Northerner Melé has long had a Southern leaning – he’s been melding southern hip hop snares & rhythms with a distinctive but undefinable UK sound since he started out producing as a teenager. His track ‘Lego’, released on his sophomore EP for Mixpak, brought inspiration for the first volume for our newly released Mixpak Pressure compilation, leading us to lock 10 producers all with a common investment in the dirty south sound.
Fresh from the success of ‘Beamer’, we met up in a London diner to talk about ‘Stage 2’, and find out how deep into the deep south he goes.
So let’s jump straight in with your track from Mixpak Pressure – ‘Stage 2’ – how did that come about?
I made [Stage 2] literally a few days after I made the ‘Beamer’ instrumental so I was still kinda trying to mess about with big pads and chords. [Stage 2] one of those things I was playing out now and again; it was just another track I made. But then I started sending it out and people really liked it, Dre [Skull] really liked it, and when he said he was doing a rap influenced compilation I thought it’d be perfect for it. We tried to add a bit of a vocal to it but it didn’t really work with the track so we decided to keep it instrumental.
And it’s an extension of your obsession with computer games?
Yeah. I had actually planned to do a Sega mixtape – I dunno if i’ll still do it, maybe I will – all based on Streets of Rage and Sega music, that I was gonna remix or make beats out of and then maybe get guests on it. ‘Stage 2’ was one of the main tracks that was gonna be on there, and then other things came up and I had no time to do it.
So when you were making the track was the southern rap thing in the back of your mind?
Yeah yeah. I think a lot of people have been making southern rap influenced stuff lately. But I think I’ve always had that influence, when I first started I always had southern snares in my music, which I use in like every single track, so I always had that southern rap thing in there anyway.
Do you have an 808 in your studio?
No, I wish I did. Actually for the ‘Beamer’ video we had one, I think it was Floating Points who lent it to us, but I don’t see the point in buying one for like £2,000 when you can just download the samples.
So what kind of Southern Rap were you or are you into?
To be honest when I was really into hip hop I was into East Coast stuff more, I was into Ludacris and some of the southern stuff but I wasn’t deep into it like I was into East Coast. Since then I’ve started listening to old Three 6 Mafia and T.I., and Juicy J stuff more recently.
How do you feel the southern sound has influenced your style in general?
I suppose in the beginning I was just trying to take different things and put them in music in a way they hadn’t heard before. I was making Drum n Bass and putting Southern Hip Hop snares in it, it just didn’t work!
Let’s see how deep into the deep south you are then…which do you prefer, chicken and waffles or fish and chips?
Chicken and waffles
Crunk or Donk?
Donk!
DJ Screw or DJ EZ?
EZ
UKG or UGK?
That is the best question I’ve ever been asked. UKG.
Missy Elliot or Ms Dynamite?
Missy Elliot
If you could have produced a track from rap history what would it be?
I think probably ‘Try Again’ by Aaliyah. I remember hearing that and I was really into hip hop but it was still like nothing I’d heard before, even when I listen to it now it sounds weird as a beat. I wish Timbaland would go back to doing that kind of stuff. I dunno if he will. That track was the one!
What do you think about trap?
I know everyone’s hating on it, but there’s some really really good stuff – Flosstradamus are the obvious ones, Baauer as well. It’s funny the way it’s come around, it’s like EDM. As soon as things get big, people are quick to like say ‘oh i don’t like that’…I don’t know if people think it’s dubstep, or if they really know the difference in general. But it’s good cos it means you can get away with playing an Asap Rocky track in your set. I like it, but I don’t like the word. It’s the same as moombahton, when that came out, people weren’t really into it.
You mean it’s useful in a bpm way too?
Yeah cos when I DJ I usually play around 140 bpm but I like to go up to jungle sometimes so it’s perfect, right in the middle. That’s why I made ‘Beamer’ really, so I could go from the grimey stuff to jungle and hip hop, a transition for my sets.
Crunk isn’t far off from a mix between techno and hip hop – which is pretty close to what you do, in your production and your sets?
Yeah I’ve always listened to a lot of techno and I bring a bit of everything into what I do, but it can end up sounding like a big mess. When I first started out DJing and was still trying to find my feet it was a bit all over the place and didn’t really know where to fit everything. But now I think I’m getting there and know where to put things.
