Chip Wants to Let His Music Do the Talking

“Interviews are just not my thing, man.”

This isn’t the first time Chip has said he’s wary of the media.

Thirty minutes later, he’ll allude to his ongoing beef with Stormzy – a simmering feud that’s dominated the run-up to the release of his new mixtape, Snakes & Ladders – before his manager steps in at the mention of the “Vossi Bop” rapper’s name and, after a short but testy back-and-forth, grips the laptop lid shut. This interview, like those before it, is no longer Chip’s thing.

Chip, at his heart, is focused on making music. Fifteen years, five albums (including last year’s collaborative project Insomnia with Skepta and Young Adz), 11 mixtapes, and five EPs into his career, the Tottenham MC remains wildly prolific. And not just in terms of the number of songs he records – he’s appeared on at least 21 tracks since last January; there are another 21 on the new mixtape – but the styles he traverses, too.

On this new record, he weaves through bashment, garage, trap and grime, while finding time to flirt with drill, boom-bap and leftfield rap – all without missing a beat. Features come from all over the globe: Jamaican dancehall legend Mavado toasts on “Give Tanks”; Kida Kudz laces slick Afrobeats on “See Through”; NY rapper Young MA flexes on “Lumidee”; Tiwa Savage brings sheen to the alté pop of “Top Shelf”. Chip also holds his own with grime legends Jme and Dizzee Rascal, and rides a rework of T2’s “Heartbroken” with Bugzy Malone. He even sings, on “Skeletons (Interlude)”. Two of the Stormzy diss tracks, “Flowers” and “Killer MC”, are on there too.

He’s playful in conversation: cracking jokes, splitting aphorisms, and firing questions back. He picks over how things are worded, but this seems to stem just as much from wariness as from his obsession with the words themselves. A self-confessed word nerd, he’s one of the most lyrically adept MCs working in the UK today. Fans dissect his verses like multi-layered riddles, and he talks about writing bars that live on as captions on people’s Instagram posts.

Writing comes to him as a compulsion, which is maybe why it’s so natural for him to air his grievances – with Stormzy, or Bugzy Malone, or Yungen, or Big Narstie, or Tinie Tempah – over a beat. He’s also just really fucking good at it. Go back 14 years and you’ll hear him taking on a studio full of playful adversaries on “Fuck Radio 5”, in what remains one of the most electrifying documents of a music scene at its creative peaks.

Chip’s success and staying power – as well as a documented willingness to rise to the bait – have often made him a target. As a result, he maintains a war footing.

I caught up with him a few days before the release of Snakes & Ladders to chat about lockdown, longevity, and letting his guard slip.

[The interview has been edited for length and clarity.]

VICE: I guess the year that we've had has suited you if you just wanted to get in the studio and record?
Chip: Yeah. A lot of people are demotivated to put out music right now, because all they're thinking about is shows. But I've even said – even since before no one could do no shows – the creation process and the actual process of making and putting out music is my favourite part. So, I just kept it trapping. From the artwork to the bars, to the melodies, to the mix, to the master – I'm proud that [Snakes & Ladders has] all been executed in less than a 12-month space.

One of the common denominators when people spoke on Insomnia was people saying that I killed every single verse on the album. That put me in mixtape spirit, you know what I mean?

When I think of a mixtape, it's not like I think I need to spit harder than when I do an album, or I need to spit less – it's just more that mentality of “man's coming from the mud again”. I'm good at refreshing and resetting my mind and thinking I haven't done nothing, I haven't achieved nothing: Here I am. These are my tracks. I want to be one of the country's greatest MCs to ever do it. That's my mindset when coming with a tape, it takes me back to when I didn't know I was gonna make 1p.

You’ve always said that you can't run out of bars…
Writing and reciting I can do very quickly – and at a high performance level as well. I actually am a super bars head. The greatest rappers in the world, I could spit their verses to them as tight as them. I'm a fan of bars, flows, cadence, quotables – I'm geeked out for that stuff. Nothing geeks me out more. So yeah, I don't stop making music. Even if I get to a stage where I don't put out music no more, it doesn't mean I'll stop making music. It's like a drug to me.

There are some more introspective moments on this tape too. You talk about Black The Ripper's passing on “0420”, and it feels, well, it still feels very raw.
I think that song's very self-explanatory, but if I had to say something that isn't said in the song: he is my longest friend in music. I don't really know how to explain that, but it's deeper than rap. A lot of the things that people have been seeing me undergo publicly, without getting into all of that, that was my focus of last year: seeing him, seeing him get back to England, seeing him laid to rest, and helping his family how I can. That was my focus of last year, really. And it's going to be on my mind forever. That wasn't an easy time. And it made me write “0420”.

It also stands out because it's quite a rare moment when you're letting your guard down a bit in your music...
Yeah, definitely. But you can't let your guard down every day [laughs]. That's why I like the tape, because there's all sides to me on the tape.

There’s all types of music as well. There's bashment moments, garage-y moments, rap moments. Obviously you came out of the grime scene – where do you think that sound fits now in this broader UK MC landscape?
I am grime, full stop. [laughs] And no matter what I spit on, you know it, they know it, he knows it, she knows it. Send me to America again for however many years, when I come back if it needs to be that time, you all know what time it is.

