[Interview & Live Review] Granville Sessions Prove That Live Music & Lyrics Still Create Hip Hop Magic

Photo: Ben Walsh www.benwalshphotos.com (Msnr Frites, Archetype, Nicola UHH)

Hip hop collectives seem to be making a comeback. Maybe they never left but they are growing in strength, and UHH was fortunate enough to meet one before their show in London at Under the Bridge. Granville Sessions are an eight-piece group (mostly) from SW London, having played together for almost a decade. They have released two albums to date, No State (2011) and Forward (2013) and have recently dropped two singles from their forthcoming album.

Their sound is predominantly hip hop but with strong threads of rock, reggae, dub, ska and grime intertwined. With 3 MCs and 5 musicians, I was eager to watch Granville live – and my enthusiasm was not misplaced. My first impression was that they were like a family band; not the hippy kind, but the kind that are beyond comfortable in each other’s presence and more importantly, with performing together. Their sound is tight and they play as a cohesive unit (not to be taken for granted), showing that the near decade of practice has paid off.

Photo of Archetype by Ben Walsh www.benwalshphotos.com

There are 5 musicians on stage: Jon (guitar) Marvin (bass) Louis (drums) Jude (trombone) and (Ed) trumpet. Not one musician is playing support to anyone else, they all have equal footing whilst sounding exceptionally clean. Although, the trombone is the arguably the glue that holds the sound together across all their tracks. Then you’ve got the MCs: Mnsr Frites, Archetype and Luca Brazi. Mnsr Frites stands in the middle, gracing the stage with a gentle bear-like presence, whilst Archetype greets us with his bassy voice, and Luca with a swifter, lyrically gymnastic performance. The three work together with complete humility, all bringing their own style without a touch of bravado or competitiveness. It’s all love and it shows.

Granville performed quite a few tracks from their forthcoming album which they hadn’t done live before, but you wouldn’t know. Such ease oozed from the stage without it feeling complacent – just a wonderful mix of lyrics and instrumental that magically come together to form an overture of hip hop with a solid accompaniment of rock.

Before they got on stage, I had the pleasure of speaking with Mnsr Frites and Archetype about how Granville came to be, what they listen to, where the hip hop scene is heading and how they think Americans are handling grime (or not).

[UHH] How did you meet and come together as Granville Sessions?

[Archetype] Some of us went to primary school together, most of us went to the same secondary school. We’ve been playing together since we were teenagers basically. Pretty much all of us have been in bands; our drummer, bassist and guitarist were in a metal band together from their teens to early 20s. And that’s where Granville Sessions really came from.

[UHH] And where does the name come from?

[MNSR Frites] When we first started jamming – me, Sean and Luca – we were getting into rapping and writing rhymes. A few little jam sessions happened at Louis’ parent’s house at Granville Road in South London, and Luca was living on Granville Road in North London…there’s even a Granville Island in Canada! We’re mainly all from SW London though.

[UHH] Since we’re talking about locations, we did a review of LEVELZ about a month back, who are another collective but from Manchester instead of London. Do feel like the backdrop of London influences your music?

[A] I’m sure it does but I don’t feel like we have a London sound.

[MNSR F] From back in the day, we were loosely influenced by the music the [original] band were listening to, which had a big scene in London. We listened to a lot of UK hip hop and grime too, which definitely had an effect.

Photo of Mnsr Frites by Ben Walsh www.benwalshphotos.com

[UHH] Absolutely, you can hear that coming through. Who would you say are your major influences then?

[MNSR F] Early 2000s, independent hip hop from New York, like Aesop Rock. But also I really like grime at the moment, MCs who put their own spin on things like President T.

[A] Little Simz is dope, I watched her Glastonbury set the other day and she smacked it, absolutely killed it.

[MNSR F] As well as the early 2000s stuff from America, early 2000s UK stuff too like Task Force and Klashnekoff.

[A] Definitely more UK influences recently though. When we were first starting out listening to hip hop, it was largely American dominated artists; it took me a while to be aware of the amount of UK stuff there was. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that I became aware of all these artists who had been doing stuff for years and killing it.

