in the studio we don’t really talk about much – this is the hard bit, to try and explain it, when we’re doing interviews,” says Hastings.

The new album is full of impressionistic, ambiguous lyrics, mixing biblical allusions, non sequiturs and ancient proverbs: “Philosophic polyfilla / Deserted in the desert / Turning sand into a mirror”;“If wishes were horses / Then beggars would ride”. It is important that the music remains open for listeners to interpret, explains Bankole: “With Basquiat, and with some of the songs that we make, there’s a question mark.” Massaquoi adds: “People have told me, ‘this song means this and that’, and it’s actually better than what we thought. I like that kind of exchange – that’s part and parcel of creativity. But we never go in like, ‘We’re gonna do something that makes people project ideas.’ I don’t think it’s possible.”

Later I suggest that the album title, Cocoa Sugar, may call to mind Britain’s links to slavery and empire, and they seem genuinely surprised. “Nope,” laughs Hastings. The idea was to represent two sides of life: bitter and sweet, light and dark. “It’s an amalgamation of how we see the world,” says Massaquoi. “Aesthetically pleasing, but fucked up.” Hastings adds: “I think we have our own [ways of looking at it], but you just brought up one that’s entirely good as well. And if that’s what it makes you think, then the plan worked.”

The same sense of freedom extends to dancing at their concerts – the standard dancefloor shuffle doesn’t quite fit the esoteric sounds coming from the stage. The band have noticed that everyone in the crowd has their own style of dancing. Bankole laughs: “When I’m performing, I’m looking at people and trying their dance moves. And I’m like: ‘Fuck, this is weird, I didn’t know you could do it like this! I’m gonna try it out.’”

A few words come up again and again in the discussion: “immediate” and “spontaneous” and “free-flowing” are good words; “familiar” is not, nor is “loyalty” to any scenes or preordained schools of thought. They have a bracingly lax attitude to the usual PR niceties and industry back-scratching. At the Mercury awards they ruffled feathers by not speaking to rightwing publications and refusing to smile (“We deserve to be here,” they later explained). The prize, Hastings says today, definitely helped open doors for them. “Absolutely. It was validation. But creatively it meant nothing, because we knew we were good before. It makes you realise the power of a big tick across your name – ‘everybody can accept these guys, they’re not these leftfield weirdos over there’.”

When I try to get a question in about Trainspotting, they look slightly weary, as if they’ve been asked about it ad nauseam over the past year. “Do you really have to?,” asks Massaquoi. Hastings starts to answer diplomatically (“We were sceptical before meeting Danny Boyle but after meeting him, we realised that he’s a genuinely lovely guy...”), but Bankole, who is humming softly in the background – he has by this point had a ginger beer and is starting to tire of the interview – interrupts with a mechanical PR voice. “Danny Boyle, heard the music, liked the music, spoke to the guys, the guys spoke to us, he came over, had a good chat, nice guy, bish bosh, song’s in the fricking video.” They all laugh. “And I sucked his dick. What? Allegedly. Ah, something happened when I caught his eyes.”

Watch the video for In My View by Young Fathers.

They are also resistant to jumping on bandwagons. Since the release of their second album in 2015, the world has changed: Brexit, Trump, the rise of Black Lives Matter, identity politics. With movements such as #Grime4Corbyn, and increasingly “woke” pop stars, there has been a sharp increase in musicians speaking out about political matters. Although they don’t consider themselves a political band, Young Fathers have always been outspoken about issues close to them. In 2015, when releasing the video for Old Rock N Roll, they accompanied it with a statement about the refugee crisis (Massaquoi himself emigrated from Liberia aged four during the civil war in the early 90s): “Britain First are trying to spawn all over the internet, while politicians and press fight to expectorate the most poisonous, anti-immigrant ignorance... If we can afford bombs we can afford blankets and a welcome.” They’ve been on protests and played shows for Unite Against Fascism.

But they are wary of music’s newfound conscience. “A lot of bands are coming out of the woodwork and being overtly political because of the current climate we’re in,” says Massaquoi. “Standing up for what you believe in as a person is definitely always going to be a great thing and a courageous thing. But now, it’s good for business – it’s a good look to be aligned with a political party, or be in the media calling people out. I think it’s accepted now as part of popular culture.”

“We’d probably have been a much more successful band if we had never said things like that,” muses Hastings. The band will continue to lend their voice to causes they believe in, he says, although they’re pragmatic about the impact they can have: “It’s only going to be a minuscule thing – it’s not going to help in the grand scheme of things. But you just kind of understand that it’s worth it, a lot of the time.” One thing they all agree on is that “it’s all to do with being people, about humanity – it’s not about an agenda or parties or whatever, because parties change, opinions change”.

There are few overt references to the current political climate on Cocoa Sugar, but the lyrics are darker than on past albums, more fragmented, infused with a sense of sadness and general malaise. “Bad men” are a recurring feature, as is the abuse of power and images of excess (“Wow / What a time to be alive / Wow / I’mma put myself first / Wow / Everything is so amazing / I said wow”). One song is called Border Girl, another includes the lyrics “I’ll cross the border in the morning”. Much of the album is told through the voices of different characters, often unsavoury: “I’m writing blank cheques / Am a greedy bugger… Fine wine and foie gras / The torture makes it sweet / So sweet”.

