Photo taken by: Elliott Simpson / @postelliott
“I do find North to be really comforting, cosy and beautiful. It makes me happy to be there. When I’m away from there, I do feel sad,” says M.I.C. It’s a Friday evening, and he’s talking about North London over a Zoom call, the place he was born and raised. It’s where a lot of his early experiences with music came from, both as a fan and eventually a musician himself.
Like many people that grew up with the internet, M.I.C credits early social media platforms as a place where he could find new sounds growing up. “I got online early, and I made a MySpace. I was trying to understand myself as a black person, so I was doing that through music a lot. I got into Wiley — and then for a year or so — I was trying to listen to as much rap as I could. That’s how I got into Three Six Mafia, Dem Franchise Boyz, Lil Jon, Nas, as well.”
The rapid-fire style of southern rap made sense for M.I.C as a listener, as to him, “it felt closer to grime.” But it wasn’t only rap music that caught the young M.I.C’s ear, nor was it only the vast atmosphere of the internet that introduced him to new music. He credits his Mum with turning him on to Coldplay and The Temptations. “She often used to play a Motown compilation in the car, and my favourite songs on that compilation were always The Temptations songs. Their songwriting is just ridiculously good. Obviously, people know them for their big songs, but even their deep cuts are really mournful. They carry a lot of pain.”
“I got online early, and I made a MySpace. I was trying to understand myself as a black person, so I was doing that through music a lot. I got into Wiley — and then for a year or so — I was trying to listen to as much rap as I could. That’s how I got into Three Six Mafia, Dem Franchise Boyz, Lil Jon, Nas, as well.”
So, at what point did rapping come in the journey? “I’d just finished my GCSEs”, he tells me, “I remember I was in the car park with some of my new friends, and they were rapping. It might’ve been a Scorcher instrumental that they were spitting on. I was like: yo, this is amazing, I wanna do this too!”
Those early forays into rapping would take place alongside his friends, recording freestyles in a studio near Enfield Cinema and writing bars at each other’s houses. By his own admission, his early verses were “just terrible” and “too slow for the beat”. But at this point, the chance to create something from scratch and emulate his musical heroes in JME and Nu Brand Flexxx were at the forefront of his mind, and he remembers dabbling in recording, writing and being around music with enthusiasm. “Looking back, it was really cute because I was just so excited to be involved in making music from the jump, which is really endearing.”
This period of messing around with lyrics led to a long hiatus. The young M.I.C temporarily retired his pen, immersing himself in the world of music as an avid concertgoer and reader of music journalism. “I remember there was one period where I saw the band Trash Talk, then Conan Moccasin, and then that guy King Charles.” These were formative experiences, as M.I.C tells me that he “was being morphed into the person I am now, as a person and a musician. And I didn’t even realise it.”
And what impact, if any, did attending these concerts have on M.I.C the musician today? He earmarks Lee Spielman – frontman of Trash Talk – as someone who helped him see the nuances of performing on a practical level. “I remember, both of the times I’ve seen them, the memory has just stuck so deep in my mind because of how he was just super courageous in terms of talking to the crowd. It felt like something beyond a concert.”
The hiatus ended in 2015. Was there a specific time where he felt ready to start taking music seriously, I ask? “No… as soon as I started making music again, I just started releasing it straight away… as soon as I knew I could record, I was like, this is what I wanna do.”
While keen-eared underground heads will have been tuned in to M.I.C’s early mixtapes – “You’re Going To Hell If You Read The Sun” and “Revenge For Colonialism” – it was the 2018 EP “Heaven Is Black” that caught the attention of the wider industry, as well as a blistering performance on live platform Just Jam, which ended up achieving viral status across social media. In the three years that have passed since then, I wonder what M.I.C has learnt as an artist, to which he candidly replies with the importance of monetising his music and making sure it can be broadcasted to the widest audience. “The most important thing I’ve learnt is that everything should always go on streaming. I could’ve been getting money for things immediately. Everything should’ve just been in these accessible places, not just on SoundCloud. That’s the one I always think about.”
“Obviously, the streaming websites are trash”, he continues, “but at the same time, everyone and their mum has access to one of these platforms. People in other countries, people who are not on social media, people who are not tech-savvy. I just should’ve done that from the beginning.”
And so we come to his latest project – titled “You Can Achieve Anything” – a record that marked a change in M.I.C’s usual creative process, which is often conceptual and put together in the most “meticulous” way. M.I.C recorded the EP across three sessions, explaining to me that “going to the studio and having everything so rehearsed that I was able to do it in three hours on one day, and then three hours on another” was “such a nice, easy and quick process.”
“You Can Achieve Anything” was created in collaboration with South London based producer Nammy Wams, who is probably best known at this point for his 2021 EP “Paradise South.” It wasn’t a quick link-up, though, as M.I.C tells me that he sat down much later to listen to the instrumentals and was blown away by what he was hearing. “When he sent me those instrumentals, I didn’t even listen to them straight away. It was about a year later, I sat down, and I was like, wow, this guy can really produce.”
So, what is it about those instrumentals that made M.I.C say wow? “He makes things that I couldn’t make… Something about Nammy’s production, it really supercharges the endorphins in my brain.” It almost feels serendipitous that the two would work together, as M.I.C explains how Nammy’s production tag is taken from one of M.I.C’s other loves, the anime One Piece. “The fact that I remember that scene from when I was little, and then he uses that as his tag!” he goes on to exclaim, with a laugh, that him and Nammy “working together is literally a match made in hell.”
Track three from “You Can Achieve Anything” – titled ‘K*rn’ – brings together three generations of emcees in M.I.C, Jawnino and grime legend JME. What was it like to work with such an inspiration, I ask? “I would rank it just before the day I was given a Gameboy Advance with a light so that I could play Pokemon Gold in bed,” he says, before bursting into a laugh as he compares the two days over our zoom chat, “Those two days, I dunno which one to go for, but they’re vying for the win. I think a lot of things in life make me happy, but certain things make me really, really, really happy and it really makes me happy to even know that something can make me that happy.”
While “You Can Achieve Anything” differed in process from M.I.C’s previous work, it still shares the same ethos: creating grime music through a wide lens. Extreme heavy metal bands like Immolation influenced the EP, with M.I.C placing the lyrical themes of those genres in a grime and rap context. “I like how a lot of these bands will have these hilarious, macabre, super disrespectful song titles and lyrics, and you’re just like, wow, I would love to hear this more in rap.”
This far-reaching approach is something that M.I.C takes into each project, as he tells me that “every time I’m recording, I don’t want to make it sound rigid, sound like I’m really adhering to a set of rules. More importantly, a set of rules I didn’t personally make. If I made a set of rules, that’s different. But if I’m making a set of rules that no human being has even told me to follow about making music, music is supposed to be me being free.”
As our conversation winds down, I’m curious as to what M.I.C wanted to present with “You Can Achieve Anything”, and what he would like people to take away from it. He tells me that “If I wanted to do the thing where I don’t make conceptual stuff, I can be the best at that”. But in the moment, he stumbles on a much more poignant thought, explaining to me that “I’m saying you can achieve anything, but I’m really saying it to myself.”
I like how a lot of these bands will have these hilarious, macabre, super disrespectful song titles and lyrics, and you’re just like, wow, I would love to hear this more in rap.”
The Art of Grime 