WORDSPJ Some
CREATIVE DIRECTORS Derrick Odafi & Jessica Rushforth
PHOTOGRAPHER Ray Napoles
STYLIST Sen Tian
STYLIST ASSISTANT Peter Phan
GROOMER Ashley Lee
PRODUCTION New Wave Studios
LA PRODUCER Christian Long
LA PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Tyler Pennington
BTS Santino Gomez
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Derrick Odafi & Emmauel Duru
PROJECT MANAGER Efosa Idubor Williams
PRODUCTION MANAGER Jonni
PHOTOGRAPHER Guled Hassan
PHOTOGRAPHER ASSISTANT Luca Nembhard
STYLIST Zahra Asmail
SET DESIGNER Murdo Hepburn
SET DESIGN ASSISTANTS Joe Harrison
MUA Natalie Messino
HAND MODEL Christie Mpaka
BTS Bet Bettencourt
CREATIVE PRODUCTION, New Wave Studios
NW: Hi Welsey, we want to start right from the beginning - What was playing around the house when you were younger?
WJ: When I was growing up, my dad would just be playing oldies like Curtis Mayfield, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, James Brown. A bunch of good funk, Northern Soul, jazz, blues. I grew up on the harmonies of the Temptations and really warm music.
NW: You seem to be someone with a unique perspective, what kind of child and teen were you?
WJ: As a kid, I was really creative. I would daydream a lot and my teachers used to always say I was never present when I got bored in school. I used to be known as the kid who was daydreaming all the time. The truth was, I wouldn’t have been daydreaming about bullshit back then. I would have been thinking about something that made me escape the room, and I guess that’s what my career is now. I wasn’t a bad kid, I was quiet to be honest but when I was comfortable around people, I was loud and make jokes and was myself. That’s how I am in life anyway, kind of reserved and keeping to myself, I have my own people. I’m really the loud guy in the room unless I’m with my people.
As a teenager, I was focused on making stuff. I wasn’t daydreaming as much, I was trying to have a sense of output. I had a flame to make things. I’ve always had that since I was younger. I remember I used to run home to draw. I would think about something I wanted to draw and then I would want to get home as quick as I could to start it. I had the same thing when I had a job as a teenager where I would want to make music or look for samples.
NW: What were you drawing?
WJ: Anything that grasped my attention. I would always copy then and then insert my own thing into it. If I saw a newspaper with a crazy corn field landscape, I would draw that and put a car there with me and my friends in it. Or, if I saw the way a hand was drawn in the comic book, I would draw the hand. I didn’t have a period of drawing certain things, it was what plucked my attention.
NW: You’re a producer and a writer, did producing start first or songwriting?
WJ: Definitely songwriting, because the idea of producing when I was about 14 to 17 was terrifying. I didn’t have the software apart from Garageband, but I was stubborn with the concept of properly producing. I was scared of it because I valued what it is too much. I got to a point where I started taking songwriting seriously, and I was getting better but knew I couldn’t write the songs that I believed I was capable of writing if I couldn’t produce. It wasn’t worth bothering without trying to learn to produce first because no-one was sending me beats. The only way I could take music seriously and respect what I was doing was fully learning how to produce. When I got 18, I spent a year making bad beats. The second year, they weren’t bad. The third year, they were pretty good, and [by] the fourth, I had my own sound. I was aware of the quality not being there at the start, but I just relentlessly went over it over and over again.
Wesley Joseph Is Resilient Through The Monsoon Of The Music & Film Industry
For Wesley Joseph to realise his concepts, he’s had to become a one-man army. The Walsall-born, London-based artist creates a liquid blend of soul, funk, hip-hop, UK bass, art pop and neo-psychedelia, and every piece of art around it is in service to his crystallised vision. Joseph has his hand in so many facets of his product - songwriting, production, directing, creative direction and photography - that he’s broken down the barriers of each discipline into one singular language of storytelling.
Growing up in a working-class town a half-hour North of Birmingham, Joseph was in an education system that didn’t accommodate his creative mind. He found himself daydreaming in the classroom, “thinking about something that made me escape the room”, as he puts it. He was propelled by creativity from young, from running home after school to draw whatever was on his mind, to summer holidays as a teen spent creating short films with a fully-scripted cast made up of his mates.
Fast-forward to today and he sits as a nominee for ‘Best Independent Mixtape’ for his debut project Ultramarine at the 2022 AIM awards, and a winner of ‘Best Independent Video’ for ‘Thrilla’ the year before.
