AJ Tracey

Feels good, man, definitely. I’m one of those guys that likes to take their time with the music. I’m not purposefully withholding music from my fanbase or anything, it’s more about not just putting out music as I make it. I record a lot. I go to the studio and record three or four tracks almost every day. I’ve got thousands of unreleased songs; if I put them out every time I made them then there’d be no quality control. D’you know what I’m saying. I want to make sure the music is reflective of my ability and what I’m trying to say. It’s been a minute, but it had to be a minute, because I wouldn’t have dropped it any sooner. I’m not about to drop half-baked music. But it feels good now, man. I’m excited to release it and have some new content floating out there.

Seriously, the only comment I get these days is “Drop music. Drop music.” But that’s good though. I’m glad people care enough to go out of their way and ask for it.

Yeah, on the 18th of April. I think almost every UK rapper was dropping on that day. I didn’t want to release it during Ramadan because a lot of my peers and my fanbase are Muslim, so I wanted to be respectful. It’s called Joga Bonito and the instrumental uses a Brazilian funk drum pattern so I thought I’d name it accordingly. Lots of football references in there.

AJ: Nah, it is nothing to do with the album at all. It’s just music to tide people over. When I made Wifey Riddims 1, 2  and Wifey Riddims 3, my love life situation was very different from what it is now. I was a young man living a different life. So, it’s hard to channel that same kind of content because I’m not living that life anymore as a young single man. For the fans and for entertainment verses, I kept the verses closer to the previous ones, but I didn’t mention any names. That would be disrespectful now that I have a girlfriend. Then, yeah, the hook is a bit more heart on my sleeve and in touch with my feelings. That’s the breakdown on that one. But the lyrical content on the album is nothing like that. The album is a lot more vulnerable and a lot more mature. It’s definitely a different direction from anything I’ve done before.

Well, to be fair I think that about every new album I produce. It’s about what you’re listening for when you hear new music. For example, whenever I listen to Skepta, who is obviously one of my favourite artists ever, because I’ve heard all his previous projects and I’m such an avid fan who knows all his old lyrics, I’m looking for some evolution. D’you know what I’m saying? I don’t just want more Skepta, I want to hear what’s new from Skepta. What his life entails now. How he’s grown since his last release. That’s my checklist for other people’s music. Whether they’ve levelled up, so to speak, so that’s what I try and put into my own music.
On the new album you can definitely hear growth. I think growth is super essential in a rapper’s life. When I was rapping at 21, I never had a legitimate job. I never had any money or stability. I had my little circle of friends from the ends and that was my life. It’s important to show people that you’ve grown, where you’re at, where you’re going, what you stand for, things like that. A key theme that I’ve put into my album is touching on mental health, making sure my fans understand that I’m the same as everyone else. If you rate me, or for youngers maybe, if you look up to me, you understand that I have been through or am going through the same things as you. So, everyone understands that there’s no pedestals or hierarchies. And if I’m going through that and you think I’m cool, then you’re cool bro.

I think growth can be defined in different ways. I couldn’t sit here and say that someone who used to rap in a balaclava and has now taken it off hasn’t grown, because that is growth. For me personally, my growth is that I’m willing to talk about things in my personal life that I would have otherwise kept away from the public. My growth is showing people, yeah, I used to be gang affiliated but now I’m trying to veer away from that and encourage younger people to do the correct thing.
There are things I used to say in my lyrics that aren’t appropriate, are a bit un-PC, which I’ve definitely ironed out. Not all of them obviously; I’m not perfect but I’m improving. I know what’s wrong and right and I’ve tried to change my lyrics accordingly. A lot of rappers just want to be ignorant and say what they want, which you can do but at the end of the day you’ve got a responsibility as an artist.

That’s a good question, let me see. I know Bas personally, he’s been my bredrin for a minute, so we were always due to work together. The Korean feature, I linked up with them personally and we went into the studio together when I was over there. That was another personal link up. To be honest, with me and features, you’re not getting one if I don’t know you. D’you know what I’m saying? I linked Hoodblaq personally in Germany. DJ Jeezy, I know through Luciano cause he DJs for him. Summer Cem, Billa Joe – these are my people. They’re actually my bredrins. If I get on with you then we can work. No chemistry, no feature. I don’t do requests.

