In the buzzing city of Manchester exists a vibrant force of positivity named OneDa. From the moment she starts to speak her infectious energy becomes palpable, we are unable to resist the urge to smile. As she shared her journey with us, it became clear that her positivity is not just a persona but a driving force that fuels her artistry.
Beyond her musical endeavours, OneDa has carved a unique space for herself as a hip-hop therapist. Her background in social work, combined with her love for music, led her to use hip-hop as a therapeutic tool, especially with young individuals. OneDa is also committed to empowering female voices in the music industry. She founded HERchester, a female rap community that provides a supportive platform for women and non-binary individuals.
Her recent work with Vibe Chemistry, Dub Phizix, Anaïs, and Sam Binga showcases her versatility as an artist who seamlessly navigates various genres, from drum and bass to hip-hop. We eagerly await her upcoming album, where she promises to deliver this diverse musical palette.
A force to be reckoned with, spreading joy, empowerment, and creativity, we chat to OneDa about her latest release, her upcoming album and why she believes female representation is still a challenge.
How’s your day been?
I’ve just been at home producing, just getting really stuck in. It took me a while to drag myself away to get to this call. I was completely in the zone and I was just about to add a sick bit, but I’ll get it back, don’t worry.
So ‘Rude Girl Flex’ was the first tune you fully produced yourself…
Yeah, that’s the first one that I produced myself that’s out there. No one else had heard my productions before.
So how long have you been producing?
I started producing from scratch about 12 months ago. I could never produce before. ever. So my first tracks were not good. It started when my dad died, and I thought to myself I was constantly hitting up people saying “I hope you got any beat for me?” Every few weeks I’d been begging someone for beats and what happens when they send you some beast you’re not really feeling? You feel obliged to use one because you’ve been chasing them down for so long to send it. You just pick the best out of the worst, that is not really making music. I had to adapt my sound to this sound to the track I was given.
I thought to myself I need to change how I’m doing this, I can’t be chasing people down. I need to put the ball more into my court. So I went on YouTube and just stayed in my studio for about two or three months. An hour-long YouTube video would take me three hours to watch because I’d be pausing and doing that bit before moving on. When I came out of the studio out of that initial period I was OK.
Did you have any help from any of the producers around you?
I’ve tried to get people in my studio to sit down with me and show me, but people always like to say they will do it, but no one comes. That’s why I decided to use YouTube and then it’s now that they know I produce, people are more ready to help, but now I’ve got to where I need to go. So now I sit with my engineers who’ll show me different plugins, different ways of using DAWs or different approaches.
All of my beats at the moment, because I’m still fairly new, don’t have plugins at all. Everything comes from Logic and then I use splice to chop up bits. I prefer that I’ve used it that way because I play-in everything instead of just getting a loop and then getting another and putting it together to get a beat. I’ve learned the longer way but it’s the more authentic way, I believe.
I can see that, you’ve learnt through your mistakes and you’re creating your own unique style…
100 per cent. I’m loving producing, I’m loving producing nearly as much as I love rapping.
Amazing does that mean we are going to be treated to another OneDa EP soon?
I’m currently working on an album. I started the first tracks at the beginning of last year. I’ve come up to about 15 tracks now. Seven of those tracks I’ve pretty much produced by myself, but because I started early in the year, when I wasn’t confident with my production, seven of them are me and another seven are from other producers. ,
You work across different genres so what can we expect from that album?
You can expect six drum and bass tracks on there making that staple on the album and about and then the rest are hip-hop tunes and a few afro-slash-hip-hop vibes on there as well. It’s gonna be a good bunch of all the music that I love. I’m gonna start off with a powerful spoken word piece at the beginning.
What have you been up to this week- have you mostly been in the studio producing?
Yeah, mostly producing and I’ve been preparing for my 6 Music Live too. They’ve said that they want some new pieces, and I’m happy to produce new stuff for them and write some new bits for them. I want to be done writing soon so I can start practising. I’m supporting Kneecap, they’re an Irish hip-hop trio, so I’ve got rehearsals for that as well and still running HERchester.
Wow, sounds like a busy winter for you. I wanted to talk to you about HERchester…
HERchester is a female rap community which I created, who meet every week, and we have a monthly radio show on Reform Radio too. We started the project because there wasn’t enough- and still isn’t enough female spitters in the North- not enough compared to the amount of men that do it and it didn’t make sense. Especially when there are supposed to be more women in the world. I know- and this is no exaggeration, about a thousand guys that rap, and I only knew about four women and non-binary rappers. So as I was coming up as a rapper, I thought I needed a base for other women and non-binary individuals where we could come together and feel safe and be with like-minded people and then boost up from there.
Sometimes that’s all it needs because sometimes it’s hard to start off when you don’t know what to do, a lot of people are raised in musical families or people that work in the music industry so they just don’t know how to do it or what paths to take because they hadn’t seen anyone doing it people, and then people just end up rapping in their bedroom.
