In Conversation with Logan Sama

Logan Sama is one of those DJs who counterpoints the culture he represents. Currently the host of the only national weekly grime radio show on Kiss FM, he’s become a figurehead for the music using his platform to help re-invent and shape the young scene. Even after talking to him over email for even a short time, you get the impression that it’s a role he takes incredibly seriously. The scope and breadth of his radio presence (first Rinse and now Kiss) has led onto incredibly well informed label projects, namely Adamantium Music and his current label incarnation Earth 616, where, at some point, he’s worked with most of grime’s leading lights. Currently helping push young talent Preditah’s instrumentals to a wider audience, his position within the hierarchy of grime is already pretty well established but simply put, Sama’s one of those DJs, hosts and label men whose tireless work rate has got him up there. His is the kind of endorsement that a lot of people are looking for and as such, he’s a man with access to an insurmountable amount of music - a lot of which you’ll find him spinning in his club sets. It really is no wonder that Plastician has employed Sama’s talents to help celebrate a decade of forward thinking British music in Room One on Friday 16th November under the Decadance banner, considering the work he’s put in and the talent he’s worked with. His forthcoming appearance also gave us the opportunity to catch up with one of grime’s most articulate characters and learn a few things about his back story to boot… Ridiculously open question I know, but what is it you love about grime music? I mean you spend most of your time in and around it… what made you fall for it in the first place? How did you get into it in the beginning? I started out DJing at the very tail end of UK garage in 2001, so that was the era that so many new and weird sounds were being made as production became democratised with cracked software and even Playstation software like Music 2000. Grime always gave me something 'new' where 2 step and 4/4 garage was re-treading old ground. Grime continues to do this with a huge width of sound I don't really get elsewhere. From Wiley early eski-beat to Terror Danjah percussion to jump up energy from Preditah or hip hop influenced styles from Faze Miyake there's something new all the time, sonically. What makes you want to keep on keeping on and pushing it? The continuous flow of new music and artists; it never gets stagnant. As the mainstream electronic music culture seems to always be looking for 'the new sound' to champion year on year, I get new sounds every week. I never get bored. You’re a pretty vocal supporter of the scene as a whole, so I wanted to ask you about something. Journalists always seem to start their articles that introduce themselves by saying something like ‘grime has been pronounced dead numerous times, but on the strength of blah blah blah it’s in pretty rude health’. I guess it’s always been quite an insular thing though and that journalists that aren’t engrossed in it might just see it from the outside and the image that’s projected. I just wondered where you stand on all that now? Considering it’s been out there for so long, do you still feel strongly about those same points? I feel the constant need for something 'new' within the mainstream bass music culture we have now is just based on lazy journalism and poor marketing meeting in the middle and not connecting. When there is little solid information on grime out there for people to latch on to, writing about what is going on becomes difficult. And when pitching stories to editors these days usually relies on a scene being new and championed by a specific taste-maker, putting that extra effort in to writing about grime becomes difficult for many journalists to justify to themselves. The role of the producer as a focal point seemed to blossom with what Butterz were doing. In speaking to Terror recently he was saying how he saw it as a bit more of an empowering thing for producers, to not have to feed their beats to emcees to get out there. How do you feel about the rise in attention the producers are have gotten? Steering the focus away from the emcees etc… Do you think that’s a good thing in general? It's always been pivotal for producers to be bringing new sounds. MCs are just easier to cherry pick. Grime as a genre only exists because of the work producers have been putting in for the last 10 years. Terror Danjah himself saw his initial success through feeding his instrumental dubs to DJs like Mak 10 and myself back in the day. That's still the case with new producers such as Preditah, Faze Miyake and Darq E Freaker. When people, be it the public, the media or MCs, hear DJs playing these new beats regularly they want to get involved. The one issue however is that whilst the MCs get cherry picked by majors and their talents appropriated to a wider mainstream audience, the producers who worked with them get left behind. Look at the output of such production legends as Skepta and Wiley who basically helped build this sound from the ground up..... these days we barely hear productions from them whilst their vocal output is still strong. The real answer is that grime as a sound is not understood by the people in places that could spread it further. Brands like Butterz certainly help people understand that grime music is an art form and worthy of as much attention as the highly lauded MCs. You must get sent a lot of material for the radio show/labels etc… what are you really looking for in a beat? Hahaha. I love melody. Strong riffs, that's what kicked grime off. A beat firstly needs to have its own identity and be recognisable within 3 beats of the drop. I love impact music. I grew up on DJ EZ, so that 'drop' is important to me. Whereas dubstep comes with bass weight, grime always came with melodies you could hum, beatbox or even program into your phone as ring tones. I love that era of grime. People programming ‘Creeper’ and ‘Eskimo’ into their Nokia 3310. Recent tracks like Preditah – ‘Circles’, Faze Miyake – ‘Take Off’ and SX – ‘Woo Riddim’ all have that aspect to them. What have you got coming up in the future on Earth616/Kiss etc? We are currently releasing all of the individual tracks from Tropical 2 as limited vinyls and digital EPs. First one should be out now-ish. After that an EP from Darq E Freaker and another from Preditah in 2013. Also we work with new producers such as Nu Klear who Wiley has recently worked with. Kiss continues to do really well and we manage to trend #KissGrime nearly every week nationwide on twitter when not many other radio shows manage that even sporadically. The After Hours and Versus sessions grow in popularity every week with more and more views and the videos can be found on my YouTube channel. I am also working on some vocal projects with some artists but they are still in the planning stages. Any specific talents you think we should know about? I have been working closely with the Lord Of The Mics crew again doing interviews and helping to put together the CD. I have to hail them up as being a great platform for new talent to get noticed by a wider audience. They have definitely been one of the driving forces behind grime being a UK sound rather than a London one now. You'll hear lots of good new MCs on LOTM4 when it drops at Christmas. If you wanna hear the new names in MCing and production, then of course check out my show every week, Monday night/Tuesday morning at 1am on Kiss. Catch Logan Sama in Room One of Friday 16th November.