To be honest, the reason I don’t like doing features more is ’cause I don’t have creative control over the sonics, you know. Obviously, I can give my input but at the end of the day it’s someone else’s work, someone else’s art. When it’s my track, I can determine the use of certain words, the angle we’re going down, and so on. I prefer when it’s my rhythm, but that being said, it’s not always going to be my rhythm and I do like delving into other people’s worlds. Like, when I do rhythms with Cash Cobain or Chow Lee, two of my favourite artists out of New York, their sound is completely different. If it’s their rhythm then I’m going to be getting up to their speed, delving into their sound. I really like doing that. On my side, I got crazy OCD so it’s a very controlled environment. It’s like, I need you to do x, y and z on this rhythm. I want it like this. I get a lot more freedom when I rap on someone else’s rhythm, granted, like I said, I don’t get control how it sounds in the end. It’s more fun doing features for other people, but it comes out more to my liking when it’s my song.

I don’t care about any of that. I’m just making music. Literally whatever, honestly. There’s a lot of grime rhythms on my album but I didn’t intentionally say, I’m going to do some mad grime comeback. It’s just the bpm that I naturally gravitate to, 140. I got some funky house on the album too. The theme of the album is just very Brit-centric. Any of the rhythms and sonics who someone under-30 knows about are going to be on there. And obviously there’s diaspora. We’re going to have Caribbean influence, African influence, and then straight British: garage, grime, bit of house and some straight rap. Making the album with this angle was perfect for me. Whenever people talk about me, they’re like, cool, AJ’s versatile etc, but I like homing in on one kind of sonic and giving people a very compact and concentrated package. I want people to feel that.

Exactly that. It’s got to be curated to a certain level. I don’t want to release tracks that people think are alright but then they know I could do better. I don’t want people thinking tracks don’t make sense within the album. I want it to be art that makes perfect sense and for people to understand why I’ve done what I’ve done. It all has to be fit for purpose.

You know what, my answer would probably be yes. And the reason is, with me, although it’s not intentional, a lot of the songs I make just happen to be commercially viable. Anyone could easily sit there, and this isn’t me taking a dig at casual listeners, there’s no problem being a casual listener, or casual in any realm, innit, but the casual listener might listen to my music and think it sounds commercial. But if you know about me and my music, the reason something like Ladbroke Grove or West Ten might sound commercial is because the public made it commercial. They made it pop, as in popular music. It doesn’t sound like a Dua Lipa record but it’s popular ’cause you lot made it popular, not because I did. I don’t have that power. I just made a record that was authentic for me. My mum’s white, Welsh and a DJ, she played garage music to me all throughout my upbringing, so me making garage music is wholly authentic. It just happens to be commercially viable. Which is ideal for me because it sits right with me and my artistry but also makes money. That’s the best of both worlds, d’you know what I’m saying.
I think people can hear when an AJ record doesn’t sound like an AJ record. For me, the only record I’ve dropped that doesn’t sound like an AJ record is Mimi. I’ve said this in bare interviews. I don’t like it. And my reasoning is what I just told you. I just tried to make what everyone else was making to see if I could make that kind of rhythm, and it’s poor from me ’cause I know I can. I don’t know why I needed to prove it to myself by putting out a song that doesn’t represent me. But I did it. I was younger. It’s all good. I learnt from it. We don’t do that no more and here we are.

AJ: She’s all good, man. Thanks for asking; I appreciate that bruv. She’s nice and healthy and enjoying life. Obviously, she lives a very different life from what we used to live before. And she feels guilty about it all the time. We’re from humble beginnings, you know, and sometimes it’s hard for people to accept that life’s good now. It’s hard to accept, without trying to sound emotional, that we made it. We made it out the bad vibes. Now she’s just learning to be a well-off person, which she doesn’t like really. She likes being scruffy. I’m not dissing up my mum, but she likes casual clothing, nothing fancy, no expensive dinners or nothing like that. I try and take her to nice places for dinner sometimes and she just looks at me like, what are we doing here? She’s always got an ear on my music though. I always play her my new stuff and she tells me very honestly when she doesn’t like it, which is a lot of the time, actually. I don’t mind that though; you need it. Too many yes men and women around saying how cold all my tracks are, but my mum will tell me, “Nah that ain’t it. Hit the lab again.” There’s a couple I haven’t played her on the new album though because she gets mentioned, and I don’t want her to hear them until they’re out.

