The Tyseley-based performer speaks to Jonathan Coste about having his songs rapped back to him in public, his evolution and identity as an artist — and his highly anticipated new releases for 2024.
It’s 27th January 2023, and rapper Jaycen Spades‘s first extended play, ‘Tyseley Resident’, has just been released on streaming platforms. The production of a first complete body of work represents a hugely significant milestone for any musician, and for Jaycen this is no exception — although he was thousands of miles above the ground at the time of its release…
“When it dropped I was on a plane back from Tenerife to Nottingham and I was with my friends. They were all listening to the EP on the plane and when [we] got off they were like, ‘This is so sick bro…’ That feeling was just mad.”
He wears the memory with a beaming grin: the culmination of a burgeoning musical endeavour, quite literally taking flight.
Yet, it is now, a year on from project’s release, that he can confidently say: “I feel like this is just the start.”
Three years before the EP’s release, and while still in college, Jaycen released his first solo song with an accompanying music video filmed in Tyseley.
The drill record ‘South Brum’ racked up over ten thousand views on YouTube — not bad for an eighteen-year-old finding his feet within the industry.
The song still gets the biggest buzz from a crowd when he performs it at a show — but can sometimes lead to some awkward interactions:
“I remember I was in a nightclub in Nottingham and some guy recognised me and started rapping the song back to me word for word. And I was just stood there…”
Despite the song’s success and viral popularity he rejects the idea of making similar songs:
“I feel like I’ve kind of leaned away from the whole drill scene ‘coz it’s a bit… I don’t want to really hear people talking about stabbing each other for three minutes on a track.”
Jaycen acknowledges that finding a clear sonic direction has been an undulating process. Although he is proud of the songs he released while at university in Nottingham, his return home to Tyseley has resulted in a clearer focus.
“What I have been recording [back home] sounds more serious and more professional. My music at university felt very uni-centric. They were songs that felt like short-term properties.”
Key to Jaycen’s recent successes is the relationship with his producer Love George, who he regards as a guiding presence helping him to unlock his potential as an artist:
“He’s taught me a lot. He wants to put me on beats that contrast my voice because my it’s quite dark and menacing. We are working on a lot of chopped samples and I’ve been trying to stretch the bounds of my writing and tell some powerful stories.”
It is apparent that the words in his music matter dearly to him, and Jaycen explains how his song-writing process has adapted over time:
“I used to try to zone in when I’d write lyrics, and whilst the songs don’t write themselves, I realised they’re also not meant to be written. It has to actually come from a place of purity; you have to feel something within you when you write. If you have to force it there’s no point.”
The role of environment remains intrinsically connected with his identity as an artist:
“Even walking around Tyseley brings me inspiration. It’s a very industrial place: there’s a big bus station where all the buses and most of the trains from the city centre come here at night… and all the old railways and factories.
“I feel like if you walk around Tyseley and listen to my music you would [say]: ‘Okay, this is why it sounds like that’, especially my most recent stuff.”
His return home has coincided with the release of a consistent stream of singles (one dropped each month from September to November, all produced by Love George) and there’s a renewed buzz around Jaycen as an exciting figure within the underground rap scene in Birmingham. So what can expectant fans look forward to in 2024?
Jaycen expects a double single release at the start of the year which will also mark his very first production credit:
“Yeah that should be a little moment for me as my first time producing. The songs have like a wintery sound… they still have that dark element, it’s more a mood that I’m evoking.”
As our conversation approaches a natural end, it becomes clear that the past deliberations about where to take his sound have been replaced with a meticulous attention to detail — and Jaycen’s self-confidence as an ambitious musician.
“I would say I’m an architect: I direct all the videos, and when I go to sessions I am very hands on. Sometimes I can get into arguments because it needs to sound how it does in my head. But I know now that I have the right people around me. I feel like this is just the start.”