Young Outsiders

Since their inception, critics have tried to define Young Fathers over their seven years together with varying degrees of success. Originally framed as a “psychedelic hip hop boy band”, their music has continued to incorporate a varied assortment of sounds and genres. On their debut album, Dead, the band continues to broaden their musical horizons, drawing on a vast array of influences ranging from pop and R&B to krautrock and neo-psychedelia as well as Nigerian hip hop and South African Shangaan electro.  

The album is filled with moments that are as uplifting and euphoric as they are dark and hypnotic, from the eerie lo-fi sounds of Dip and Paying to the minimalist pop of Low and the epic R&B jam, Am I Not Your Boy. While they’ve been renowned for their darker sounds and melancholic vibe – and Dead is certainly no exception – G Hastings says they don’t see it that way.

“People say these songs are dark and stuff like that, but for us they were always kind of hopeful songs. Like when you see people singing at a funeral or anything like that. It’s a sad occasion but it’s like you know how to deal with things, to move on and keep moving; you sing for that and that’s always our premise.”

Hastings formed Young Fathers in 2008 alongside Alloysious Massaquoi and Kayus Bankole, brought together by a shared passion for making pop-infused hip hop along with other music that reflected their varied cultural backgrounds. While Hastings was born and raised in Edinburgh, Massaquoi is originally from Liberia and Bankole, though also born in Edinburgh, spent several years in the US and Nigeria before moving back in his teens. The band spent three years touring the UK and Europe before releasing their first mixtape, Tape One, which saw them push their sound in that darker direction. Their follow-up, 2013’s Tape Two, recently managed to earn them the prestigious Scottish Album of the Year Award plus a hefty £20,000 cash prize.

"Where I come from, if you had done anything expressive like sing or dance, people were kind of like, 'Well, who the fuck do you think you are?'"

Now with their first full-length album released, Young Fathers are gearing up for some of their first international dates including an Australian visit that will see them play a run of dates as part of the Listen Out music festival.

It’s an impressive feat for a band that’s largely always thought of themselves as outsiders, at least according to Hastings. “Well we’ve never been insiders – that would be too boring. I mean it’s not that we try to be outsiders or we think about it that much; you just kind of know you are one. But you can be an outsider but you have to bring it in the presence of a lot of people rather than just hiding away in a corner in the underground where it’s easy to be accepted amongst other people who are like you, but there’s no other band like us, so we were just forced to be outsiders. It wasn’t really a choice or anything.”

Growing up in Drylaw in north Edinburgh, Hastings was first exposed to hip hop at a local underage club when he was 14. “It was a sweaty hip hop club called The Bongo,” he remembers. “I knew a guy who would go and it was only basically me and him from my school that would go because it was the kind of club that if you went to you would get the piss taken out of you because it was hip hop and that wasn’t cool at the time. And so I went and I had just never experienced anything like that in my life; it was just such loud, bass-heavy music and it was brilliant.”

It was there that Hastings was first introduced to Massaquoi and Bankole. “We just started dancing with these boys and I just shook Ally and Kayus’ hand in amongst other people and that was it. We just started dancing there and then for the whole night without even speaking to each other because it was just too loud but then I spoke to them after. I was making music in my bedroom secretly and they told me they did music so I asked them to come to my house and they started coming down most weekdays and we’d record until my mum kicked us out at like 10pm.”

Hastings says from the start the three were drawn to mixing pop-style melodies with darker beats, something that would come to define their earlier work on their first two EPs. “We kind of liked a mixture of different things; we liked hooks, we liked sweet things but over like a hard beat or whatever. We just enjoyed the kind of well-constructed pop songs and that sort of freed us because everybody else was just trying to rap and be one thing or the other but for us the songs were so important because we really had that kind of telepathic connection with music and we still do. If any of us play music, we’ll all sing the same thing or if we play a song, we’ll all notice the same kind of hooks that we love and we’ll all sing along and it’s just really kind of like a family. It’s so natural, you know, like it’s in our genes.”

Hastings says making music with Massaquoi and Bankole helped him find an outlet of self-expression. “When I met the guys, I couldn’t believe how much they expressed themselves and weren’t put down for it. Where I come from, if you had done anything expressive like sing or dance, people were kind of like, ‘Well, who the fuck do you think you are?’ So when I met those guys it was like a whole new world to me and I wanted to be more involved in that.”

And while each member often gravitates towards the same musical ideas, Hastings says the band still encounter their fair share of disagreements. “We’re not the same kind of people. We’re no like-minded in anyway; we’re very different individuals but it’s the process of knowing that there’s going to be arguments, knowing that you’re not the same and you don’t like the same things but when you can put it together, that’s what makes it special. I think a lot of music is made of people who want to agree with each other all the time and sometimes for us it’s more exciting to disagree on a lot of the songs with how they go but it goes to a democratic vote and our producer Tim London comes in and he helps out but that’s just the process to make something. It’ll make you uncomfortable but it’ll be special.”

Their first live shows were met with some hostility from other local acts who weren’t fond of their penchant for boy band dance moves and pop melodies. “We would go to 8 Mile-style open mics where people were just fucking rapping for ages about shit that never happened to them and then we would go up and do like three-and-a-half minute pop songs and incorporate dance moves just to piss them off and it would work. At the time I don’t think we were trying to really piss anybody off but we kind of enjoyed that as well.”

Seven years on and the boys have dropped the dance moves and built a strong presence in the British and international hip hop scene. It paid off this year, with the band eclipsing fellow Scottish acts Chvrches and Biffy Clyro to win the prestigious Scottish Album of the Year Award for their Tape Two EP. Hastings is hopeful the achievement may turn a few more people onto their music; in any case it’s a small victory in the bigger scheme of things.

“Awards and things like that, they might happen, they might not. For us, we already know we’ve won; we didn’t need any validation from anybody really. It’s good because it allows people to start talking about you and then more people hear you and your music and see your videos and everything, but the actual awards, it’s nice but it’s nothing we don’t know already. For us it just feels the same from when we started even though maybe more people know us now than last year. When you stop it gets too boring and we’ve got very short attention spans so we need to keep ourselves active and keep it moving. We can never do the same thing twice so with recording and everything, we’re not going to sit about on a sound; it’s got to be something different. So we always want to feel that uncomforted again.”