A Heart that Can’t be Caged

Written by: Jimmy Wah – Sense Music Media

At the beginning of lockdown, who would have thought that a 30-year-old father of two from Oldham, England would be dropping rhymes that speak to the hearts of so many? Not even the man himself could have predicted the overwhelmingly positive reception. Talking to UK-CRAIGIE from his home in the silence of the midnight hours, we were given the opportunity to listen to the thoughts behind the lyrics.

Craig Anderson is a man of humble beginnings who began writing hip-hop tunes as a means of expressing himself as a teenager. Now, with the experience of life as his canvas and a heart of gold as his brush, the rhymes are now giving a voice to those who need more than a predictable beat and self-indulgent bluster of notoriety. When asked about what set his rapping apart from other artists, Craig laid it all to bare.  

“I used to use music very much as a coping mechanism when I was younger. I wouldn’t even write songs specifically, I’d just write how I felt, which would just come out in poetry form. A lot of the hip hop that was out in the mainstream was about guns and gangsters and lavish lifestyles and drug-dealing but one day when I was about 11 or 12 I heard this insane song by KANYE WEST called ‘All Falls Down’…”

WEST has been getting a lot of negative coverage in the media of late with his presidential antics that have put a very sour taste in the mouth of the public and damaged his reputation in many ways; but there was once a charismatic charm to his individuality. Craig tells it best.

“I heard the vocal sample and the way that he was rapping and It spoke to something inside of me. He’s got these pink polo shirts on and he’s rapping about his feelings and really embracing who he is and that was the first real moment that gave me that awakening. It made me feel like ‘There’s a place for me here, I can do that and I can tell my story. I can do this and get these feelings and these thoughts out in that kind of style.’”

In spite of his limitations, this is what set Craig on the forward moving hip-hop journey, affording him a unique perspective that has given birth to his originality.

“That’s when I bought a terrible, TERRIBLE microphone. It was horrendous – it must have been – oh mate it was so cheap... It was dreadful. I bought a little laptop and got ‘Audacity’ (Karaoke program) and I ripped those beats off YouTube. It was like a baptism by fire, for the first three or four years it was dreadful, I was making the most horrendous music… It was only when my eldest daughter was born that I started to take things really seriously. It was one of those moments where you’re at a crossroads and you think ‘It’s time to grow up and take this seriously and have a real crack and a real shot at turning this into a career, something that I can do for a living, or just put the microphone down and get a 9 to 5 job and live a regular life” That was never really an option to be honest with you.”

As you’ll hear from the punchy vocal delivery of UK-CRAIGIE’s lyrics, he definitely knows how to rap with flow. There must be more than just KANYE WEST influencing his style.

“I listen to a really wide array of music. In terms of hip-hop, JOE BUDDEN is another massive influence. Him and KANYE are probably my two biggest influences. JAY-Z is another influence – I love how he can so effortlessly tell a story. It feels like JAY-Z just sets a microphone up and is good to go.. He could rap to the weather or to the news and I’d still be hooked. He could just read the ingredients off the back of a box of cereal and you’d still be like “Oh wow that’s great! It’s what? How many grams of sugar?? Oh my God.. did he really just say that?” You know? He could just sell that to you. Aside from that, my biggest influences musically are groups with a bizarre front -man or a bizarre singer like The Smiths, I really like Morrisey and the things that he does, LANA DEL REY, ALANIS MORISSETTE and how personal her lyrics are.”

There’s definitely an authenticity of Craig’s work really shines through in his lyrics, as one spin of his latest album I Can’t Sleep will show you.

“People like ALANIS MORISSETTE who’ve got this absolute transparency and that’s something that I really wanted to bring over. I sense a real opening there to do something different. A lot of hip-hop is about hiding away those vulnerabilities and deflecting them by saying ‘Don’t focus on my worst traits, look at the cars that I’ve got!’ Like It doesn’t matter that we’re all here one minute and then gone the next - it doesn’t matter that life is fragile and life is hard and we’ve got so many tough choices – ‘cos look at how shiny my chain is!’ I want people to listen to my music and feel like they’re not alone.”

Sometimes it’s hard to tell how much of an artist’s persona is authentic and how much is just the braggadocio of the microphone. Craig goes onto explain where it comes from.

“I don’t just want to be that voice for other people, I try to do that outside of music as well. I do a lot of volunteering in the community. I help with song writing classes for children and spending time with vulnerable kids and things like that. So being the kind of person that I wished I’d had when I was a teenager is very important to the core message and the influence of my music.”

Speaking to the journalist who wrote the album review of I Can’t Sleep, Brenton Realph, the first thing he said to me was “He seems like a really good dude”. Listening to your lyrics and now hearing what Craig says about doing volunteer work is triple confirmation of that notion. So I asked Craig if there is anything about this album that sets it apart from his other work.

