Flava D politely texts to say she is on her way from the hotel. She’s running five minutes late- the journey up to London from her hometown- Bournemouth has been a little testing. If any one can be let off five minutes, it’s her. On top of nightmare trains, she’s been very – albeit very happily- busy. A quick scroll of her instagram tells a tale of reams of shows, releases, collaborative studio sessions and perhaps most importantly her Las Vegas marriage to her new wife.
With a beaming smile of salutation, we climb the stairs of a very noisy pub trying to find an unoccupied spot. Finding the only one just under a pumping speaker. We’re meeting just before the very first UKF Invites at London’s Colour Factory where Flava D’s is joint headliner.
Aside from the show it’s also the eve of her debut UKF release ‘Dutty’ with P Money.
“I’m buzzing to get this release going. It’s one of the most exciting tunes I’ve made in a while.
“UKF is such an iconic label. I can’t believe it hasn’t happened sooner to be honest, I’m so glad the link up has happened now. When I made this track I asked myself who I was going to take it to and I felt like it was just perfect for UKF. This resurgence of 140 is coming back round, and the label is such a staple in dubstep. So I had my eye on UKF from the get go and when you wanted it, I was just so stoked.”
As we settle into the interview a wave of just-hidden panic passes over her. She ruffles around in her bag to double check she has her trusty tool.
“I was just making sure I’ve got my two USBs, they’re something I just can’t go without. I have to have at least two USBs at my gigs. You hear horror stories from your DJ friends. I’ve had the emergency loop. Or sometimes you can export and file it corrupts, and if you’ve only got one USB you’re screwed. But when you’ve got a spare you can fix it and hopefully the crowd doesn’t notice.”
With the non-crisis completely avoided we think about the sheer amount of musical weight those USBs must carry, as well as dubs from friends and classics she has stacks on her own iconic tracks. With the amount of riddims she has under her belt, it seems almost impossible that after more than 10 years in the game, this year we see the release of Flava D’s debut album. Here & Now, an album Flava D herself proclaims is predominantly drum and bass, will be released on the juggernaut that is Hospital Records.
“I’ve just finished my debut album – that’s quite a big deal for me. It’s a drum and bass album, with a bit of experimental stuff on there too. It’s coming out on Hospital Records this summer. It’s been three years in the making, so it feels amazing to get it to the finishing line.
“Hospital have been really great. They’ve given me a lot of creative freedom. They knew when they took me forward that I am quite twist and turn-ey with my sounds. And they told me that they just wanted to be played the album, whatever that is. I didn’t feel held back in anyway, I could just do my thing. It’s all drum and bass album with artists I’m really excited to be working with.
“We have a listening session planned for next week. We’re going to sit in the studio with me and the crew and listen from start to finish. And then round it down to 12 tracks. So far we’ve got 15, it’s making sure it has what it needs. I’m a little nervous about what to cut. Honestly, I love it all, but naturally you want to shorten it to the right amount.”
Years of hard graft and a back-cat of killer tunes has earned Flava D the reputation of one of the most respected producers to straddle the grime-UKG-drum and bass borders. Truly a master of every UK bass genre she touches, her versatility is something that can’t be understated. Comparing the sparse, iconic beat of ‘Step 18’, to the silkiness of ‘Hold On’ – her first official release on Butterz, to the bouncing, wobbles of ‘Bump & Grind’ it’s clear that a deep understanding of the full spectrum of UK bass music runs through her veins. So why, you might ask, has it taken the best part of a decade for a full album to materialize.
“I’m ten years into my career and it was never really a thing I wanted to do. Until just before COVID, when I was about to start it. But then I put it on pause for a bit because of the way the world was. It just didn’t feel like album time.
I only feel like it was last year that I really got the tracks, and I really found myself. I found my confidence, I was happy with the tunes I was making, I was happy with my mixing down. I felt satisfied and I felt like I had something that I was satisfied with.”
Growing up on the UK’s south coast was very different to Flava D’s time in London’s dirty South. However both areas have strong underground music scenes. Spending her formative years across the two areas it is easy to see how her diverse range of influences had contributed to the breadth of her soundscapes today.
“ I was born in Bournemouth, but I lived around South London for about 10 years, and then last summer I moved back to Bournemouth. It’s quite a change. I miss London- certain things, the environment, the energy, the nightlife, things like that. But then you’ve got the seaside. I love the seaside, and my family are around me. It’s a nice change that I think I needed.
