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Nia Archives: One For The Headz
A couple of years ago, if you had told the average raver that a jungle artist would be competing at the BRITs in 2023, they probably would have laughed you out the room. That is, until the advent of Nia Archives. When we speak, she’s calling from LA, during a snippet of time she has prior to making her way to San Francisco for the next stop on her US tour. It’s part of a global footprint she has established in the past year, meeting new fans as far away as Asia, a show run she grins at the mere mention of. The 24-year-old is thoughtful and passionate in speech, despite just recently waking up. It’s almost cliché to ask how it all feels. “Every time I come here I have no expectations,” she says in her broad West Yorkshire lilt. “But this time, things feel different.”
DJ Mag December 2023 Cover Story
Wizkid Is On Top of the World
A meeting with Wizkid is an exercise in observing superstardom. When I arrive at the studio in Haggerston where his 10 photoshoot is due to take place, the artist is not there yet. Rolling up a couple of hours late to his 2pm call time, our interview ends up having to be rescheduled as his fitting runs into the early hours of the morning. It’s already been sandwiched in between touring, other interviews, photoshoots and more.
When the time comes to talk, his label rep warns me that Wizkid is, understandably, tired and we only have minimal time for the interview. Surely, I suggest, the artist will let them know when he is too spent to continue? The response speaks volumes about why the star is exactly where he is in the entertainment world. I am told that Wizkid will not say if he is tired – ever the showman, he will simply keep going.
10+ Magazine Issue 5 Boxazine February 2022 Cover Story
Teezo Touchdown is Taking Things Seriously
'Really early on when people were like “laughing emoji” or something like that, it used to get to me,’ shares Teezo Touchdown. ‘Like wait a minute … they think that I'm joking.’ Teezo Touchdown knows he is a polarizing figure. He straddles creative brilliance with the zaniest of cultural and visual references; hair full of craft nails (literal pounds of the stuff atop his head), a series of alter egos and characters, music videos all filmed in front of the same garage and an overall countercultural ethos that's oftentimes too much for some. For every fan, there’s been those quick to deride; Pitchfork dubbed him an ‘insufferable fashion rapper.’ He’s gone viral, whilst others pored over whether his music was, well, a joke. But all becomes clear in conversation with him. One thing Teezo is not? Taking things unseriously.
Justsmile Magazine 2023 Cover Story
Inside the Radical World of Willow Smith
Willow Smith is someone who is used to standing out. She is a Hollywood tale as old as time; daughter of superstars who has spent most of her life in front of the press. She is only 21, but there are already many titles in her orbit: singer, songwriter, actress, guitarist, spokesperson. It’s a place where many children of celebrities can crash and burn, jostling with the pressure of living up to the blinding star quality of their parents. But Willow seems to have found the antidote, and is making a name for herself, all on her own.
Glamour Magazine September 2022 Digital Cover Story
Keenon Jackson, the artist known as YG, is telling me about his wildest travel story. Touring the states between 2014 and 2015, it includes a tour bus, a gaggle of his boys, and strangely enough, his mother. We on tour, my mom wanna hop on tour with us,’ he says. ‘I say “look mama. You don't want to come be on a bus with the homies, it get crazy.” And she like “nah... I want to come on the bus!" So she comes with us for some days One night it get crazy. Her bunk is across from mine all the way in the back of the bus, by the back room. The back room is where we party at’. It doesn’t take a genius to guess what happens next.
YG: Compton's Rose From Concrete
Trippin x Wave Mag SS 2022 Limited Edition Cover
When Tiffany Calver was a child, her mother made sure she knew exactly who she was. “It was a standard in my house; my mum would always ask me, ‘Who are you?’” she remembers, smiling. With a video camera in hand, her mother would often chat to her at home. Tiffany still watches the tapes back now. “She’d make me look in the mirror and say it; I’d shout, ‘I’m Tiffany Calver!’”
