David: But in a way your sound is closer to grime than to dubstep, especially with regards to the MC…

The Bug: I love grime yeah. Well to be honest, Kode 9 and I, even two or three years ago when there were great dubstep tracks coming out, would both say that we were still totally inspired by grime. I'm very vocally orientated; I love vocals, I like music that has emotion, it doesn’t always have to be vocal to be intense but I like the intensity of words, I love rapping like hip hop and ragga and for me I love the fact that lyrics deal with the reality of the environment around you. So I’d say that the grime thing for me...you had these incredible producers like when Wiley's eski productions first came along i was completely blown away, I couldn’t work out how the hell he got the sounds. The first Dizzy Rascal album, 'I Love You', still sounds incredible, it sounds futuristic still.

D: People are starting to say that the grime scene is dying... What do you think about that? Have you heard interesting beats coming out from this side recently?

TB: Slewdem, i think Slewdem are really interesting producers. Grimewise, I thinks its really difficult because in a way it has faced a racist backlash. I think the authorities wanted to close grime down because they saw it as young black music and for me that’s what’s really pissed me off is to see that there's almost been a conspiracy against grime in London. It’s like venues aren’t allowed to put on grime acts as there were new laws instigated maybe one year ago.

D: Tell me more about this conspiracy against grime?

TB: To be honest its not just the fact that the authorities are trying to close the scene down, it's also that a lot of the leading producers have got very greedy too soon, and rather than build on their sound, a lot of the producers seemed embarrassed by the rawness of the sound. It's like a lot of the MCs would criticise their own music, they would criticise grime for being too amateur, too raw, too home-made, too DIY and as more money came onto grime a couple of years ago with So Solid and some of the early Wiley Roll Deep things, they went to big professional studios and suddenly wanted to sound like American hip hop acts and to me that was bad, a bad move. Why not build on grime as opposed to trying to sound like american hip hop? And that’s contributed as well as a clamp down from the venues, from the police to shut out grime. So its been a mixture of things that’s pushed it underground again.

I don’t think it’s dying, I think its interesting that its been forced underground in a way and I think at the moment dubstep is obviously very trendy, everywhere; its blowing up, its exploded in the last year so if you put one against the other it looks like grime's going away. But hopefully, with people like Wiley - I mean Wiley's new tunnel vision series, the first two volumes, i think are really interesting and I think there's some really good stuff on there. Personally working with Flowdan, i think he's one of the most talented MCs i've worked with, he's got an incredibly flow and tone; lyrically he's very strong with an amazing presence and while there's people like him, who are still committed to the sound, while Dizzy still works there'll always be interest and as I said earlier it doesn’t matter what type of music it is, in dubstep for me 95% of it is going to be shit, its the 5% that are doing it to be original…

D: In dubstep as well?

TB: Yeah, everything. To me its just that dubstep at the moment has become popular for a few different reasons. Drum and bass in the last three years has died, its become so formulaic that i think its just boring and, a lot of the people involved in that scene have jumped into dubstep because of that.

D: I see what you mean, but I'd say that the general quality of production in dubstep is still quite interesting and creative, you don't think so?

TB: Yeah but every scene when it first blows up has that big genesis of ideas where it all blows up. The initial bang is the most exciting time, that’s for sure and in a way it is a very exciting time at the moment. Like at the DMZ the first tune that Joe Nice started a set with was an american track called 50 000 Watts by Matty G, I literally just got a copy of it off Loefah a couple of days ago but that was interesting for me because i didn't know the track, I didn’t know anything about the American take on dubstep really, so that’s really good that its at its most positive time but for me as well, I cant really help but take a look back as well to try and assess what’s sort of going on in the scene because when DMZ had its first anniversary, when it moved upstairs, that night was a turning point for me and not just a positive one. Its great for Mala and its great for Digital Mystikz for all the hard work they've put in these past three years but for me, at that night, suddenly the audience seemed more like a drum n bass audience, it seemed more white, it seemed more male, the formula seemed to be almost there then so that was the first night I really noticed there was emerging a really strong formula like in drum n bass, like all the tracks were starting to sound a bit like Coki or Skream. And Skream also that night was rewinding every track which i thought, well the crowd weren't even generating so much interest for him to do that, so it seemed like a lot of hype and an audience that I thought were maybe a little too closed.

