Get To Know: Jordy

New Wave is back with another ‘Get To Know’ feature but this time around we introduce the Tottenham hailed artist Jordy.

Jordy has had a busy few months. We’re talking, writing and recording his debut EP alongside working on new releases with the multidisciplinary collective Vibbar. Through all the noise and chaos, he chose to adopt a tunnel vision approach to his creativity resulting in a lineup of new music for us to take in. At the time of our conversation he was gearing up to announce the release date for his EP SMH and to share the music video for the lead single Cherry B. He admits to feeling small bouts of nerves before the announcement but nonetheless he remains optimistic through our conversation.

With this new project in the pipeline I was curious to know how the recent isolation posed its challenges to him from an artist’s perspective, he says: “It made me think more creatively as opposed to going for the lazy or obvious options that were available before the pandemic… I can’t just have a listening party. I've got to think of different things but I’ve had fun doing it. I do think it’s also made everything a bit more even in that the bigger artists and the smaller artists have to use the same means because we’re all at home.”

Born and raised in Tottenham, Jordy soon moved to Essex which marked the turning point for him and his music. Prior to this move, he would soak up the sounds of UK garage from his cousins, who are now his longtime collaborators and producers, as they took turns spinning decks; but it was the moment he heard Ludacris’ hip hop classic Rollout that he knew he had to start rapping.

However, Jordy’s refined delivery and straight-talking bars were a long time in the making. It was through experimenting with different sounds, even if they were styles that he emulated from the other rappers he admired and putting himself through an artistic trial and error that he found the formula to the fully-formed sound we get from him today, he tells me, “This was when I first started to find my ability, I realised that my rapping voice is boring, it’s just monotonous so I added melody to it so it sounded like I’m singing and I quickly made that something I wanted to add.” Jordy’s style remains consistent but no two songs ever sound the same, in fact he has grown to be an artist that is notable for switching his flows within a track but never sounding too disjointed or out of place. If anything it's an exciting display of his creativity and his ability to create a well rounded moment of storytelling through his music.

After making the move to Essex the change in environment took a toll on Jordy’s approach to making music, forcing him to step outside of what he knows and into a fresh way of perceiving the world around him. “In Tottenham I wasn’t recording anything anyway and I used to write stuff but it had no substance, it was just them classic grime bars that you’d hear back in the day - ‘I’m gonna punch you up deh deh deh’ - meant nothing. And then I came here and I was still growing and I was still doing them bars but it was a different experience to being in Tottenham.” This experience made him pay attention to the racial differences compared to living in London which sometimes lead to conflict, but to Jordy it was all a means for character building which, in turn, has shaped him into the gregarious individual he is today.

He admits that it’s also part of the reason why he’s been able to collaborate with so many staple names in the industry so far, spanning from grime veteran Ghetts to artist and producer Tiggs Da Author and Kojey Radical. He tells us, “I think good chemistry is important, I know people I want to work with but I’ve never met them so I can’t send [tracks] to them, I have to meet them first and build a rapport. That’s for me! Some people might find that it works another way but I like to know the person I’m working with as a human first and then we can work as an artist cos even if I like you as an artist you might be a terrible human being and I just think I don’t want to work with you so that’s important.”

With an in depth pool of experience in a short space of time Jordy is still looking to expand his repertoire of collaborative work, he drops hints of a song in the air with London rapper and wordsmith A2 and mentions “there’s conversations being had with many many fantastic artists, a lot of people I look up to”.

Rap has always been pulling Jordy in this direction, he momentarily takes us back to the first time he ever wrote a track which funnily enough was a diss track, he reveals: “It was to a boy in my school who raps too but I always rapped better he just recorded his raps. He dissed me one day in the summer holidays and I got it via MSN and people were going ah Jordy you’re dead, I couldn't believe it cos it was pants so I had to call my cousins and say ‘yo just let me in this one time let me record for this boy man’. I was probably 14, I smoked him and I remember all the schools in the borough were hearing about it. That was different and I felt great walking into school that day, I think that’s when I thought yeah this feeling is good man making music ain’t bad.”

There’s only a number of weeks left till the release of the much anticipated EP and the social media buzz of Jordy supporters speaks for itself. After an extended pause and as we are in the cusp of summer it’s only right that he provides the vibes for our long-promised motives as well as our quiet moments of introspection. He describes the EP as an experience that not only shows his sonic range but is a raw display of his emotions which is why it takes the name Shake My Head or SMH: “I use that term all the time on twitter or on text like shake my head.” He tells me, “I use it in good times, bad times, funny times and the past year has been like a whole shake my head experience so it's just a broad title on what a whole weird year it's been for me and maybe everyone else.” After hearing that one track in the project took 18 drafts till it reached its final form, Jordy gave an insight into the inner workings of the EP, revealing “[Therapist] was probably the longest, the idea was started in 2017… We shelved it, came back to it and fine tuned it.” The rest of the tracks had a similar outcome in that the sound it started with is different to what we’ll be streaming, one song in particular is a bold example of this. Placed in the centre of the tracklist is the amapiano-style groove titled Feel Right Now which he reveals “wasn’t even that sort of sound, it had trap drums and it was supposed to be like a Bryson Tiller-esque type thing. I’m glad we took it there because that’s probably my favourite song even though it changes everyday.” It’s no secret that nowadays anyone can put out music without much thought towards the musicality and quality of what’s being consumed, Jordy even attests to making his own fair share of what he calls “fast food music” but now that has changed; “I want to listen to my stuff in four years from now, even two years from now and it won’t feel like ugh what the hell was I talking about or like the lyrics are out of date, stuff like that is so important for me.”

As our conversation circles to a close, it’s clear that this year will see Jordy grow from strength to strength. He touches on his rap collective Vibbar having a project landing not too long after his EP but reluctant to give away a specific date he settles for hinting that this too will be a summertime drop. While we count down the days till SMH lands all that's left to do is soak up the teaser tracks that Jordy drops ahead of time. Stream Cherry B and the recently released final teaser 'Die 4 The Bro' below: