What brought you all together?
DJ Nonames: The love of music and debauchery.
Orifice Vulgatron: It was the love of hip hop that brought us together really.
Metropolis: Yeah, back in the day I listened to a lot of deep underground east coast shit. Then I met Pav, and he was into the same shit, like Company Flow as an example. We just really vibed and connected on that level. We've just been banging out tunes since.
What has been your biggest struggle?
Orifice Vulgatron: We all have our individual struggles, like with the fact that we can't operate in society as "normal" people. A huge struggle is that we love underground music, and we like doing what we want to do. If you look at our music as if it was a school report, we have deadlines. Then you hand in the homework, and they say something like "it's very smart, it has potential to be amazing, but you need to conform".
Metropolis:Yeah, and we just can't do it. Our real struggle is conforming.
Orifice Vulgatron: We do what we want to do, and the three of us individually do what we want to do. It's cool though; back in the day I would look at groups like Non Phixion for example. They don't have to do all the radio shit. They do what the fuck they want to, and they travel around the world doing it.
Who have been your greatest influences?
Metropolis: Max is one. El-P is another one.
DJ Nonames: All the classic hip hop shit. Redman, Biggie, Wu-tang Clan.
Orifice Vulgatron: There was a point where hip hop was the hottest music in the world, and it was about pure skills and who was the most out-there guy. For me, when Busta Rhymes came out, it flipped the whole fucking game.
Metropolis: From leaders of the new school shit, when you used to hear Busta Rhymes go off, and you would be like "Busta's ill". Then he flipped up when he came out with 'Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See'. I remember hearing that tune and being like, "who's this..oh shit! It's Busta!".
It took a while for rap to become mainstream in a sense, but it's a beautiful thing. Now, you see guys like Kendrick Lamar, for example; that is an underground dude who is fucking blowing up everywhere.
Can you tell me a bit about Rag 'n' Bone Man?
Orifice Vulgatron: Rags is old school. He's basically the guy who came up in a similar way through his love of drum and bass music. He was the MC at all the shows in Brighton. He was also a rapper and a junglist at the same time. Rag 'n' Bone man blew up world wide. He signed a deal with Columbia Records about a year and a half to two years ago, and kept doing all the shit he wanted to.
Metropolis: And he still fully supports the rap scene.
DJ Nonames: He'll put his support acts on, and he decides who performs at the show. He gets to do exactly what he wants.
Orifice Vulgatron: Even Pyramid Stage; it's one of the hottest shows on this fucking planet -- he still brings out his fucking boys and does a rap show.
How do you maintain originality and authenticity with your sound?
DJ Nonames: It's because we are always interested in new shit. We're lucky to be in a place with people we know, and geographically where we are in London, with all the different shows we get to play. We get to mix with a whole bunch of different MCs, different producers, different people in general. We don't really fit into one box, we are always fertilizing.
Orifice Vulgatron: If we tried to do what other people were doing, it would sound fake. Like if we tried to do some UK Drill shit, it wouldn't sound right.
Metropolis: It's weird though, because now in the rap game a lot of people are busting the same flows. You've got all of these guys in America like 2 Chainz; where he does it one way, but then you've got some cat from Manchester flip that same flow, and in a way it's just different. It's his own in a different way.
For us, the flow is just a means of approaching a track. When you look at a beat, you ask "how do we approach this beat?" or "what can I do to get the most out of this beat?". It doesn't really matter. You just fucking approach it. I think it's our personalities and the things we want to talk about that makes it individual for us. It's not necessarily down to anything more than that.