Having released a flurry of tracks throughout the first half of 2014, Matt Tarr caught up with grime mc and Roll Deep member Manga Saint Hilare in his studio in East London to discuss his recent tracks, directing his own video’s and how the success of Roll Deep has influenced his current sound.
MT: Since you made the move from being known as Roll Deep Manga to Manga Saint Hilare, you’ve put out a lot of music, particularly over the last six months, which has included tracks like ‘Addicted To Black’, ‘4 In The Morning’ and ‘Down To Earth’. What has the response been like to your newer stuff?
Manga: ‘Addicted To Black’ has done alright but it’s difficult to pick up YouTube views and get plays because you don’t really get breded if you’re not talking about road rap stuff and that’s annoying. I’ve never been about that road rap and if you’re not doing straight grime either it becomes more difficult. I’m just doing music that I wanna do but maybe the people who follow me aren’t ready for it and that can be disheartening. If I do a tune with Wiley now, which obviously I’ve done bare times, or I do a tune with Roll Deep it gets bare views and all the hype but when I’m trying to do songs I wanna make it’s a bit slower and is more frustrating but I’m happy that you’ve seen that still!
MT: I think you’ve put out some great tracks recently and with other artists such as G Frsh releasing tracks like ‘Falling High’ which isn’t straight grime or rap, there seems to be a market for the sort of music you want to make.
Manga: That’s a nang tune; it’s a great song. That’s what I’m trying to make, just ‘good songs’ full stop. I realised it a long time ago but I don’t think it was reflected in my music; I was putting bits of it in my mixtapes without fully committing to it. I think it was Young Kye who I work with a lot, who was like ‘bruv you need to either do that [sound] or don’t do it cos you’re confusing your audience’. I thought I was being smart by putting bits and bobs of different music in my projects but really people weren’t paying attention to those tracks so I could either keep doing that and have the songs I like keep getting ignored or make a stand and that’s why I changed the name instead of clinging on to trying to please the people who are just hanging around waiting for another Roll Deep grime song or even another Roll Deep commercial song. There are loads of followers who are around from the times when we made ‘Green Light’ and ‘Good Times’ and they’re just waiting for another one of them tunes but obviously there isn’t gonna be any more of those tunesagain. I’m not really on that vibe now; that was a crew vibe and that was a few years ago so now I wanna say different stuff and I have different ideas.
MT: The visuals that you’ve been putting out to accompany tracks recently have been very creative and artistic; have you got a team around you who support with videos?
Manga: I’ve directed all of the videos but have had guys filming them and so I’ve given them the director credit. I edit all the videos as well and so they film it and I take it away and come to the studio and edit it all on my laptop. To be fair, I tried to do it on a budget previously but the people who were doing it didn’t see the vision and were editing it wrong so I decided to sit down and do it myself.The first one I did was ‘Poetry and Politics’ although ‘Addicted To Black’ is probably my favourite as I just tried to keep it simple and get the vision across to support the tune.
MT: For anyone who has followed your career over the last decade, I think it is clear to see that the tracks you have released this year are ‘your sound’ and you can tell that you’re passionate about them. It definitely comes across in the music and videos as you aren’t taking the shortcut of trying to push out commercial tunes that you don’t believe in.
Manga: I get more artists coming up to me and saying that they like this new tune or that new tune so that’s the plan. People think the commercial tunes are easier to make but for me they’re harder to make and the same goes for a straight grime tune for me at the moment cos what am I talking about? I’ve been spitting for so long that I can’t say anymore about ‘my bars are better than yours’ or I’m better than you’ cos I’ve done all that and I just wanna show people who don’t like the music something to make them like it. When I show this music to anyone that likes music they like it and they get it. People don’t wanna listen to it because they already think they know what it‘sgoing to sound like but once they listen to it they realise that it’s different. People have marginalised grime by thinking that if the music doesn’t sound a certain way it’s not grime but grime is our version of hip hop and there is bare versions of hip hop so grime can be the same. There still needs to be that original grime sound but I can’t do it; I can’t make the same tune that Tempa T makes or Flowdan makes and I find it difficult to do that. The only times I can make that sort of music is when I’m with bare mc’s and I just wanna write a better bar than them.
MT: For me personally, I can see that since you were on In At The Deep End [Roll Deep’s debut album] and having released several mixtapes since then, your music has evolved and your sound now reflects the journey that you’ve been on over the last 10 years.
Manga: I’ve learnt loads of stuff since In At The Deep End cos that was one of the first things I ever recorded. Obviously now I’ve got things to say cos we’ve been piss poor broke where no one cares about us and then the next year we’ve got two number one’s. With regards to music I’ve learnt loads and understood what lasts and who lasts in music. What lasts is the people who do their own thing and don’t chase what they think they need to do. ‘Good Times’ and ‘Green Light’ were just made off our own back and Wiley said ‘lets give that a go‘ and it worked and propelled us to where we got to, but even that wasn’t forced. If house is big this year and you try and make a house tune it’s almost definitely gonna flop cos ‘where’s your next one?‘;people are gonna check your background and it’s not really that so it may be a short success but it’s not gonna last. In the time I’ve been making music, I’ve learnt how to try and make my music broader so with a tune like ‘Addicted To Black’, it’s a relationship song but I tried to keep it as real as possible and people seemed to respond to that because I’m not just talking like ‘babe, you’re buff’, although I have got some shock bars in there but I’m thinking more about how I make songs now.
Follow @MangaStHilare to keep up to date with everything Manga straight from the man himself and subscribe to his YouTube channel ‘Manga Saint Hilare’ to watch all the tracks mentioned above.
Matt Tarr
@MattTarrJourno
Matt Tarr
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