Tiffany Calver: No Requests
DJ Mag February 2022 Cover Story
Mabel: Close Up
Mabel McVey is a pop star in the most effective of terms; impeccably styled, madly charming and the darling of her one million Instagram followers. Finders Keepers made Mabel a rising star, putting her under pressure to top her blow-out hit. She did that with 2019’s Don’t Call Me Up, which peaked at Number 3 and later appeared on her debut album, the suggestively titled High Expectations. In February last year, a few weeks before the first UK lockdown, she won Female Solo Artist at the 2020 BRIT Awards.
And then, it all became too much.
The Face June 2021 Digital Cover Story
PinkPantheress: ‘Music’s been the same for so long. Can we get something else?’
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‘I used to sing in front of In-N-Out Burger’: Victoria Monét’s long road to pop stardom
Stefflon Don: ‘That’s what it is to be an artist – you’ve always gotta evolve’
‘The world is now coming to Africa’: why Madonna and Ed Sheeran want a piece of Afrobeats
Sex-positive pop star Shygirl: ‘I want to affect your equilibrium’
Rapper Tion Wayne: ‘Police don’t want us to win, they want us in jail’
Channel Tres: ‘House music is for everybody, but it’s special when it’s your people’
Jon Batiste: ‘If not hope, then what?’: the musicians finding optimism in dark times
Celeste: 'Black women singing soul, blues and jazz aren't being heard in the mainstream'
John Glacier: the Hackney rapper mingling catharsis and mystery
The return of Katy B: ‘Being looked at all the time is not very natural’
Omari Douglas: ‘After It’s a Sin, I’ve realised that I was always supported for who I was’
George Riley: the R&B songwriter and club kid who is switching on the joy
Esperanza Spalding: ‘My energy comes from optimism’: the hopeful music of spring 2021
‘Black music is my superpower. It’s my way of showing love’: the art of Georgia Anne Muldrow
'I'm not wearing tracksuits, I'm sexy!' Ivorian Doll, drill's first female star
How Missy Elliott’s Black iconoclasm gave me a sense of identity
Wireless festival 2022: weekend two review – raunchy, twerk-friendly rap
Darling buds: books, music, theatre and more with spring in their hearts
High anxiety: film, music, games and art for the paranoid
Little Simz review – an unstoppable force on the mic
Tems review – Afrobeats darling has riveting star quality
Steve Lacy review – Bad Habit showman balances virtuoso guitar playing and irreverent gags
Weapons-grade 808s, luscious horns and a megastar’s early steps: the best music our writers discovered this year
Japanese gems, maligned boybands and ‘the Dan’: the best old music Guardian writers discovered this year
Lynchian punk to Lady Gaga: the best music Guardian staff and writers discovered this year
Little Simz deserved her Brits win — but the industry needs to catch up
Darkoo on rising to fame, meeting Stormzy and her first love
Starstruck's Nikesh Patel on becoming everyone's favourite romantic lead
12 of the most anticipated albums of 2022
10 essential Grimes tracks that prove she's a music maverick
The best albums of 2022 (so far)
10 rising musicians destined for greatness in 2022
The trailer for the "making of The Godfather" series looks absolutely wild
Fivio Foreign and Ye's “City of Gods” is proof of the overwhelming power of drill
Mabel: “I was living my dream. But I didn’t know how to deal with some of it”
Munya Chawawa talks BRITs, skits and boujie wotsits
Let the Skiifall
Flock Together reveal new music project, Taste The Sky
TYSON: “It’s taken me till now to find my little path”
BERWYN won’t ever give up
Grove: Bristol’s wildest club kid
Usher’s Confessions is a masterclass in storytelling
Namasenda: All guns blazing
Joviale is coming into their own
George Riley uses a playful aesthetic to explore Gen Z issues
SXWKS: Strength in numbers
How music underscores the nuanced depth of Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You
The Top 50 Albums of the Year: 1 - John Glacier, SHILOH: Lost for Words
Is FLO the next great British girl group?
ENNY on ‘Peng Black Girls’ success and her journey in music so far
ENNY live in London: Rising star stays humble at intimate Islington show
Sudan Archives' radical honesty
KeiyaA: forever and a day
How Black-led music organisations are creating opportunities for emerging talent
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