[UHH] I would say you are hip hop but you can hear that there’s rock, reggae, dub, ska and grime in your music. So although you can label a group, I don’t think you neatly fit anywhere, which is great.

[MNSR F] We’ve come up through that scene but we do have a really varied set of influences. The core instrument players in the band come from a non-hip hop background so that’s had quite an influence on the music we make.

[A] When we first started out, we played quite a lot in Brixton, which was such a hub for sound system culture. We were playing a lot of nights with a mixture of hip hop, jungle, dub and reggae, and I think that’s definitely worked its way into our music. We’ve had in the back of our minds, ‘This would go down really well at Hootananny’ [legendary Brixton venue] and started inadvertently making quite eclectic sounding stuff.

Photo of Mnsr Frites & Archetype by Ben Walsh www.benwalshphotos.com

[UHH] There are 8 of you altogether. Do you all collaborate on the creative process?

[MNSR F] We all do but we go through different phases. We might have one brand practice with everyone but the vocalists, we might have one with everybody, or some instrument players and MCs. But as we get older, getting everyone to practice at the same time can be a challenge, although we do practice regularly and take it a lot more seriously than we did in the early days.

[UHH] And that’s how you write as well?

[A] We tend to write lyrics separately, bring our verses to practice and see how it sounds with the band. But we try to make the writing process as collaborative and democratic as possible. Our guitarist used to be a vocalist and has loads of creative ideas – everyone’s got their own taste.

[UHH] There is a particular track, Hungry Ghost, which is very strongly a song of storytelling. In hip hop there’s a tradition of storytelling from greats like Eminem, and others are less about the story and more about a sound or vibe. What do you think the role of storytelling is in UK hip hop or hip hop in general?

[A] Not a big enough role!

[MNSR F] We don’t do too much of that but I like storytelling stuff. Me personally, I’ve done it a few times but I really enjoy just putting words together, having general themes and not always using specific concepts. But I love listening to great storytellers, like Slick Rick. Masta Ace is the master of that I would say – his concept album is really good, it’s based around his time at school. Out of people I’m aware of, he’s the best out there.

[UHH] So your new single, Calgon Sunrise, is great. But first of all, Americans don’t know what Calgon is, so please could you explain?

[MNSR F] Ha yes! Calgon is a limescale remover washing machine tablet you can purchase here in the UK. It’s just the line “washing machines live longer with Calgon” – the two words together [Calgon and Sunrise] sounded quite funny.

[A] The song got called that as a result of the line, it was the last song we wrote as we recorded the album. The general brief was just to have fun. The beat is quite spooky so the fact that we’re just talking about washing machine tablets was deliberately obtuse. For want of a better phrase, it’s ‘barrsing’.

Photo of Jon (guitar) & Louis (drums) by Ben Walsh www.benwalshphotos.com

[UHH] The song has quite a rocky feel with lots of heavy guitar. Is there more of that sound on the new album?

[A] There definitely is. The two singles we’ve released so far [Calgon Sunrise and Leave It] give quite a fair representation of the album.

[MNSR F] Hopefully there’s a few tunes on there that no one’s expecting, we weren’t even expecting them! Compared to our last album it’s quite different, so hopefully people like it - we’re really happy with it.

[A] We had a different guy making the back-end sample productions on the last albums, Zippo. Whereas this one is entirely Luca Brazi on the samples, so him taking charge of the whole project means he’s put his stamp on it.

Photo of Luca Brazi by Ben Walsh www.benwalshphotos.com

[UHH] How conscious was the decision to take your sound somewhere new for this album?

[A] I think it came largely down to our trombone player, Jude. She’s been fully instrumental in creating that cohesive sound you mentioned, it’s definitely the most altogether sound we’ve had on our albums. She’s got a motherly presence and authority which we respect, and she knows what she’s doing!

[UHH] And when is the album coming out?

[A] Hopefully September but you never know…definitely maybe 2016!

[UHH] You guys are most commonly described as a hip hop collective - you’ve obviously got the classic groups like The Roots and Wu Tang. Do you think hip hop collectives are coming back or are solo MCs taking over?

[A] You’ve got lots of new groups popping up like Cult of the Damned and Gatecrasher. Lots of crews are coming together to form ‘supercrews’, that’s a positive thing – super talented solo artists coming together, more of that would be good.