“I think what makes this album different from anything else that I’ve done is that I’ve really kind of found my own sound in terms of the production used. I’ve really found my own niche or my own lane. The very acoustic based stuff, the lack of drums, the very ambient instrumentals… Very stripped back and with really raw and honest vocals.

A lot of hip-hop is very busy with the production, the drums are all going off at 9000 miles an hour and the beat’s all over the place, there are all kinds of wonderful things going on but I just like to strip it back so you can really focus on the core message. It reflects the raw honesty and energy of the album as I’ve matured, grown up and become more comfortable with who I am. It’s just easier to lay everything bare.”

UK-CRAIGIE talks about a lot of personal things on his new album like his partner, his kids and the age he’s at. Hetells me about growing up in Oldham, England with a single Mum, his brother and a fractured relationship with his absent Father that never really repaired. Despite this, he always seems to take a positive perspective on things.

”It’s something that’s been really good in terms of my relationship with my children. I think when you’re growing up, you’ve got two kinds of people you can learn from. You’ve got the people you want to be like and you’ve got people that you don’t want to be like but I think everyone can teach you something. So the absence of a real fatherly figure has made me bond so much more with my children and want to be something that I never had.”

Is that where the motivation to write lyrics came from?

“I really wasn’t very academic when I was younger. I got diagnosed with dyspraxia which is a condition where your co-ordination is all over the place, so I always fell behind a little bit when I was at school so I was always a little bit of an outcast. I wasn’t very good at sports, my handwriting looked pretty much illegible, so I fell behind a little bit, the outcast situation set in and I didn’t enjoy school whatsoever. Then I left school and I’d always used writing and song-writing and story-writing and things like that as a coping mechanism. So it would almost be like therapy.

My Mum would say ‘It’s ok to talk about things and it’s alright to show your feelings’ but I never wanted to be a burden to her because she obviously went through so much raising two kids and working on her own. She never wanted me to feel like that but writing became my escape. I’d just sit in my room and I’d write and I’d write and I’d write and I’d write and I’d write.

Then when I decided to pick up the microphone and the laptop I never looked back really. I had my first child when I was 22 – man I’m old. I’m 30 now, that’s ridiculous – went back to college, studied music for a couple of years, had the chance to move away from Oldham – Moved to Merseyside, this wonderful little seaside town – and yeah, just took it from there really. So yeah it was tough but we made it.”

So how are things going for Craig now? How did he cope with the announcement of the Covid lockdown?

“The first couple of months when we went into lockdown were a huge change. When I told my Mum about basketball shorts that I’d ordered from China and she said jokingly ‘Don’t order anything from China, Coronavirus will come hahaha’. As it turned out Coronavirus came before the flippin’ basketball shorts did!

Before that I had the album almost done, I was preparing things. I volunteer at my local football club so we’d set up a little partnership where I could perform some shows there, I’d set up a nice album launch and then – BOOM! – the country got locked down and it completely took me by surprise.”

Things obviously changed in a big way but once again, when I asked him how he coped with the devastation, Craig put a positive spin on it.

“I had the kids with me at home 24/7 which is a blessing really, I mean if one good thing came from the lockdown it’s been to have an even better relationship with my children. We have a lot of communication, we talk all the time, I’m very hands on, I’m very involved; so that’s been the best thing to come out of lockdown. After the first couple of months of lockdown I stopped feeling sorry for myself, I was literally just playing video games and playing with the kids, I got nothing done personally for like, 2-3 months, nothing at all.”

So how did the album come together?

“I kind-of had this light switch moment, I thought “I have this collection of songs here that would have been poignant before the world flipped upside-down and now that the world has gone crazy, people are really gonna enjoy this message.” So I got it all finished, added a couple of songs on there, took a couple of songs that I thought were a bit weaker off and just took it from there really.”

What impact has that had on Craig, with such a monumental achievement in the face of adversity?

“Things have started to improve a little bit with my mental health as I’ve been doing more and getting more work done and I’ve been getting good results. I’ve just started to enjoy it a little bit to be honest with you.”

Finally, Craig leaves us with the ultimate take home message.

“When they opened the schools back up in September I was like ‘Oh my goodness, I feel like I’ve barely seen you guys’. I mean I had my kids with me for like 5 months straight but I was like ‘I feel like we’ve barely done anything. I wish we had longer’ – I know that’s weird but I wish we had more time to just really enjoy each other’s company. So whatever the rest of the year throws at us, I’m confident that we’re fully equipped to handle it this time. You can lock us down but you can’t lock up our hearts, lock up our minds, lock up our passion or our energy mate!”

If mental health is becoming a problem in your life, you aren’t alone. Check out these resources:

www.beyondblue.org.au

Lifeline: 13 11 14

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