Because for me the beauty of dubstep were the producers that I met in the beginning, the fact that they were influenced by a lot of different music; Kode 9, Mala, influenced by jungle, influenced by dub, influenced by classical music, soundtrack music. That’s brilliant, I could hear that on the tracks but now i think that there are new producers that are coming into dubstep and they only listen to dubstep and for me that’s when jungle became drum n bass, that was the problem then. Drum n bass producers were just listening to drum n bass producers so there weren't as many interesting influences on the music and I think of course with dubstep now, its amazing the progress in the last year but I don’t see why I should say everything's positive when its obviously not really.

D: I see what you mean but how can the scene avoid becoming formulaic too soon?

TB: I think it's interesting the reaction to the Kode 9 album - because for me the Kode 9 album is probably the most progressive record to have come out of dubstep - but I’ve noticed that it’s divided a lot of people and he, in particular, appears to divide a lot of people and I think that’s really good but I know that he’s finding it in a sense difficult to deal with the reaction. I think partly he expected it but he probably hoped in his heart that people would see he is doing it for the right reason to open the music up whereas a lot of people are trying to close it up saying Spaceape is on too many tracks, that Spaceape ruined Dubstep Allstars which for me is bullshit because Spaceape is an incredible MC so for someone like him I guess it’s becoming a struggle already to kick against the formula. But whilst people like him and Loefah are still involved I think there’s great hope for the scene. Personally I share a studio space in the same building with Loefah and Jamie from Vex’d and as you said earlier, I think the quality of production is incredible on the scene and it makes me work much harder on my own—it’s competitive but in a good way. But it’s interesting seeing the reactions from them to say, Dubstepforum where people are trying to say “Well, this is what dubstep should be and that isn’t what it should be.” And I sense a lot of people think it’s a lot of Americans coming into the scene and they’re like “Well, what the fuck is it to do with them, they weren’t there from the beginning, we’ve been doing this for years, why should we listen to someone telling us what it should or shouldn’t be?”

So i think it’s definitely a time of fairly obviously great change. And I don’t think they know. As far as I can tell all the producers that I know on that scene, that i’m close to, they’re all totally shocked at how big it’s become in the course of the last year and it’s great for them. I’m really happy because a lot of them are really genuine people, in love with the music. They did it for two or three years without any support at all, and you would have known at FWD how quiet it was for two or three years. And for me, I’m like a freak from the outside. It’s like Kode 9 asked me to do tracks at 135-145 bpm so that he could DJ over them because he liked my sound and he said “I want you to do stuff like that with ragga MCs, and that’s where ‘Money Honey’ came from and ‘Dem a Bomb We’, when i did the fast version actually just with Kode9 as a DJ tool. I’m sort of friends with a lot of the people but i make Bugstep not Dubstep (laughs)… It’s a nice scene.

D: So what’s your plan for the next few months?

TB: For me it’s the studio, always the studio. It’s like i’m sort of insanely working on three albums at the same time.

D: Wow! Three albums!?

TB: Yeah, which is nuts. There’s a Bug album which will be on Ninja Tune, then i’m doing Ladybug which will be for Soul Jazz, but that’s gonna be a series of singles which will then go on an album. And then there’s a project I’ve done with Roger Robinson called King Midas Sound which we're still finishing off but most of the music and vocals are recorded, it just has to be mixed down and just working with Flowdan at the moment on new tracks for the Bug album with Ras B and with Warrior Queen who’s already recorded her tracks for my album, so just the studio, its all about the studio really.

Go back to the 1st part of the interview…

Links: The Bug | King Midas Sound

Thanks to Kevin, Poppy, Dimitri and Benoît.
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