My raving years were a bit in Bournemouth and a bit in London. When I originally moved out of Bournemouth I moved to Maidstone in Kent and when eventually I could afford it, I headed to South London, in Lewisham, Catford and then Bromley.
There used to be a lively drum and bass scene in Bournemouth- it’s not quite the same. About 10 years ago, Bournemouth was known as ‘that party town’
As I was growing up everyone around me was into different things, but dance music was a big thing. My auntie was into old school garage, my mum was very much into trance and euphoria- she had all the Ferry Corsten CDs. My dad was very into acoustic rock and my cousins were into Cyprus Hill, Nas and Lauren Hill. So I had such a complex musical palette at a very young age. When I was ten I was listening to J Dilla, and everyone in my class was listening to the Spice Girls.
Being musically different from my peers didn’t bother me at the time. I was just very into what I was into. I was a bit of an introvert anyway so I would buried myself in my music and passions at school.”
Those of us with enough fine lines to remember Channel U and SBTV will have fond memories of the many, many hours sacrificed to watching our favourite MCs spitting over the intriguing, frenetic new genre- grime. The explosion of music television meant that swaths of young people now had access to underground genres that had previously only been easily available if you lived within the reach of a pirate radio tower. Flava D had found her sound, even though she didn’t know what it was yet.
“My first break though music I’d say was with grime. When my mum got us Sky, we had this whole new array of channels and I was like, “Oh My God”, and I eventually found channel U. Living in Bournemouth you didn’t have Pirate FM, you didn’t have local radio stations playing things, so that was my gateway into grime.
“More Fire Crew, So Solid Crew, all the early garage. I was obsessed with Ms Dynamite. I was captivated by what this really raw sound was that I hadn’t heard before. Dizzee Rascal ‘Boy In The Corner’ I had that album on repeat- I think we all did. Those were the days that I was learning to produce music. I was like ‘I don’t know what this is, but I’m gonna try to make some. And that’s how I started my catalogue of grime.”
Although self-taught, Flava D surrounded herself with a support network of friends and colleagues who filled an almost mentor-like space without ever needing the title. She attributes the nuance of her unique sonic style to the underrated beauty in making mistakes.
“I was about 17, 18 when I started to produce grime. I was self-taught. I was working at a record shop in Bournemouth when I was 16. My boss was a top-three DMC turntableist champion. He was very into his hip-hop and he had a copy of Ableton and he gave it to me on a disc. I took it home, there was no youtube then, no tutorials, no nothing. So I really had to find my feet in it, but I’m so glad I did because I feel like I wouldn’t be me, if I had learnt today with so much information around me.
“If everyone’s learning from the same youtube videos, everyone will have the same sound- the same formula. It’s not cheating, but you are fast tracking a little bit and I feel like sometimes the beauty can come from experimenting, just, you, yourself. Trial and error. I think that’s how you really develop your own style as well.”
Ten years ago social media was in its infancy artists didn’t have the access to the copious amounts of online resources and support that we are blessed with today. If you wanted to make it in the industry you had to get out there and make friends and mentors and do a lot of learning on the job.
“I’d never even mastered a track. I don’t know how I winged it for so long. I’ve never had a mentor or anybody like that. Wiley didn’t critique or offer advice. He’d just be like “I like this, send me this.” And the next thing you know it would be being played by Logan Sama. He wouldn’t even send it back to me after the vocal. And people would be talking about this sick tune. That was a fascinating time, he’s an interesting character.”
“Butterz at Cable was my first real live gig. I played for about 30 minutes, and I just didn’t know what I was doing. I was so nervous. I didn’t know how to beatmatch properly, and I was chucked in at the deep end. That was my only night at Cable and it was a few weeks after that that it closed.”
With her reputation as a DJ and a master of beats across the entire UK bass spectrum it’s hard to imagine Flava D as “winging it”! We chat about her natural progression though genres and her innate ability to flip between tempos in the studio. We wonder if there’s a methodology to this process and if she still feels like she’s “winging it” today.
“What I produce is very much dependent on how I feel on the day. I think it’s just my personality, because of my autism I can very much hyper-fixate. I hear one thing, this tiny eight second clip of something and I’ll have an idea. I do like a challenge as well, I have to completely rewire my brain if I’m drum and bass, compared to if I was making garage or something. D&B is the most testing genre of them all, it’s by far levelled me up the most, like sonically and learning to mix down. I’ll listen to some of my garage stuff and it sounds like it’s in a box. I just do it differently.
