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  Kray Twinz Interview
interview 0564 added 20.04.08 words:
Ben Spurr
technical:
Spoon
Hailing from Coventry but blessed with a worldly perspective, the Kray Twinz shot to some people’s attention with the club banger ‘What We Do’ featuring none other than Lethal Bizzle and Chi Towns Twista. Since the success of that track the Twinz have toured and hooked up with a range of unlikely collaborators from Blue’s Lee Ryan to Police legend Sting. So what’s next for the Midlands beat masters? Ben Spurr found out via a lengthy phone conversation with Jaz, fifty per cent of the duo.
People know you from the monster track ‘What We Do’, did that track open up a lot of doors for you and what have you been doing since?
For 2 years we were touring off the one record and then back in the studio working on my new artist Vee. So it was just all around the world with that one tune and then get back in and start the next project.
Just out of curiosity, did you hear Kano’s version of the track on his mixtape ‘Beats and Bars’ and if so what did you think to that one?
No I didn’t hear it!
Oh right, yeah Kano did a bad freestyle using the beat on his mixtape, moving on, how on earth did the collaboration with Sting come about and did you complete a track together?
Yeah, what happened was I was in L.A. at the time when the call came, there was going to be a computer game that was coming out and he was asked to do the track for it and they recommended me as the producer. He called me up and said ‘send me a few beats, I wanna see if we can do something’. I sent him a few things, he said ‘yeah I love it’, he said ‘come fly out to my villa in Italy’ and then for about 4 days we just jammed and came out with this thing. I don’t know if it’s out right now but yeah we completed the song.
...No UK artist has got the push they needed...
Is there anywhere we can listen to the song?
 Obviously being such a great artist at a big level I don’t think they’re going to let little things like that leak, not like they would let us leak out. They have got a lot of hold on that and because it is Interscope and everything there is like a big chain you have to go through before people can get it.
Not that a factor like this should matter but with the music industry being so fickle, do you think your ethnicity has helped or hindered your career?
You know, I think in my own community it might have just set it back a little bit but from everybody else it’s just been love because music is music. A lot of people from my own community will probably say ’well why have they gone down that route’ but you know as I try to explain to them my upbringing wasn’t with Asian music, I was always brought up on Soul, Hip Hop, RnB, Funk. So you know obviously I’m going to go with it, not that I’m not capable of doing that, I still put a bit of my roots in to the music but at the end of the day music is music. It doesn’t matter what colour it is or what kind of music you’re doing, people who are going to look out for the music are always going to appreciate it.
So you have worked with the likes of Twista, Bizzle and Sting, who else is on the list of artists that you want to produce for?
I would want to do stuff with people like Stevie Wonder, people like George Benson and all the people that I've grown up listening to. If I could re-work stuff like that I would love to do it but right now I've worked with, as you said, Bizzle, Twista, DMX, Ronnie Jordan, Truth Hurts, Ray-J, Sting, Elephant Man, Lee Ryan, you know I've worked with quite a few people, but right now you know I think I want to reach out and bring back to my old school.
So it's an RnB/Soul vibe you’re talking about there?
Hip Hop is always a lot but I've always had the soul and RnB influence within everything that I do, so yeah I would definitely like to go back in time. Like right now I'm even trying to get Slick Rick to do something for me.
If you could have your dream track with you on production, three rappers doing verses and somebody singing on the hook, who would you choose?
On the hook, Stevie, I'd put Busta on a verse, Biggie if I was still able to get something from him and Slick Rick because he represented the UK first. Without him no one really gave a shit about the UK anyway.
It is a known fact that there is not a lot of money in the UK Hip Hop scene, for example some of the best artists in the scene such as Skinnyman are still roaming the streets just getting money from doing gigs here and there, do you make a suffient amount of money to make a healthy living?
 The UK right now, the industry has changed ten fold. Now American artists ain't getting the million dollar deals they used to get, they're back on the grind again cos they're not getting paid that. We've never had any money in the UK to tell you the truth; you know that as well as me. We never really got the push as UK artists, no UK artist has got the push they needed, there have been certain artists but they can't follow it through. Like you said, Skinnyman and all these people are there doing their thing but they're not getting recognized. They are put in that cliché that it's not gunna happen, but I'm gunna take that cliché out the box and be like no it's not all about violence, this that and the other. We have got a big urban market here. The Billboard chart in America is filled with Hip Hop tracks but the UK is all about Pop but you know as well as me there must be fifty per cent of us who don't check for that, so where do the rest of the fifty per cent go- down to buy mixtapes and stuff. We all have to hustle to get there, I'm not in a deal with nobody, everything I do, you know, where just hustling to get where we are getting.