[UHH] What do you think groups bring over and above solo artists performing with features?

[MNSR F] It’s a cool live dynamic usually, especially if they’re super well-rehearsed like Jurassic 5. I think it harks back to the early days of hip hop where it was all about routines. Proper, well-crafted stage shows that were great to watch. By far one of the best stage shows in the UK is Strange U – it’s just a producer and MC duo but their live show is exceptional.

[UHH] Since this is a New York based hip hop blog, I’ve got to mention that hip hop was born there. Currently, where do you think US hip hop fits in with the UK scene, especially as you’ve got grime doing so well in the mainstream?

[MNSR F] It’s hugely popular of course. To be honest, I feel like both country’s scenes are so wide-reaching, there are loads of little micro-genres within hip hop in America and in Europe, so they’re doing really well. Especially making underground music, there’s quite a tendency to be like, ‘Fucking mainstream man…” but to be honest, if you think about people like Kendrick Lamar and J Cole, they’re all proper lyrical guys – so I think it’s in a good place.

[UHH] So do you listen to the mainstream much?

[MNSR F] What is mainstream anyway? As an underground MC, there’s a tendency to think that people who spit more complex bars are best, but I think there’s something to be said about simplicity as well. Some of the new and popular songs are really simple but I think slower spitting is harder in many ways.

[A] You have to be more concise, more meaningful.

[MNSR F] Exactly, no filler. I’ve got a few mates in New York and last year had the chance to do some recording out there in Sheepshead Bay, so want to send a big S/O to Zeps from South Brooklyn, big up to him.

[A] I’ve never been to New York, I’d love to go! [Gasp from UHH followed by swift invitation to one of our cyphers]

[UHH] Do you think ‘breaking America’ is an outdated concept?

[MNSR F] Probably. We’re much more interested in the short term or getting a fat European tour going. We recently played with Blabbermouth and went to a hip hop camp in the Czech Republic linking up with other artists. Obviously it would be great to play America but I think in the past UK artists saw that as the sign of the success. There has been no UK MC ever who has properly broken America. I think Skepta is getting there…

[UHH] Do you think the US is ready for grime?

[MNSR F] I think it is but the US is so big – it’s one thing in NY, LA, Bay Area etc. I think NY has a similar energy to London.

[A] It’s definitely a distinct sound. It might be a bit Marmite for some people. [Marmite is a vegetable spread with the tagline ‘Love it or hate it’.]

[MNSR F] It seems to have taken root in Canada a bit more, Drum n Bass got really big there. Maybe the UK style of MCing is a bit more palatable to the Canadian ear, especially in Toronto. I’m no expert though, time will tell.

Photo of Jude (trombone) & Marvin (bass) by Ben Walsh www.benwalshphotos.com

[UHH] To finish, we’ve got some rapid fire questions. Ready? Burgers or Chips?

[Both] Chips

[UHH] Beer or Wine?

[Both] Beer

[UHH] iPhone or Android?

[MNSR F] iPhone

[A] Android

[UHH] Soundcloud or Spotify?

[Both] Soundcloud

[UHH] Instragram or Snapchat?

[Both] Neither?

[UHH] Best live act you’ve ever seen?

[MNSR F] The Roots.

[A] Edan – he’s a producer/rapper/master of hip hop music from Boston.

[UHH] Which venue you would like to play the most?

[Both] Brixton Academy! It’s just a great venue, some of my favorite gigs I went to as a teenager were there, like System of a Down and Tenacious D.

[UHH] Which artist you would like to collaborate with the most?

[MNSR F] Strange U. But I like collabs to happen organically.

[UHH] We’re about to watch you perform live. How would you describe your show in 3 words?

[Both] Loud, jokes, eclectic.

[UHH] Anything you want hip hop fans in the US to know?

[MNSR F] Just check out the rich history of hip hop from this country. I’m still trying to learn about stuff from the 80s, DJ Cuba and DJ Supreme are name checked quite a lot.

[UHH] Anything else UHH should know about you before we go?

[A] All the MCs from Granville are actually in another crew called Moose Funk Squad, with Fourny P and Jester Jacobs!

[UHH] You are definitely busy then!