Urban Development hooked up with Roll Deep member J2K for a full English breakfast and discussed the success of Roll Deep, his solo career, and what exactly is electric about his boogaloo…

Hello Mr J2K, Roll Deep seem to be having a “good time” of things right now, how are you feeling about it?

Yeah, it’s good man, Roll Deep have been doing their thing for a very long time now. It’s cool man, they’ve worked hard and they’ve got some kind of reward now as a collective.

How about your solo success? Are you aiming for that number one spot yourself?

Everyone wouldn’t mind a number one, obviously you would want to get one but if I don’t get one it’s not an issue, I just want to make music that I’m happy with and people are happy with.

What genre would you put your music into?

I’m an artist that’s always been varied in what I do, just through my versatility. So like hearing Electric now doesn’t mean I’ve changed genre or that I’m doing one specific genre in general. It’s just my vibe and my mood, music comes naturally to me. You can listen to my EP ‘Wake Up’ which is all grime cos that was what I was feeling or you could listen to my mixtape ‘Who Am I’ which is mainly Hip-Hop. I do whatever I want to do when I feel to do it.

What genre would you say you prefer?

I don’t really prefer anything over anything else. Obviously I understand grime is where I came from, that’s what put me on the map because I was an MC on the radio, so when people started noticing me, that’s when I put my mixtapes out cos at the time no one was doing mixtapes and no one was really doing the versatile thing that I was doing. I was juggling hip-hop sounding beats but at the 140 tempo, so it was still the grime beat. I like to experiment and play around with music.

You can hear that in the new single WTF (Electric). What was the concept for it?

That was just a vibe, literally I just went into the studio, the beat was playing and I was like ‘rah’, didn’t even think about it, and just did it on the spot. Initially it didn’t have the chorus it has now on it, but obviously I got radio play and advice like ‘it could do more if it had more of a hook on it’.

What is ‘boogaloo’? And why is yours electric?

Boogaloo is a dance, so is the electric slide, an old dance move. I got the idea from a tune I featured on by Wiley & Jodie Connor called ‘Electric Boogaloo’. My bar on that starts “he does the boogaloo but mine is electric slide..”. I just vibed it, if I thought about it too much I probably wouldn’t of said that.

Can we see you doing it in the video ‘WTF (Electrik)’?

Nah [laughs], not in the era we’re in. I can do it though, I’m nang like that.

You are a part of the collective A-List along with Sadie Ama, Shola Ama, Wiley, Brazen, Wrigley, Mz Bratt and others. Can we expect anything new from you guys?

I don’t know about that, you’d have to ask Wiley.

What are you rinsing out on your iPod now?

At the minute it’s Frank Ocean’s mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra. The four big tracks are ‘Swim Good’, the one where he wants to lash her in the garden, can’t remember what it’s called, oh it’s ‘Nature Feels’, ‘Novacane’ and ‘We All Try’. Them four are killing it.

Imagine you’re on tour right now and it’s your mums’ birthday, what do you do?

I think it was her birthday when I was last on tour and I couldn’t take the time off. I treated mumzy though with the present I got her.

Will we be expecting a mixtape or EP from you soon?

Yeah I got the mixtape ‘Now Playing 2’, coming out with Ayo (Producer/Rapper). He phoned me out the green to feature on one of his songs, did that and he called me again a couple weeks later and we ended up in the studio making a bunch of tracks. I like to flow with things, it’s a vibe.

When will that be coming out?

It was done so quick we didn’t actually think of when to release it, I’m tired of sitting on music now, so it will be out August 22nd. There will be videos for the tracks as well, that’s sorted!

http://twitter.com/j2klive

J2K gets right back into the swing of things with his debut single 'WTF (Electrik)' featuring singer Kenzie May, which is set to be released digitally on August 7th 2011.

WORDS: Dorsa Nam