James Massiah is a poet, DJ and musician from South London whose work delves into themes of ethics, mortality and sex. Imaginatively redefining the boundaries of creativity, he has garnered attention from some of the most revered cultural institutions and global brands of our time. We sat down with James on a vibrant day in Streatham Common to talk personal philosophies, being a multi-faceted creative and early road-rap influences.
What sort of environments did you grow up in?
I grew up just down the road in Mitcham, my nearest cousins to me in age lived in here in Streatham and I spent a lot of time at their house. We often went to churches in Balham, Wimbledon and Brixton. At the youth services you’d see more contemporary styles of worship involving drums and bassline grooves whereas at usual services there would be an emphasis on hymns and more traditional forms of worship. I guess I experienced both sides of it you know, people have ideas of black churches being like over the top but that wasn’t really my experience growing up and although it was predominantly black, there were definitely a diverse range of backgrounds in my church.
How was your love for poetry born?
A combination of church and school. Everyone does English in school and there are poetry modules within that which I was really drawn to at the time. You realise you can trigger different emotions in people with the words you use and you kind of start to enjoy it. As far as poetry and church, one of the youth pastors came to my house once and saw a poem I had written in school on the family notice board which he thought I should read in a service, that pretty much kicked off my career as the resident poet of the church. I ended up studying English at university, poetry wasn’t given much space in the curriculum but there was a place for it in church until I became an atheist and then there wasn’t really a place for me anymore in church.
Much of your work focuses on themes of mortality, ethics and sex, what is about such topics that you are drawn to?
I’m really into the school of thought of amoral egoism, self-determination and the idea that there’s nothing absolutely right or absolutely wrong and it’s up to each and every individual to make their own choices within the context of reality. For me there’s a lot of things I didn’t do because I thought they were wrong. For example, I didn’t get with guys or I didn’t take drugs or I didn’t even get with girls, these were things you just didn’t do because it’s wrong. Even beyond being a Christian there’s stuff that’s socially looked down upon. I try to avoid being didactic in my work, but everything an artist does has some sort of reason or philosophy behind it and so even if I’m explicitly saying to someone “don’t go church, do drugs instead” it’s in there subtly, it’s me kind of talking about what I see and talking about the lives of the people I admire and putting it all in a form that’s palatable.
Who would you say has had the biggest impact on you as a poet?
Big influences are EE Cummins; Gertrude Stein, Alice Oswald, George Orwell, Roald Dahl, Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, Kanye West, Jay Electronica, Francis and the Lights, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, George Carlin, Dave Chappelle, Richard Prior, Eddie Murphy… But the person I can say who’s impacted me beyond their writing is Ayn Rand, her ideas really influenced me. Mostly through watching her interviews on the internet though one of my favourite books is Anthem by Ayn Rand, it’s almost a precursor to 1984 by Orwell, Rand wrote a lot about egoism and the idea of it being rational to do something in your own interest.
You’ve mentioned Charlie Dark as an early mentor, ‘towing the line between music and poetry’, was he influential in you branching out into music and being a DJ as well?
I met Charlie around 2008/09, he was doing the Nike Run Dem Crew in Shoreditch, I was chilling with Skinny Macho at a point in time when he was already going to all the early Boiler Room, NTS stuff and all the funky house raves in South, he was there at the centre of it all and I was sort of beside him throughout this time. I knew Charlie as a poet primarily and Skinny was my best friend who was getting into DJing so I was sort of bouncing between them as we were all in the same running club and would always end up at the same after-parties or whatever else. My dad had shown me Benjamin Zephaniah and John Cooper Clark videos so I was aware of poets that had done stuff before but I guess in a more recent time Charlie Dark was definitely a major influence.
You’ve been commissioned by Nike, Selfridges, Tate modern, The Guardian and many other big organisations, does poetry play a role in the world of modern marketing?
It definitely does. Since I’ve started doing adverts a lot more brands have seen and referenced them and people have got more work through that. In a weird way, working for these agencies and corporations has helped me develop my writing skills because I find myself thinking more about why I might be wording a sentence a certain way. The funny thing with many brands is that they approach me not because they care about my work or even know it but because of how I look and who I’m associated with and they think it’s cool to have that as part of their image too. Everyone is using everyone for everything all the time, which leads back to the whole idea of not caring about such things because I’m getting to a cheque, even if it wasn’t a cheque its more just about your life and what you want to take from the situation.
You’ve mentioned Wiley and Dizzee Rascal as influences and in previous interviews have mentioned being a fan of early road rap, how does your work intertwine with those genres and your experiences from that era?
My next project is going to be referencing all that. My last project was called Euthanasia Party and it was about a bunch of people who died in 2007, in that period of my life I saw the craziest shit and it really impacted me so Euthanasia Party served to cement that time. With my next project I want to re-create a lot of the videos, styles and characters that I saw in those early road-rap days, they were so dynamic and a lot of them now, for drugs or whatever else, are in prison or have lost their minds and have been completely forgotten. To me they were some of the most important poets, artists and filmmakers of that time. I’ll be out doing a set playing Travis Scott or whatever but in my head I’m thinking I just wanna play some Tempman! (laughs) I never do; I think I’m going to start though.
What themes will you explore in your next project and when will it be dropping?
I’m still deciding what the name will be but this next project is about someone who dies in the future and the idea that someone’s life can be carried on even after they’ve passed and how people immortalise them. When someone dies you put their name on a t shirt or you put their name in your bio on social media, I want to really unpack that and think about the idea of living forever and how would it be if someone’s social media profile took on a life on their own or if there was an algorithm that allowed the profile to live on. What if some young gangster who died had this Facebook profile that kept updating itself even after they’ve gone almost like a second consciousness? I feel like one of those rappers in interviews always pushing back my projects but I feel like it has to be this year, it’s got to be this year man. Do you know what? I want it to be done by the end of the month actually… actually, I might do it this weekend fuck it!
http://www.jamesmassiah.com/
https://www.instagram.com/jamesmassiah/
Interview: Nicholas Borghesi
Portraits: Jake Ranford & Joseph McDermott