So then I put out a call-out on my social media and I approached Reform Radio with the idea that I had and I needed a base for it. I knew Reform Radio already as I was doing hip-hop therapy sessions, hip-hop writing sessions and spoken word sessions for them now and again. Then we joined together we used the station as a place to meet- I couldn’t have everyone in my house- I mean it wasn’t big enough, especially where I was living back then.
There were probably about 17 females and people identified as females who came to the first pilot session. And that blew my mind, I was thinking “Wow, I ‘ve never seen any of you guys, let alone know any of you rapped!” When we talked to them everyone was saying ‘It’s because I rap in my bedroom.” Or “ I’ve been to the studio once and it was just full of guys or didn’t want to come back.” or “I tried one stage,” or “I’ve just had a kid, so it’s not for me anymore.” So all these reasons could one hundred per cent be overcome- and a lot of the circumstances that I’ve had to overcome. And it actually made me happy because it meant that it was needed.
So that’s where we started in the first year we started with eight girls that were fully HERchester members and then second year we had 15, and now in our third full year, we have 27 female and non-binary members. We started in 2019 but Covid took some time from us, but it’s growing. It’s a mad feeling really, it’s sick, it’s just being at a rap school.
What do you get up to when you meet?
We get together every single Tuesday to write together. What I do is mainly building up confidence but we do shows as well. We’ve got a cypher out it’s the biggest cypher in the UK at the moment- there are 17 women and non-binary artists all spitting on that, it’s the third year we’ve done a cypher now. When we meet just write fresh, everyone’s got the same beat in their headphones, everyone’s just jamming and within half an hour everyone’s stepping up and spitting and performing what they’ve written.
They could come and bring new tracks that they’ve been working on back at home and they show it to the rest of the girls and everyone gives feedback. We do that quite often it’s important that we give each other constructive criticism. We do that every single time we meet because when it comes to rap or anything you do, is that having that feedback can really boost you, that’s how you improve. We perform quite a bit as well, so it’s about getting out there as well.
Great to hear about thriving community groups, well done.
I read that your musical education started young and you could read music at the age of six. That’s pretty impressive…
Yeah, that’s true, but my powers have gone now. From the age of six till when I left for high school, I could read music. I was in a brass band. We used to go around Manchester me and my best friend, I played the trumpet and he played the cornet. We played all through primary school- I used to love it, come home practice, practice at break, practice at lunch, practice all the time.
I used to carry my trumpet around in a wooden box, and as soon as high school started approaching I wanted to go to the same high school as my brothers. It was quite a naughty, renowned high school in the area. When you’re young you don’t think about anything else. I just knew that I wanted to go there, and I used to think “I can’t go there with my trumpet!” So I stopped it for high school. By the time I got to about 15/16, I couldn’t even read music anymore. I regret it now, but then at the same time, I think to myself that’s the one instrument that I couldn’t play and rap at the same time anyway… I could rap and play the violin, the piano, the drums. I chose the trumpet, so it all worked out really.
Did your parents persuade you to choose the trumpet?
No, our area is quite poor and I went to quite a poor school. There was an initiative when I was in year one, and some music people came into the school every week, and if you were interested in it then you could just do it. From there they created a brass band in our school. I remember being a kid and just loving it.
That’s so cute. What about our home were you surrounded by music there too?
At home, my mum and dad were mostly into African music, traditional Nigerian music like Fel Kuti, but also Michael Jackson as well. My older sister used to listen to jungle, like the Hysteria tape packs and all that. My older brother used to love DMX, Rough Riders stuff like that. We went to church a lot so there was gospel running through the house and my oldest sister was a singer. Her and her friend used to try to write their own songs and sing- it’s always about guys- ha!
That’s an eclectic mix, and it can be heard in your personal style.
When did you personally get into bass music? Was it just listening to your sister’s mixtapes? When you were younger?
Not really, I got into bass music probably around late high school and college times, I’ve always been more of a hip-hop girl. Especially because, me and my brother were closest, so I just copied him really… If he loved DMX, I loved Eve- she’s always been my favourite. Then I got into my Baseline at college, just listening to it, maybe going out to a few raves now and again. But I’ve got more into it again now, since I did my first track with Sam Binga, that’s when I thought “Right now I want to make it!” Before I just listened to it, I never thought of making bass music before. Sam Binga hit me up, and was like you’ll be good on this OneDa, so I went down to the studio and I didn’t even know how to hit the drop properly, because it comes in differently to how hip-hop does. I had to rework my brain a little bit just to understand how to MC on it differently.
What would you say the main difference is MCing over bass to hip-hop aside from the BPM?