What is it that pins all these different things together for you?
I suppose it’s just electronic, innit. Mostly early 2000s productions. For the hip hop stuff too, like Aaliyah and Timbaland, that’s really electronic and he was using a lot of sounds that techno guys would use, acid stuff that no-one in hip hop had used at all. Hip hop now is really electronic too.
Is part of the fun for you trying to mix all of it things together?
Yeah. It can get a bit stressful sometimes trying to mix everything together cos one day I’ll want to make a house track and then the next it’ll be a grime track, and so I don’t really know where I fit in to a kind of scene, so I have been trying to make more music for my sets. I took ‘The House of God’, which is an old techno tune, I did a re-edit of that for my sets which I’m still playing out a lot. Every single genre that I play I try and make a track of my own that’ll fit in so I can play it out.
So with DJing you can scratch that itch in a way – play everything that you’re into?
Definitely. Depending on where I’m playing. The weekend before last I was playing 2 hours at Creamfields, I started off with house, played loads of Ibiza classics then went into grime. Throughout the 2 hours I basically crossed everything I’m into in the dance music world.
Is that something you value in DJing? What do you think makes a good DJ now?
Selection is really important. Too many DJs now are too scared about playing to the crowd or playing something that might be on the line of being too much, I’ve seen a lot of DJ – which is fine, it’s fair enough – they’ll play a straight up house or a techno set for 2 hours, and I know that’s their thing but I like to do something different to that. Like Jackmaster, he’s really good for mixing things up.
So do you try and deliberately mix in the old stuff with the newer weirder stuff, so people in the crowd basically don’t realise what’s happening?
Yeah, kind of. If I get an obscure track I really wanna play then I mix it with something like Armand van Helden so I’ll just mix it out of that to keep the momentum going and people will be really going for it to a really weird song.
Is that what you’ve been doing since you started out DJing?
I got decks when I was 13, I was just collecting hip hop and going to HMV and Virgin Megastores. My mum’s friend’s son sold me these decks and a load of techno vinyl and I didn’t know what it was. I thought you’d just scratch and that’s how you’d DJ, just mix techno out of hip hop and then I started getting into garage and house and grime and those were the only records I had, so I started just mixing them all together.
Do you still collect vinyl?
No…I wish I did. You know what, I sold it all to my mate for like £20 in the last year of school. There was so much good stuff in there, and I thought ‘I’m not gonna use it, I’m just gonna use CDs’, and I thought I was just gonna be a producer and that was it. Then I wished I hadn’t sold them.
So you’re fully into Djing in itself, you’re not just using it as a side to your producing?
Sometimes I think I enjoy DJing a lot more than I enjoy producing, I enjoy just getting out there and doing it rather than sitting inside in a studio and stressing out. Even if I was gonna do an album or something, I’d still have to be DJing, I’d get so bored. Sometimes I wish I could have two weeks off and then when I do I just get so bored and want to get back out there!
And you’ve got your own studio in London now?
Yeah I built a studio in the loft of where I’m living now [see above photo]. It’s not ideal but it’s better than a bedroom. I found I was getting nothing done in a bedroom.
Things must have changed for you since you moved to London – did you used to go out a lot in Liverpool?
There was this one night I first went to when i was like 15, which might have gone now, and I think James Lavelle from Unkle was DJing and I think that was the first time I heard techno out. We just started going there all the time. [Liverpool] was quite limited in terms of what you could do there.
Did that mean that you spent a lot of time at home, producing?
Yeah and none of my really good friends who I went to school with were in to the same music as me at all. Finding people to go out with was hard. They’re kinda getting into it now but they were always just into anything. Only one of my mates was into the same thing as me so we’d just go to everything together.
What are you working on right now?
Right now I’m working on a second single. I’m just working through what direction we should take and whether we should get a vocalist or not. Tt’s gonna be really exciting. And we’re just trying to carry on the momentum. The next track will be a bit different though, I’d like to go more into the club world a bit with this one.
Buy ‘Stage 2’ here
Words: Suze Webb
Photo via Instagram