(Laughs) It’s not a dealbreaker, I’ll be honest. But it definitely does have some bearing on the situation. I could tell you honestly, you wouldn’t believe it, but my mum never liked Butterflies, which obviously did really well. She was just like, you can’t sing. I don’t know why you’re trying to sing. She was right actually (laughs), but it still worked. It’s not about me singing it’s about me giving them a vibe, and they caught it.
The other one people didn’t like, funnily enough, was Ladbroke Grove. People didn’t really rate it that much.

You know why? I’m not going to throw anyone under the bus, I’m not even going to say who didn’t like it. It wasn’t my mum by the way. She liked it. But not everyone understood. If you listen to my music, sometimes it’s highly lyrical and other times, I’m not really saying much. I’m allowed to say that, yeah, ’cause it’s my music. I do everything for a purpose though. If I drop a song that I want to be mass appealing, then I’m not going to put a triple entendre in there because people won’t understand what I’m saying. You got to remember what you’re selling. I’m not going to give the kids on TikTok some mad triple entendre complicated sentence to dissect. But in the same way, when I want to bar out and rap and talk to people, then that’s what I’m going to do. So, when people heard Ladbroke Grove, they were like, I get it you’ve done a garage thing when no one’s dropping garage. But you’re not really saying much. And, why aren’t you saying anything when you’re a lyricist? But it’s not every day you have to say something, and like I said, they caught the vibe and that’s it really.

That’s a great question, still. No one’s ever asked me nothing like that before. Let me tell you something crazy. This sounds so funny actually. I name songs before I’ve even written them. I’ll just have a name and then write the lyrics around the name of the song. Not always, but if I feel like it’s the time for a song name and it suits this beat or whatever then I’ll just go for it. It’s funny you mention it with Ladbroke Grove though because that song, yeah, the hook is comprised of a four-bar repeat. And that’s the four bar repeat I used to spray on radio as a stop gap between lyrics until the DJ would bring in the next beat and I’d spray the next set of bars. Everyone who was on radio with me had heard them bars a million times before they were ever on a record. But to other people it sounded like I’d made some cool new hook. But I just thought that if it sounds good on the rhythm and it’s true to MC culture then let me just slap that on there. With the name, obviously it’s one of my biggest songs and naming it after my area which I love so much is, to me, just like the cherry on top. It’s triple platinum, hopefully it’ll be diamond by the time I retire (laughs), and it’s named after my ends. You can’t get better than that bro. And my first album, one of my favourite pieces of work to date, is named after myself. My two favourite things named after my area and myself – can’t go wrong. 

I’d say there’s four people who really started doing that: Krept & Konan did it a long time ago when they were freestyling together, Don Strapzy or Dru Blu, whatever you know him as, and then Dave and myself. Between all of us you could probably find a bar for almost every footballer. What really matters though is the way that people use the football bars. One of my favourite recent ones is from an unreleased track I have with Aitch. I don’t care what anyone ever says to me – Aitch can rap rap, with the best of them. We were in the studio, and he said, “I got man in OT and they ain’t Red Devils. They don’t come back with medals.” (OT here doubles up as Old Trafford, the home stadium of Aitch’s football team, Manchester United aka the Red Devils, and UK slang relating to county lines drug dealing, meaning out of town or over there). That is a hard bar, a super super hard bar. I made the producer lock up the set and was like, you said something there. The way you use the references properly matters. In the single I’m dropping now, I said,  I’m in Greece with grapes being fed to me daily, but I ain’t wearing a toga. I’ll end things with a voice detect on the dash in a Rover. Now you wish you stayed with the guy that’ll play you like your Armando Broja. Come on, bro. Mandem don’t know about them bars. You got to say things like that that make sense though. You can’t just say man will slap it off like Rashford or man’s on the wing like Bale. You got to use your noggin a bit!

You know what? I’ll keep it a buck. Obviously, I’m a Spurs fan first and foremost, but I’m a football fan as well. Just as a black man, Henry’s a legend in the black community. I met him. He held up my ting properly. Really lovely guy. I’ll never have a bad word to say about him. And Uncle Ian (Wright – another Arsenal legend) too, never a bad word. I got a few Arsenal bars, I can’t lie. I don’t mind it. Sol Campbell’s never getting a mention though!

Yeah, when the BBC put it on YouTube it was listed as Dave – Thiago Silva (feat. Alex), and I was like, alright – but honestly, I’m one of them guys where it doesn’t matter that much to me. I’m not trying to be fake woke or nothing, it’s just not that deep. At the end of the day, it’s a friend of mine performing one of our biggest songs with a kid who’s a genuine fan and knows all my lyrics off by heart. How can I be upset about that? I did think the BBC could have done a bit better with it, but it wasn’t enough of a big deal for me to mention it to them or anything.
I just think society, not to get too deep, but – people might look at things and think, don’t throw the race card in here. It’s not to do with race. But it is. It is to do with race, you just don’t realise it. The racism is so casual that it just flies over your head. With me and Dave being black men, at the time black kids, rapping about struggles we had in the black community, I can understand that for white people that might be hard to relate to. But to us that was reality. And we wasn’t rapping it to glorify it, it was because that’s where we’ve come from. We were hoping that us telling our story would take us out of the situation we were in, and it did. Thank God. But for the mainstream media to say that now it’s a white kid saying these aggressive lyrics which we would usually shun you for, we’re going to send him off to meet the footballer that you lot were rapping about. They never done that for us. Don’t get it twisted. Since then, I’ve had interactions with Thiago Silva, he even sent me a shirt. It’s lovely. But it’s not about the recognition, it’s about people understanding how the perception changes between a white kid and a black kid saying these same bars. If Stormzy comes out his house with odd socks on then the media are going to be like, what does he think he’s doing? This is Great Britain! But it’s not like that the other way around.

Then there’s kids in Surrey.

I love my audience. People say to me, “AJ when you do a show, why are there thousands of white kids?” Bro, why the fuck do you think? We’re in the UK, it’s a white country. Are you dumb? Furthermore, I’m half white. I don’t need anyone to mention people’s race, creed, religion. I don’t care about that. What I care about is, these are the people who enjoy my music, and they’re turning up for me. I got infinite love for them yutes, trust me. They changed my life. They’re still changing my life. And they show me love every time I step out. Nothing but real genuine pure love. I know a lot of artists that say they’re for the fans, but you know when they’re not.
Not to blow my own trumpet but whenever I do my own headline shows, it’s very rare that I make a profit. I put in everything plus my own bread out my pocket to give the yutes the best possible experience. I understand that these kids have saved their money to come to my show, or maybe their mum worked a double shift to make sure they could come for their birthday. These are serious things not to be taken lightly. I don’t care where you’re from. Fucking Essex, Surrey, Croydon, Ladbroke Grove, wherever. You support my ting; I support your ting.

I wish. Production costs are crazy. I could honestly just put on a bunch of shows with an LED screen and a mic in my hand. The kids would probably still love it and I would too, to be honest. But it would cost next to nothing, I’d make a shitload of profit and then I’ll feel like I’ve committed a smash and grab against my fans. When I do a show it’s different. At my Ally Pally show, I split the set into sections and there was a sports section. So, I had Nothing But Net – basketball, Thiago Silva – football, etc., and we had the lights green and I got a system that released the scent of freshly cut grass into the air. These are the lengths I go to give my fans an experience for life. I’m not trying to just take some money then adlib my own songs and go buy a Lambo on you guys’ expense. That’s not my angle. My angle is when I leave and see the reviews saying that’s the best show people have ever seen in their life. Saying AJ went out of his way and made the effort. That’s what I’m going for. That’s on my mum’s life.
Regardless of the audience, you’ve got to give them an experience. I did a show in Portugal recently and I was co-headlining with Metallica and trust me Metallica fans are not my fans. But I see that as a challenge, I’m going to go out there and win some new fans. It’s a blessing that I have that opportunity. I went out there and it was a massive crowd, maybe like 50k. All the diehard Metallica fans were waiting for them to come up next. So, it was already full when it wasn’t really meant to be full for me. There was a little group of maybe 25 kids at the front who had come just for me and amongst a sea of Metallica fans they were just going crazy for the whole show, so I thought cool, fuck it. I turned up for them for the whole show and I was just spitting my bars right at them. After the show, all them yutes were DMing me saying they appreciated it but then I also had a lot, way more than I expected, of messages from genuine forty-year-old Metallica fans saying that they never came to watch me but that I killed my set and they wanted to check my music out. That means the most. Trust me. It’s just about your mentality. We’re not going to be rapping forever. It’s about leaving a legacy. When I quit rap, I can go be a property developer or something and make loads of money. With the fans it’s not about the money. These are people that have a genuine connection with my music. It’s the soundtrack to some people’s lives. Important moments in their lives. You need to remember that.