The drop, once you go beyond the drop it’s very similar. I used to spit on grime back in the day, not a lot but now and again with my friends and I would have the right different bars for grime. I’d have hip-hop bars ready, but I would never be able to spit them on grime, it wouldn’t work. I’d have to re-write my whole flow and pattern. But with drum and bass a hip-hop bar, it just translates straight over, I don’t have to change the flow, I just speed it up.
You facilitate hip-hop therapy sessions, can you tell us some more?
I studied social and before I came back to music, I thought I was gonna be a social worker, I’d given up music. I thought I needed to try being a normal person, I thought that I couldn’t just be chasing music forever. I had no confidence in myself at all, I knew I could do it but I didn’t believe it was possible. So that lack of self-belief made me think okay, at least if I can’t do music as myself, I’ll try and do hip-hop, I’ll do it through social work.
After finishing uni that’s how I started making money, I tried to be a youth offending officer, but they didn’t take me. But now I know that was the universe- they weren’t meant to take me, because if I became a youth offending officer, I wouldn’t have started doing my own hip-hop therapy sessions. If I had been a youth offending officer I would have been crying today, crying in my sleep, every day depressed because I wanted to be in music.
So I started doing the sessions with reform radio, they got me my first few gigs, I would do that two or three times a week. From that, I would be earning as much money as I would as a full-time youth offending officer. It was mad, it really blew my mind, I knew how much work I would have had to do with them and I was doing something that I wanted to do, that was helping me and helping other people.
What was the therapy? Were you teaching young people?
I mainly worked in pupil referral units around Manchester for ages from about 13 to 16. I would use music to teach the kids about themselves, and the world around them and use it as a form of expression. When you get them to write things down using a tool that they’re into you can help them to navigate their emotions, their home life and school life as well, which was hard for them at that time. They could start expressing themselves and really looking at what their words meant.
We used to focus on their thoughts as well and help them to retrain their thoughts and habits. I believe I’ve navigated the world, I used to think down on myself all the time and it was just my thoughts that made me think I couldn’t do anything. That just wasn’t the case, I just had to think differently. I’ve not changed. The way that I thought changed. Thinking is very, very powerful. The way you think can either keep you down or can skyrocket you. You are not your thoughts, you have to be the observer of your thoughts.
You’re pouring so much positivity into the world, where did your philosophy stem from, have you always been this bright beacon?
No, go back four or five years and I used to hate everything, hate myself, hate the world. I got kicked out of two high schools and then college, I was a rebel and never wanted to listen to what anybody told me. And that stands strong with where I am now in my conscious way of thinking, I’m not even gonna listen to my own thoughts never mind what people tell me. I’ve always been a rebel but now I’m a rebel that life loves herself. The reason why I wasn’t progressing then was because I listened to myself. I wanted no one to tell me nothing, but I hated myself as well. But now I think I am sick.
What changed with me is that I used to look at my writing and think, “Okay, if I like this but a million people don’t like it. Then it must not be good.” But now I think “Whoa, if a million people don’t like me, then there must be something wrong with them because I know I’m sick!”
About three years ago a friend sent me a video that was called “12 Laws of The Universe That Will Change Your Life.” Normally I would tell him to f*** off because I was raised in a very Christian household where things like that are witchcraft, and demonic, bad.
I wasn’t sleeping properly this one particular week, I was waking up at about four every morning, when I got this video. It was a random guy to send it to me as well, it was my best friend’s brother, normally I don’t really speak to him, especially to be sending me a video in the morning. So it was weird. I watched it anyway, it was 45 minutes long, and I thought it’d just put me to sleep. So starting watching it and within five to ten minutes in I jumped out my bed, I was a uni so I had notepads on my side, grabbed them and jumped back into bed. overs up like that start watching it again. By the end of it, tears were streaming down my eyes. I cried more than I’ve ever cried him a whole life, but I wasn’t sad. It was even beyond happy. I was amazed, I could feel the emotion.
I thought why did I not know this s*** before because it’s I suddenly knew what life was about. One effect was I said “Right I’m doing music again. Because I know I can do music.” I used to be scared of the dark now, I’m not scared, I can walk around the house with the lights off and that’s a big thing for me. I used to be terrified, I used to think demons were going to get me this in the night. Now, my demons run away from me.
Talk to me about ‘Pussy Power’… What does that mean to you?
Pussy Powers is everything that I’ve talked about embodied in one. I’m a female, so everything I do pushes my femininity, pushes my energy. My belief in myself is my power. Pussy Power is pushing females to the forefront to show that we are all powerful. Us being ourselves is the power.
What should we be talking about in our music scene that we’re not currently talking about?
Female producers, female promoters, and all the females behind the music industry as well. Females in your role all the females in music. Only 3.4% of producers are female, so imagine engineers and roles like that, the statistics go lower and lower. Pushing female roles within the industry, I think the more young women see women already working in the industry it will inspire them to follow that path if they want to.
READ