But the point isn’t to judge or tell people off. “I think everybody has a dark side to them, especially people who’ve got a lot of power,” says Massaquoi. “But we’re all contributing to that somehow, we all have faults. We’re all complicit in it. It’s me looking at myself too.” Finger-wagging, he says, is “cringey”: it’s not like they have the answers to these problems. He tells an anecdote to illustrate the point. He was at the bank when a woman had her bag stolen; no one else reacted so Massaquoi ran after the man, who appeared to be a drug addict, and stopped him. He gave the woman her bag back and let the man go. “So on the one hand I’m thinking, I’ve done a good deed, I’ve helped this woman. But I think to myself: ‘Is this actually a good thing?’ Because on the other hand he’s not harmed her, he’s just taken something that’s, like, superficial or cosmetic. And he’s doing it to feed a habit – he has a problem. I just felt really conflicted. Context is key: you don’t know that person’s situation or how they got there.”

They found themselves in another difficult position last summer, when they made a short video for the National Galleries of Scotland of Bankole pretend-boxing the wealthy white men in the portraits. It was accompanied on voiceover by a poem about colonialism (“Does this mean I don’t exist? That I’m not a man? Because I don’t see a face like mine framed in gold hanging on the wall?”), but also about privilege, power and status. Somewhat predictably, it unleashed a stream of comments accusing them of being racist against whites, of being unpatriotic, of wasting taxpayers’ money.

The band asked the gallery to take the video down, which they did, but it was promptly posted online again by an angry YouTube user so that other people could be outraged by it too. “The level of the backlash took me by surprise a bit,” says Hastings. “I mean, they were calling us anti-white, when I’m in the group.” Massaquoi is less surprised – Edinburgh is not as multicultural as people pretend it is, he says. “But the ironic thing is, the people we’re fighting for are the people that are complaining: the nurses, the doctors, the bricklayers, the firemen. Those are the heroes, those are the people that are keeping society up. Not the people who are behind doors and you never see anything of but have the most money. That’s ultimately what that piece was about.”

But this isn’t likely to scare them off. After the band’s evocative collaboration at the Basquiat show, they aren’t ruling out more crossovers with the art world, which is starting to embrace them. “We’re game for trying anything, if it’s good – we’re open to things that maybe a typical band wouldn’t be,” says Hastings. Whatever they end up doing next, it’s not likely to be a straightforward pop album. “There’s no way that we could ever be normal. We’re always gonna be weird as fuck.”

Young Fathers’ album Cocoa Sugar is released on Ninja Tune on 9 March. They play five UK dates next month starting in Birmingham on 20 March

Contributor

Kathryn Bromwich

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
Young Fathers: ‘We’re putting out there what needs to be said’
After winning the 2014 Mercury music prize, the controversial Edinburgh trio are back on the attack and tackling race, identity and euphoric pop on their new album. We joined them on a soul-searching tour of South Africa

Paul MacInnes

04, Apr, 2015 @10:31 AM

Article image
Young Fathers: White Men Are Black Men too review – passion and protest
Young Fathers follow up their Mercury prize-winning debut with a genre-defying album of playfulness and politics

Kathryn Bromwich

05, Apr, 2015 @7:30 AM

Article image
Young Fathers: Cocoa Sugar review – sounds like freedom feels
(Ninja Tune)

Damien Morris

10, Mar, 2018 @3:00 PM

Article image
Young Fathers: Heavy Heavy review – a joyous feast of noise
The Edinburgh band’s fourth album is an enjoyable mix of driving beats and infectious enthusiasm

Ammar Kalia

05, Feb, 2023 @1:00 PM

Article image
‘Creating this magical atmosphere is addictive’: five of the hottest festival acts for 2023
From veteran crowd-pleasers the Chemical Brothers to first-timer yeule, musicians discuss what they love about playing the great outdoors and give their top tips for festival-goers

Killian Fox, Ammar Kalia

30, Apr, 2023 @10:00 AM

Article image
Young Fathers: ‘I saw the excitement in my parents’ eyes and felt proud to be in this group’
The Edinburgh-based experimental rappers whose debut album, Dead, defied the odds to win the Mercury music prize. By Nadia Khomami

Nadia Khomami

14, Dec, 2014 @9:00 AM

Article image
On my radar: Kayus Bankole of Young Fathers’ cultural highlights
The Scottish-Nigerian musician on taboo-breaking conversations, brutally honest images of apartheid and where to find the best akara falafel wrap

Kathryn Bromwich

02, Mar, 2024 @3:00 PM

Article image
Mercury prize 2023: Arctic Monkeys tie Radiohead’s record for most nominations
There are first-time nods for the likes of Fred Again, Lankum, Jockstrap and Raye, and repeat recognition for acts including J Hus and Jessie Ware

Laura Snapes

27, Jul, 2023 @10:02 AM

Article image
Kitty Empire: best rock and pop of 2016
Mavericks were lost, Dylan bagged a Nobel (and then went quiet), the Knowles sisters sparkled, and grime moved centre stage

Kitty Empire

04, Dec, 2016 @7:00 AM

Article image
Kitty Empire’s best pop of 2017
From Jay-Z to Taylor Swift, it’s been a year of high political and personal drama in the worlds of rap, pop and rock

Kitty Empire

10, Dec, 2017 @12:00 AM