Roll Deep, one of the original crews on the grime scene

One of the original crews on the grime scene, Roll Deep, return with a brand new double A-side single, ‘Moving In Circles’ and ‘Club 7’. Catch A Vibe visited their studio and sat down with two members of the Bow collective, producer and DJ, Target, and MC, J2K, to find out more about the new singles and what they have in the pipeline.

Your new double A-side single is ‘Moving In Circles’ and ‘Club 7’. What was the main theme and concepts of both songs?
DJ Target: I think Moving In Circles is one of those songs which is out of the normal box for us. The studio opposite us, well they’ve moved out now, it used to be Tippa Irie’s, who is a well-known reggae artist. We used to go and vibe over there and they used to come and vibe over here. One day Danny [Weed] and G Vibes, who is Tippa Irie’s music partner, started making a couple of beats. We gave the Moving In Circles beat to Kivanc, who’s not in Roll Deep, but he has a studio downstairs. He came up with the chorus, the hook and the first verse, and then Breeze and Scratchy just added their verses. It’s just one of them songs that comes from nowhere; it’s something very different from what we usually do.
J2K: Club 7 is more of a track for our core audience, something for the underground. The instrumental itself was getting a lot of love on the circuit anyway, through pirate [radios], so it was just natural to do a song for it. It was produced here by Wiley.

Why did you guys decide to release a double A-side instead of a regular single?
J2K: To cater for everyone.
DJ Target: ‘Cause we’ve  obviously  got more fans on the grime scene, where we’re known from but  we’ve also  got a  few mainstream fans, so we didn’t want to  cater for one side  and leave the other one out, ‘cause people are always accusing you of doing one thing and leaving out another. So we thought, “we’ve got two strong tracks so let’s just put them together to cater to both”.

You said that you wanted to cater to both of your audiences? Now that a lot of grime artists are infusing electro, house, and other musical genres to create an unnamed-as-yet subgenre, do you think Grime music is slowly fading away?
DJ Target: Nah I wouldn’t say fading away…
J2K: Nah! It’s got too much energy: grime is like the only music that has a scene in this country, there’s no other scene for nothing else. There’s no r&b or hip hop scene. That’s why you’ll see hip hop artists, when they’re putting out their stuff, they’ll do a little faster tempo or something, to kind of grab a little crowd. They understand the power of the music.
DJ Target: It’s becoming not just the sound of the music; it’s the whole thing around it, like hip hop. If you take hip hop twenty years ago, it all sounded the same. Now hip hop can be any kind of sound. I think that’s what grime is kind of going.
J2K: There are so many influences that are coming in. Like hip hop’s got r&b and pop influences now.

Apart from anyone in Roll Deep, who are you feeling at the moment UK Urban wise?
J2K: At the moment I’m feeling Wretch 32, he’s my favourite at the moment.
DJ Target: I’m hearing a lot of good stuff, so it’s hard for me pick any.

I understand that you have shot the video for Moving In Circles with a kind of Hollywood-esque theme to it….
J2K: It’s got a cinematic feel to it; I wouldn’t say Hollywood [laughs]. But it definitely does have that feel as opposed to a performance video.

Who came up with the concept? Was it the directors, or yourselves?
DJ Target: The directors. They came up with the concept and we kind of pitched in our little ideas and helped out where we could. It was more or less their vision to do all of that stuff.

What has the future got in store for Roll Deep? Is anyone within the group doing a solo project at the moment?
DJ Target: “Is anyone not?” is a better question! Everyone’s just doing their own thing at the moment, trying to fit in group work and solo work. Obviously as we’re here, we have to talk about our own projects. I’ve got a production album coming out, Aim High Volume 4, with  Danny [Weed].
J2K: And I’m all over it! [laughs]
DJ Target: He’s on it, the rest of Roll Deep’s on it, Wiley, Kano, Ghettz, be Scorcher, Wretch, Chipmunk, and Giggs. Everyone is on it! Then J2K will be working on his own stuff…
J2K: Yes, my stuff is  scheduled for May, Wake Up it’s called and it’s unique because it comes out on micro SD cards that go straight into your phone, I’ve just got distribution on that.
DJ Target: The rest of them are working on stuff at the moment so look out for that. Everyone else’s CDs from Roll Deep, all the usual faces, they’re all doing solo projects, mixtapes, EPs, albums, popping up on other people’s things as well.
J2K: Loads of other work going on, [we] got a lot of collaborations with other people.
DJ Target: We’ll probably bring out another album towards the end of the year.

Moving In Circles (featuring  Kivanc)/Club 7  is out now and available on Roll Deep’s latest  album, Return of the Big Money Sound.
http://www.myspace.com/rolldeepofficial

Pic: Hyperlaunch (PR)