I can’t lie; I was proud of myself for that one. I ain’t never heard of no one doing that before.

Literally, to the highest level.

I think there’s two ways it can go. For people that don’t know about Ladbroke Grove, it’s the highest level of affluence in London sat literally adjacent to the blocks, the projects, the estates, whatever you want to call it. People ask online why AJ raps like he’s from an impoverished area when he’s from Kensington. You lot don’t know the half of it. Golborne Road is the poorest ward in Europe. Let that sink in. Parts of Paris, Germany and Belgium are quite greezy. But we’ve got the poorest ward in Europe alongside the most expensive house prices in Europe around Notting Hill. That should show people the extreme comparison. Growing up there from the hood, you either see the wealth and it motivates you. It puts batteries in your back, like it did for me. ’Cause I said there ain’t no way I’m living round you lot and not getting a piece of this. Then there’s the other route, which is quite sad ’cause it’s not their fault, and that’s to basically get depressed because of all the good life being rubbed in your face, which is unfortunately what happens to the majority. Luckily for me, my mum is a great believer in me, and in youth in general, she’s a youth worker, so she just motivated the hell out of me. She told me she loved me, not to worry about our situation and to just crack on with it. And I did, so big up mumsy bro. That’s why I big her up every interview, ’cause it’s no joke. She made this happen. Have to give her flowers every time. It’s hard living in that area as a teenager when you want to link girls and you’re looking rough, and all the rich girls are looking at you like – know what I’m saying. That said, I can’t give you a sob story on that front. I was good with the girls. I had the gift of the gab. But in general, it’s hard. The establishments that are local to us in Grove are all very clean cut and some are very expensive and only available to the elite. When I was younger, I didn’t have the money to go in Harrods or Selfridges or even Tape. So, we just kind of hung around, doing what kids do I guess.

I can only just about afford one now. Do the leccy money on one drink.

Yeah, it’s a youth club but it also serves the community in general. Mums who need a bit of help, kids who get kicked out of school get referred there. Rugby Club was pivotal to me and Zuu’s life and career bro. They had a studio set up in there which they let us use. They used to blur out our swear words, so we couldn’t record a diss track for the opps or nothing like that, but it was still a good creative outlet, and it allowed us to hone our skills. We went every single chance we got. Mash a couple rhythms, make some tunes. Serious place. Big up all the staff there. I love youth workers, they’re so essential for society. It’s a shame that the government’s choosing to make their cuts on that sector rather than other places that really don’t need investment.

Well, I always wanted to do some charity work. Although to be honest I don’t even want to call it charity work. Philanthropy, maybe. Work with the community. Obviously, my mum is a youth worker. So is Zuu, and my dad too. It just makes sense; it’s in my DNA. And when I was younger, I was actually very adept academically. My behaviour wasn’t good, but my grades were. Doing the whole Oxford thing and giving black kids money to help support their studies there is important for me because if I was a student that had gone down that path instead of rapping, then I know I would have really appreciated the help. The stigma of kids from the ends thinking they’re not good enough to get into these kinds of universities needs to be eradicated. The only way to have people from our community that are highly educated and able to be in positions where they can change things is to funnel them through the correct pathways. Even me, I knew I was smart but never thought there was a way I could get into Oxford or Cambridge. But you can. Of course you can. Going and meeting all the kids was great. They’re smashing it. I’m super proud of them. I would’ve loved to go there. If you’re able to do something nice that changes people’s lives, then you should do. It’s everyone’s duty to do what they can.

Seriously, people get too wrapped up in this rapping ting. You never know. I had my tonsils out a couple years ago with a laser. It was the first bit of money I ever spent on private health care or anything like that. The doctor said NHS surgery would’ve been with a scalpel which might have changed my voice a lot. My mum’s fully against the private healthcare ting, but I need my voice box and I’m not trying to take any risks with my money maker. I say all that because, God forbid, imagine that went wrong. Then all this rap stuff would be done just like that. You have to think about every action, day by day. Am I going to be able to stand on that in a year? Or in ten? Is this how I want to be remembered? I don’t want people to just say, yeah, it was funny when AJ was beefing all them rappers. And it was funny when he had some scandal. I want people to talk about good music and a nice person who tried to help people. That’s what I’m going for. If you spoke to me when I was maybe 23, I wouldn’t be saying anything like this. I was super gassed up then, but now I’ve mellowed out and I understand a bit more what life’s about. So here we are.