You hear it when you play the tunes in the club. The standard in D&B is so high. Some of these producers, their technical skills are incredible, it’s like they’re sound engineers. When I first started to make D&B I’d play my own tune in my set and the next tune I’d mix in would just eat it alive. I had to go back to the drawing board and find out what I was doing wrong.
It took a good two years to craft my sound to the point where I’d play something and I’d know it sounds good. I’m notorious for the car test. I probably do my wife’s head in, I get her to come and sit with me in the car. If we have some coins in the door and they’re not rattling, somethings not right. They have to be rattling. I do the iPhone test, the Apple Airpods, the car, and then I’m good.”
It’s well known that Wiley, The Godfather Of Grime, was a major catalyst in the rise and success of grime, this was undoubtedly due to his relentless passion for nurturing up and coming UK talent. He was Flava D’s first industry supporter and she remembers her earliest experiences with him as interesting and developmental.
“It’s certainly very interesting to tell. I owe a lot to him. He was the first person that actually paid me for my beats. Back then I wasn’t thinking about money or charging people. I just loved making music, collaborating with people, I guess exposure. If someone vocaled my track maybe someone else would hear it and come to me. He was paying me £100 a beat at one point and half the time he didn’t even vocal them. I was like “He’s giving me this money! Do I give it back?” But I was able to use that money to get out of Bournemouth, he played such a big role in me eventually moving to London and the people I met. That was essentially the beginning of my career.”
Often referred to by Wiley as “Eskibeats one and only female producer”, it’s no secret that gender imbalance is prevalent across the entire music industry, and while underground and dance music are some of the more progressive and inclusive genres, UK bass music is still heavily dominated by male identifying individuals. Today we’re seeing a slow and steady shift in this ideology but ten years ago, while Flava D was coming through and making a name for herself, it was almost impossible to see women in the bass music sphere, especially within the ruff, raucous and “masculine” energy of grime. Although the imbalance was very noticeable Flava D wasn’t particularly bothered by it, and it certainly didn’t affect her work ethic or determination.
“If I’m totally honest I wouldn’t say that I was bothered by how male dominated the industry was. I’ve always been a very tunnel vision person. I think what helped me was that I was surrounded by this very boisterous masculine crew. The grime lot took me under their wing a bit. I was always very protected and I think they respected me because I was this very niche female in this particularly masculine group. This little blond, white female who’s too shy to speak – but they just liked my beats. They were almost like older brother figures in a way. I made a lot of connections with a lot of friends and the respect level just always remained from then on.”
We reflect on the very obvious juxtaposition of Flava D and her comrades. A blond, white, incredibly quiet female from a typical British seaside town against her group of predominantly black men, raised on the rough and ready roads of London. We wonder if this added to Flava D’s je ne sais quoi.
“Up until I signed with Butterz a lot of people didn’t even know Flava D was a female. People would be like “What you’re Flava D? You made that?” I’d never had a manager, I’d never thought about branding. I liked to stay behind the scenes. When I signed to Butterz I finally had this really solid branding. They knew how to do marketing and releasing officially and my first ever press shot I got was after meeting Elijah and Skilliam and that’s when people actually started to know that Flava D is a girl. There was no difference in reaction, but I think people were just surprised.
“If anything, I think it was probably more refreshing to the female audience that were just discovering me, back then a female produced in the underground scene was quite rare.
“It’s a massively different landscape for women today, there’s still a lot more to be done, with the attitude and the energy towards tokenism and stuff like that. But it’s a completely different way to what it was then, and it’s so good to see. In lockdown, because we all had so much time a lot of women learned to produce, they learned to DJ. Getting in touch with their hobbies and we’re really seeing the results of that coming into fruition now.”
The interview is drawing to an end and we begin the short walk from the pub to Colour Factory where Flava D is playing the very first UKF Invites alongside Casey Club and Taiki Nulight. UKF Invites is a free ticketed event inspired by the community. It’s designed to feed the smaller, grassroots clubs and offer accessible tickets to fans. Flava D agrees with the sentiment.
“I think we could come together as a community during this really hard time. Things have become very big, quite corporate and in some areas we really need to come back to our roots a bit more in terms of smaller events for the people. Like tonight – it’s free tickets.
It’s a small line-up but it’s the culture. It’s about keeping these things alive by doing these things every so often. I think the bigger brands need to step up and put on grassroots events every so often. When I first came to the game there was a lot of this stuff going on. A lot of pop-up events, everyone knows things are shrinking right now, a lot of clubs are closing. We’re quite spoiled for choice with these massive, massive lineups and venues. I’m not showing shade to anyone but I think we’ve got to get the smaller underground sweet as well.”