A couple of years ago you said that "the bundle packing of music created by ethnic minorities needs to chill". That was when Afroswing and drill were really popping off. What do you make of that now?
No matter how you try and bundle pack the music coming from ethnic minorities, it's clearly taken over the world, mate.

It's not the same as when I first came through. The bundle packing of the ethnic minority music is now popular culture, whether you like it or not. But that's what happens, the more you try suppress something, the more it just explodes.

The average rapper that starts out in 20 years’ time, when he drops his first song, I don't see him thinking, "Oh yeah man, this is just gonna connect with my ends." I think when he drops it, he's gonna be thinking, "Boy, man might go Canada first." Do you get what I'm saying? But it's took everyone, every single person has played a part. So it's good to see the, you know, the flourishment.

What's your position in that hierarchy? Particularly as you turn 30 and you start thinking, "Oh, am I the adult in the room now?"
Don't remind me! [Laughs] It's cool though, 30's the new 20 – it's calm. I just put it like this: if England as a country is going to war on the microphone and you can only take a five-a-side team or an 11-a-side team, from what I've heard, whoever's picking that team, I'm coming innit. That's it. And that's young guys to old guys, whoever. The vibe I've been getting from the occasional things that I do watch and see today is: we are taking Chip.

What position are you playing? Are you the striker or are you the goalkeeper?
Whatever position you tell me! I just know I'm a force with rhyming words. I don't even mind being the super sub [laughs].

You talk about the global nature of the UK scene now – have you got your sights set on another pop at the US, having already kind of been there and done that earlier in your career?
I don't ever see it like a pop at something, I think it's just been the course that I've been on. I'm a grime kid, innit, but obviously I know how to rap now. I think actually living in Atlanta [in 2012], and getting my toes down and getting down with the culture, that assisted my rapping skills.

I just feel like the world is the world and what's written is written, and we can feel it opening up organically. It’s a pandemic, no one's leaving their yard or really going other countries like that, and I can see people grabbing man's riddims and reacting all over the world.

Everyone from all over the world is working together. The tape's got America on there, Nigeria on there, Jamaica on there, London on there. The iPhone's made the world a lot smaller, man.

You’ve called the mixtape Snakes & Ladders, and a lot of the lyrics on the mixtape are concerned with the snakes and the haters – or the people who will go behind your back or talk down on your name.
In rap you're meant to let your nuts hang. But when I do it, [people say] “Oh, why you doing that?” It's my turn! It's my tape! Enjoy it. I feel like that’s something that I face, just in general, and probably why I don't really like doing interviews too. Because when you get to the next album and he's letting his nuts hang, they ain't gonna pick, choose and scrutinise what he's saying.

Would you say that you've been patient in your career? You've been doing it longer than most people, at your level and at your age.
I think everything in life comes with patience, not just the rap game. Life's kind of like the mirage when you're in the desert and your mouth's dry, and every time you get to that water, when you just want to throw it in your mouth, it’s like it was a hologram. So you’ve gotta just keep going, and keep going, and keep going.

But me, personally, I want to hang my boots up on a high. Even some of the greatest boxers in the world, they get knocked out in their last couple of fights. I don't want that to be me. I've looked and assessed my 15-year career and I think that it would be a good time to try and hang my boots up on a high in the next five years.

Someone that you've sparred with a bit before, lyrically at least, is Bugzy Malone. He features on the mixtape, on “Grown Flex” – how did you guys end up linking up and burying the hatchet, as it were?
We spoke. At the time when we posted a picture, a couple years back [in 2017], we spoke that day. We stayed in touch behind the scenes, not doing too much, but we stayed in touch. We had a conversation one time with some food and a long chat. That was good. And then he asked me to be on his album. We was always gonna do something once we had spoke. It was confirmed that, yeah, one day we should do something together – that would be grown. But it was just about timing.

I went down to the session and he played me his album and we had a long chat. With music, once the energies are right, correct, and positive, the bars is the easy part. You just breathe, you don't even write you just go in there and just breathe. And that's what happened. He had the start of “Notorious”, I went down there, we closed it up, and then I told my manager that I'd done a song with him. And what I do for one, one do for the other. So we've got songs and videos on both projects.

And you talk about him on “0420” as well, right? His motorcycle crash.
Yeah. It's mad that it took us to bump heads to see eye-to-eye in some ways. I'm a Sagittarius, he's a Sagittarius. I came off a bike [in Malia in 2014], he came off a bike. I’ve got a Spartan in me, he's got a Spartan in him. I think we find interest in deciphering each other's minds, knowing that we both grew up kind of different.

You seem to enjoy bumping heads with people. Is the sending, diss tracks and sparring – riling people up or responding to people – is that just keeping your tools sharp or is there more to it than that?
Trying to rile people up or responding to things, that's two different things. What would you do, if I was outside your house? What would you do, personally, today, if I was outside your house? You're an interviewer, journalist, if someone did that you might write an article about it. I'm a rapper. I do rap.

Clearly you're talking about Stormzy here. Have you actually fallen out with him, or is it just music?
...

@wf_pritchard