Loyle Carner started his career in hip hop aged seventeen, as a way to help his mum pay rent. Six years later he's been nominated for The Mercury Prize and two Brit Awards, overcoming ADHD and dyslexia in the process. He talked to RNZ Music's Tony Stamp backstage at Laneway Festival.
Photo: Supplied
“I’m quite hyperactive, but I’m quite laid back also.”
It’s true: Loyle Carner is simultaneously the most relaxed person in the room, and the most energetic.
Backstage at Laneway in shorts and trainers, he’s taking the hustle of the media room in stride. But once he gets chatting it’s like he can’t get the words out fast enough.
There’s a lot to talk about. In 2017 his debut Yesterday’s Gone was nominated for the coveted Mercury Prize, and he’s up for British Male Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act at this year’s Brit Awards.
I ask how he arrived at his distinctive, slightly melancholy style of hip hop. His hands, constantly fidgeting, tap the table as he tells me “the music is relaxed, but [my rapping is] the hyper bit.
“That’s just how it sounds in my head. My album is how my head sounds… or how my house sounded when I was twenty one.”
He’s twenty three now, and two years seems like a long time ago. Loyle grew up in the South London suburb of Croydon with his working-class mother and credits her eclectic music taste with helping him find his sound.
“There was jazz, funk, and soul, but then there was also folk music, like Bob Dylan, and then there was also some David Bowie, and some Oasis and what not. All real storytellers, but all quite melancholic”.
Born Benjamin Coyle Larner (his stage name is a spoonerism, a nod to the fact that he is dyslexic), he was seventeen when fate stepped in. His dad passed away and his mum needed help paying the bills.
“I was like ‘everyone says I’m alright at this rap thing, maybe I’ll give it a go for real’. I started playing shows, kind of accidentally became a rapper, and now here I am… in New Zealand.”
He’s beaming when he says that last part, suddenly conveying the enormity of the situation he finds himself in, and the depth of his gratitude.
Later on the Laneway stage, he’s blown away by the size of the crowd, which has swollen considerably for his early afternoon set. He tells the fans how much he appreciates them, how much he loves the country, how much he loves his mum, and his friends, and so on.
Search for Loyle Carner online and in most of the photos he’s smiling. He tells me he still has his fair share of troubles, but his music (appropriately dubbed ‘confessional’ by GQ magazine) serves as a kind of therapy.
“One of the first songs I put out, ‘BFG’, is about my late father. I didn’t want to put it out. I was embarrassed, because I was obviously quite upset.
“I said to my DJ ‘I can’t put this out. I made it to get it off my chest; I don’t need people to hear it.’
“He said ‘Yo, you don’t understand how many people will feel the way you feel.’
“So we put it out. And literally since then I’ve been inundated with people saying ‘I feel the same. Thank you for vocalising the way that I feel.’”
In fact Loyle’s music has resonated with people around the globe. He tells me about wandering the streets of Singapore at 2am, unable to sleep. Some skaters approached him: “Whoa, you’re Loyle Carner!”
I comment that must have blown their minds.
“It blew my mind more!" he says.
“I’m just a little kid from Croydon, man. From South London. And there are people in Singapore who want to chat to me. So it’s equal. It’s mutual mind blowing.”
Tony Stamp, Loyle Carner, and Yadana Saw backstage at Laneway Festival 2018. Photo: RNZ