Above all, care is the biggest virtue to Joseph; according to him, if you have people around you that care just as much as you, financial problems and a lack of industry backing are problems that will be thought around. The proof is in his AIM-winning video: “people assumed ‘Thrilla’ was made with £100,000,” he says, “but it was literally a slither of a percent of that.”
In being the catalyst to his own series of breakthroughs, Joseph has won the support of the revered independent label Secretly Canadian for his new project, GLOW. The project focuses on the interplay between light and dark feelings, such as how conquering unpaved territories leads to moments of self-destruction. He enlisted help from rare collaborators, house music innovator Leon Vynehall and A.K. Paul of the groundbreaking Paul Brothers. World-building is still at the heart of the project, from the new surge of oracular music videos to the album cover which, even with the backing of Secretly Group, he chose to shoot himself.
There was always something deeper Joseph was thinking about that let him escape that classroom. He beats me to pointing out that escapism is what his work provides today.
WORDS Nathan Evans
“As a kid I was really creative - I would have been thinking about something that made me escape the room, and I guess that’s what my career is now.”
Suit, Song of the Mute
Hat, Arist's Own
Girll: Artist's Own
High Neck Jacket, 66 north
Denim jacket, Wood Wood
Jeans, Goomheoa
Belt, Stylist own
Gloves, Goomheo
NW: Reninds us of something you retweeted a tweet a while ago that the US rap game is mad because they laud Nav for making and engineering his own beats while UK artists have to do this out of necessity. Why do you think that goes unnoticed?
WJ: There are beatmaking and rapper scenes in the UK that parallel the dynamics of American rap. There are artist-producers, but they are more in the lane of James Blake or someone that’s more on the artist side.
For me, growing up in a working-class small town, there wasn’t a lot of people making beats. I only really got my shine for making my own beats when I started getting a buzz and people started realising that it was every song I made, I produced. Even to this day, a lot of people don’t know I produce my own stuff. People these days care about the music and if you have produced it all, you will eventually get your flowers. When you look at American rappers who have loads of producers, people assume that everyone here does the same thing. It’s such a producer-rapper culture that sets the standard for Western music, but the reality is there isn’t as big of a scene out here and there are people doing it all themselves. From my experience, for anyone to send you good beats, you have to have proven yourself already or know someone who is trying to come up with you at the same time.
NW: When you moved from Walsall to London, were there any key changes to your surroundings that have inspired you and your music?
WJ: Living on my own and having my own space for the first time was huge, because I could stay up all night making music without it being a problem. For my neighbours, maybe, but as a student at that time, I didn’t really care. I would leave the house at 2am to go have a jam, having that freedom was a big thing. I hadn’t had a city around me that facilitated what I wanted to do either. The amount of people and cultures here in one place is overwhelming. You can be listening to jazz music in Brixton, and then you can go to a dub night, then you go to some open mic rap night, and then you might end up going up on the mic because you were a little waved, then you meet a bass player and have a session the next day. It’s just a big amalgamation of people doing shit. I never had that before.
NW: You studied film, what about that time most refined your skills as a visual artist?
WJ: [Even before studying], my technical skillset was already there from years and years of filming and editing shorts. I did that my whole youth up until that point. What [studying] did give me was a sense of discipline and understanding how to work with other people. It was more about maintaining and protecting and flourishing your vision whilst being put in loads of different environments. I learnt how to elevator pitch while I was at uni because I had to make people believe in ideas all the time to get them on board. When it came time to pitch ideas crystal-clear to companies, I could do that well. I could translate what it is and what the potential could be.
NW: What shorts did you make when you were younger?
WJ: They’re not on YouTube anymore, but I would spend my summer holidays writing scripts, printing them out and getting all my friends to meet up, handing them pieces of paper and giving them characters to play. I would have all the shot lists, and I’d shot it all, edit it all, do special effects… and then I’d put it on YouTube. The ones I was most proud of didn’t even make it to YouTube because I was waiting for the perfect time that never came.
NW: Who inspires you when it comes to visual storytelling?
WJ: To be honest, I don’t know. I’m inspired by a lot of things, I love Jordan Peele, Donald Glover, Kahlil Joseph, Jonas Lindstroem, Steven Spielberg, Tarantino… I couldn’t pin down one thing. It’s also real life [that inspires me]. If I hear a conversation on the bus, in my head I can think that that’s a sick story in the way the two characters interacted with each other.
NW: How do you manage to stretch the budget on your videos to make them look so high-quality? What techniques did you use?
WJ: The short film ‘Pandonomy’ was made on £3,500, and that was a whole film with 35 cast [members]. ‘Martyrs’ was a little more. ‘Thrilla’ and ‘Ultramarine’ were small-budget videos. People assumed ‘Thrilla’ was made with £100,000, but it was literally a slither of a percent of that. It was more about the team, if the team is invested and are prepared to go extra for it, those videos were passion projects for everyone involved. On top of it, we were really smart with how things are done with tricking perception every step of the way. With ‘Thrilla’, for example, the shot with the Angel Boy in the sky, to get a crane to travel to any location is thousands of pounds. But on a weekend when they’re still in the office parking lot, they’re not doing jobs. So we just asked them to shot it in the parking lot.
The shot of me leaning over the lake, if we did it legitimately, we would have a stunt team, a crane, people ready in the water if I fell… instead, we found a lake that isn’t deep and dangerous if I fell and get people to hold me with a rope. It cost no money. It’s more about how far we’re prepared to go because I’m prepared to go all the way. When your team are like that too, you can really move mountains.
NW: The visual for the ‘Cold Summer’ is another strong piece directed by yourself, what was in the magic briefcase?
WJ: [laughs] I can’t say. There will be an exhibition at some point where the briefcase will be glowing and opened.
NW: Your latest single Monsoon continues your musical connection with water, what was behind the concept for that video?
WJ: The concept for that video was about stripping it back to raw imagery and metaphorical iconography. I have my own definitions and meanings to each image and the majority of the pieces relates back to the metaphors in the lyrics. But I wanted to make a video where you could put every single frame in a gallery and you could look at it and take from it your own way.
NW: You’ve really connected musically with Leon Vynehall, how do you two meet?
WJ: We met when I was at the last parts of Ultramarine and I was trying to finish the song ‘Ur_Room’. I was trying to get the drop right and couldn’t quite get it right. Our managers had a conversation about working, and my manager asked me if I wanted to work with him. I’m bad with names so I didn’t know him at first, but then I put his name into my Spotify and I had saved loads of his songs. I went round his house at the time and we made that tune, and off the back of that, we became friends and continued working.
NW: I interviewed Leon last year and you two share a freeform way of making music, it’s very genreless. Do you feel like you get categorised or put in a box?
WJ: I did at the start of the journey. People call me a “hood poet” or a “grime artist that’s conscious” just because they didn’t know what to say it was. My first song ‘Imaginary Friend’, the raps were at 140bpm but the beat was not a grime beat at all and the chords [synths] were James Blake-y and the melodics were jazz chords. It was super annoying when people called me a hood poet. Then we put out ‘Martyrs’ and people were the same but didn’t know who was on the hook. Then I dropped ‘Ghostin’’ and they didn’t know what to say. They labelled me a UK alternative R&B dance guy who can rap. I didn’t like that either, and so I started Ultramarine with ‘The Bloom’, a soul ballad. You can’t say anything after that. Ultramarine was the definition of being undefined. I’m on some Coca Cola shit - it’s distinctive because you don’t know what it is.
“ I started Ultramarine with ‘The Bloom’, a soul ballad. You can’t say anything after that. Ultramarine was the definition of being undefined.”
NW: Another unexpected turn was signing to Secretly, what spoke to you about that label?
WJ: They just got it creatively. They cared. There was a lot of labels and money at the time, but the care wasn’t matched the same way they were. They have a really tasteful roster of artists like Bon Iver, who’s one of my favourite artists, and Moses Sumney.
NW: Let’s discuss the new project, GLOW. How long did it take for you to put it all together?
WJ: It took less time than Ultramarine. The process was way more fluid, because Ultramarine was scary because I was genuinely doing something that was my complete myself [for the first time] and after doing that, I earned the confidence. I knew that people liked me for me, so I needed to follow this out and that’s what I did. I was way less in my head and it was more expression. It took about 7-8 months. I made half of the whole project in 3 weeks, and then the other half was over a long period of time. I had this awakening moment in the middle of that where I knew what was going on, and that was when we made the first half of the project.
NW: What was the concept for the album this time around?
