Northampton’s Weirdoe discusses new Scum EP

This summer, Weirdoe packed fans into The Lab for the launch of his EP, Born In A Barn, and last month, he released its follow up Scum - also picking up the accolade for best ‘rap, grime, drill, hip-hop artist’ at the Northamptonshire Local Music Awards.

Despite his successes over the last yeah, the Northampton native is already planning his next move with more releases and shows on the horizon.

“The reaction has been massive - I’m buzzing, honestly,” explains Weirdoe.

“P4, the most recent single, is doing well and Hotel Cecil did well a few weeks leading up to the main release. It’s created a good bit of momentum.”

Five track EP Scum features the tracks Chit Chat, Hotel Cecil, P4, Mongrel and Bad Choices and follows the seven track EP Born In A Barn which was released in July.

Talking through the tracks on his latest EP, Weirdoe said: “We knew for definite with Chit Chat that it was going to be the first track of the project and it was Harlz’s idea to have the structure of verse, chorus verse but not finish up with a big chorus - let it lead onto Cecil.

“Cecil was made up of lyrics we already had, we gave it a bit of a refurb and twisted it on its head a bit, made it bigger, made it better.

“The third track, P4, we knew we had to go with a strong grime track, especially after the success of Stuck In The Mud from Born In A Barn as that one also did really well.

“Fourth track is Mongrel and we just started getting dark and twisted with it really.

“It was the outcome of messing around with heavy 808s and almost following on from Hotel Cecil which has the horror themed lyrics and almost trying to make it as messed up as possible.

“Weirdoe is Weirdoe because it’s weird. That’s the bottom line of it.

“Lastly, Bad Choices was my take on a drill track, it’s not your orthodox drill track, but none the less it’s a Weirdoe drill track.”

After a series of releases in recent years which also included appearances on YouTube channels such as JDZ, Weirdoe decided to hit ‘reset’ this year removing tracks from his streaming platforms having a firmer idea of what he and aforementioned producer Harlz wanted the project to be.

“We wiped everything, took a couple of years worth of work down,” he explains.

“Because of gaps in consistency, artwork, videos, we took the decision and because the levels of quality have excelled since.

“We hit the reset button before it was too late to do so and went off the back of something fresh which was Born In A Barn.”

That quality and the carefully crafted visuals were evident in the videos to Born In A Barn singles Insomniac’s Lullaby and Stuck In The Mud which saw Weirdoe team up with 2Pence and Alex Potton.

Weirdoe again worked with 2Pence on the video for Hotel Cecil, filmed at The Langham Hotel on Northampton’s Barrack Road, and with Dot Media on P4.

Talking about the two EPs Weirdoe explains: “Mine and Harlz’s sound I really think is original. From my perspective no one’s doing what we’re doing.

“The grime me and Harlz produce, it doesn’t sound like London, it doesn’t sound like Birmingham, it’s crafted into its own Northampton sound and that is exactly where I want to be.

“I want to be original, I want to be the one who stands out not the one who fits in.”

Writing poetry growing up, Weirdoe started writing lyrics as he headed towards his teens, getting into garage and grime as the likes of Wiley, Kano and Dizzee Rascal all broke through to the mainstream.

“All these names that we now know - that’s what I grew up listening to,” he explains.

“Old school vinyl, sets in a garage with all of us stood around a phone in the freezing cold, all trying to get our own little eight or 16 bars in. That’s how it all developed really.

“Growing up, people like Eminem were huge at the time. Everyone wanted to write smart lyrical content.

“I admired the rap and the poetry and then grime came about. Flows were a massive thing listening to grime.

“I realised lyricism was my strong suit. I understood the structure of lyrics and how to be smart with similes and metaphors and idioms and be clever with it and that’s what I’ve tried to stick to.”

Looking back at the success of July’s headline gig at The Lab, Weirdoe explains next year, the plan is to “go bigger and better,” with more live performances and another, potentially bigger, project.

“The Born In A Barn show was incredible and I’m now looking for more opportunities of live performances,” he explains. “I'm just excited for what the future brings really.

“We knew Born In A Barn was only going to hold its momentum for so long and that’s why we thought, ‘right let’s play the strong suits, let’s play into what people want, let’s give people what they want’ so we made Scum to wrap the whole year up and call 2023 a success.

“George is another member of the Weirdoe team who brings a number of qualities, he can produce, get behind the camera and one of his strong suits is his knowledge in digital marketing.

“To be good friends with the people you’re working with, to enjoy what you’re doing, it makes it easier to push forward.

“Hopefully that momentum pushes us into next year with a bigger project.

“The idea right now is to get a larger volume of work out, dot it out with singles and I wanna bring more quality to the videos and shows.

“It’s the performances I want to nail while we’ve got a nice catalogue as well – it’s gonna make a hell of a performance when they’re done back-to-back.”

Scum is out now on streaming platforms.

For more information, visit https://solo.to/weirdoe