So how do you guys fund your jet set lifestyle where your recording in places like LA when there’s not much money in the music?
With regards to that it’s like people who will come in and believe in a project and finance a project so you get investors to come in and say ‘look we’ll do this’ and you know, say if I’m working with an artist in America they will fly me out there. If somebody wants me to work with them then they are going to obviously pay for me to be where they want me to be for my services. Because we can do these beats wherever we go we always try to carry our studio wherever we’re at so whoever we can get hold of at the time, whoever we can play something to, we get it done there and then. It’s not like we can just say ‘I’m going to record with blah, blah, blah’, we have to make the most out of a situation which might arise. You never know when it’s going to come so where just ready. Most of the time it’s people who want to invest in a product and there’s always a way to reach that thing and it all comes back down to the hustle.
...Without Slick Rick, no one really gave a shit about the UK anyway...
What’s the deal with your latest artist Mr Rap Singer and is his name not just a PR stunt?
His name isn’t Mr Rap Singer, the whole thing where this came about is we put ‘who is Mr Rap Singer?’ because he raps and sings, so that was a PR thing. His names Vee, we’ve been working with him for the last 3 or 4 years with the whole vibe of ‘who is Mr Rap Singer.’ It started off with a video diary I had up on Facebook and then all these internet sites where like ‘we want to get involved, can we do a series out of it.’ Then we went in to that and up until this point I wanted people to see what we’ve been doing so in terms of getting yourself out there the internets a really big thing right now. That’s why I did the diary where you can see me working with Sting, it’s up there, you see me working with all these people up until the mixtape with Vee. So yeah, it was a PR stunt that he was called Mr Rap Singer and the mixtape is going to be called Mr Rap Singer because he raps and he sings.
Just going back to your hit ‘What We Do’, who came up with the sample?
 All that was done while we were in L.A. We were Jammin’ out there, all my production is sample based because Hip Hop is sample based. For me it was like let’s just do it and I didn’t think much of it but when I played it to a few people they were like ‘lets jump on it’. The original thing with that tune was supposed to be Busta, Trina and Twista on the tune. But then I flipped it and thought, you know what, I’m going to just put Twista on it and then come back and put Lethal and Gappy on it. I was trying to get hold of a lot of UK artists but I was finding it hard because a lot of them didn’t want to get in to the studio or do the work. It was like forever- ‘yeah, let’s do it, let’s do it’ but nothing was ever happening. That was just one thing we did in L.A. while we were out there because I’ve just got billions and billions of beats that we just made forever. I want to come with the follow up for that anyway, I’ve already got an idea of where I’m going to come from it’s just picking the right artists again.
What is it with the UK scene in terms of people not turning up and things like that? That would have been a good look for a UK artist to jump on a hot beat like that for exposure, sometimes we seem to be our own worst enemies or something?
Exactly, I think that’s the problem, it’s like our work ethic in the UK that a lot of people are just not moving with it. I think I’ve reached out to every single artist you can think of who was big at that time to say ‘come and get on the track’. It was always ‘yeah, lets, do it, lets do it’ then it was always like ‘ahh, I’ve got something else to do today.’ It’s like for me, if somebody gave me an opportunity like that I would be there straight away. I think it just comes down to everyone’s so laid back, it sometimes reminds me of when I’m in L.A. If you go to L.A. everyone’s so laid back about things and it’s the same over here, it’s not moving forward because the work ethic isn’t there. It’s like there are so many artists I would work with out here but they’re never going to turn up to the studio and never going to put in the time to do it.
...For 2 years we were touring off the one record...
Ok, a bit of fun to finish with; an either/or section!
Man United or Arsenal?
Man United.
Westwood or Semtex?
Ha, ha, that’s a hard one. I’d have to take both.
 Both? Ha, ha, you’ve copped out there! 50 or Kanye?
I’d go with Kanye.
Wiley or Bizzle?
Errr, I’d have to go for both of them because I know both of them!
Ok, Michael Jackson or Sting?
Michael Jackson or Sting? Both! They are both Legends!
For everything else you need to know about the Twinz, visit their myspace page. ‘The Kray Twinz present Mr. Rap Singer’ mixtape dropped exclusively online at the end of March and the video diary is airing exclusively on www.kraytwinz.com now.
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Ben Spurr
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