WJ: The feeling I get when I listen to GLOW is a reality of chillness but with a reassuring warmth, like something glowing in the night. It was a therapeutic one for me, every song I needed to make to get it off my chest at the time. I was putting feelings of periods of my life into this thing. The first half is brighter than the second half, but the second half I made first and I was in a darker and more reflective space. I was thinking about the past and things I’ve lost and my perspective on it. One half is grounded in reality and the other is in an escape. Those things together are the glow in the night.
NW: You worked with AK Paul on this project, how was that?
WJ: It’s weird because we’re friends now and we work together. Growing up, I was smoked out listening to Jai Paul and AK Paul for many years. My manager got in touch with him ages ago, and he had heard ‘Thrilla’ a year later and said ‘yo, ‘Thrilla’’s hard, I’m down’. I went to the studio and we made another song that isn’t out, and then I went back a month later with ‘Monsoon’. Me and Dweller made the initial idea and went to AK. He helped me with my vocals and Paul-ified it. He’s amazing at what he does and a good human.
NW: How do you create the detailed soundscapes in your work?
WJ: I spend a lot of time of synths making sounds and patches, hours. Some days I don’t make anything but patches and samples. And then those sounds will pop up in a song, and people will wonder how I made that for that song at that point. I didn’t make it for a specific song, it was just hours and hours into making this folder of sounds and one of them happened to fit in the song. The moments that feel truly considered when it comes to atmospheric stuff, I did not mean for it to happen.
Jacket, 66 North
Denim jacket, Martine Rose x Tommy Hilfiger
Jeans, Martine Rose x Tommy Hilfiger
Belt, Stylist own
Shoes, Stylist own
Sunglasses, Gentle Monster x HB
“The feeling I get when I listen to GLOW is a reality of chillness but with a reassuring warmth.”
NW: How do you create the detailed soundscapes in your work?
WJ: I spend a lot of time of synths making sounds and patches, hours. Some days I don’t make anything but patches and samples. And then those sounds will pop up in a song, and people will wonder how I made that for that song at that point. I didn’t make it for a specific song, it was just hours and hours into making this folder of sounds and one of them happened to fit in the song. The moments that feel truly considered when it comes to atmospheric stuff, I did not mean for it to happen.
NW: Our theme for this issue of New Wave is based on the idea of Resilience, what does that word mean to you?
WJ: When I was making my first music videos, I forgot who said it but a director said it along the way. She said, “resilience triumphs any amount of money”. If you are resilient, you can literally do anything. It’s the difference between what’s in your brain becoming real and it not. If you don’t have resilience, you’re not prepared to get slapped down 20 different times and get back up. It’s more powerful than any asset. It’s the most extreme version of caring. I pitched ‘Thrilla’ for damn near every production company in London, and no-one took it on because we didn’t have enough money. Then we found Blacklight Films and they said ‘let’s do it!’ Same with mixing engineers; before I found Lexxx, I worked with a bunch of different engineers that did not click at all. So many wasted hours and so disheartening, it could have put me off music itself. Then I found Lexxx. He saw something in the music. It’s just resilience - you’ll get to where you need to go, you just don’t stop.
NW: You recently were nominated for Best Independent mixtape for Ultramarine, how did that feel?
WJ: As bad as it sounds, because I’m always appreciative of being nominated and winning stuff, around that period of time I stopped caring about awards. Really, the only win is actual people liking your stuff. Ultimately, I don’t know any of the people on the board for these awards, and I’m not making music for them, either. It’s always nice when they come, but if I don’t get it, I’m never gonna feel a way about it.
NW: What are the biggest difficulties of being independent?
WJ: The biggest difficulties for me would be if I wasn’t multi-faceted. If I didn’t know how to use Photoshop, edited and directed the videos, created the creative campaigns, shot artwork, did the fonts, I would be paralysed to a degree. Truly I was independent for Ultramarine, it was just me and my manager. Because we didn’t have a lot of money, I was doing a lot of the things to make it work. Everyone had more than one job. Now, I’m signed to an independent label, but I can feel that there’s a support network there.
You can’t trick people with art. If they feel something and it’s sincere and outside the box, it doesn’t matter about that major and independent [label] stuff because you’re can be a success regardless. There were artists that had bigger deals that dropped when I dropped Ultramarine, and now Ultramarine has done as well or better as a purely independent release. It’s more about the care and attention put into it rather than the major or independent stuff, for me.
“ If you are resilient, you can literally do anything. It’s the difference between what’s in your brain becoming real and it not.”
