I’ve got cousins whose parents were born here and have never been back-and-forth like I used to. I didn’t resonate with being English in that way, but it’s nice that people do now we’re a generation deeper.
Looking at things now, I remember seeing all the young black kids wearing England kits during the EUROs, but that would be something I never would have done as a kid because I was Jamaican. “I felt like a Jamaican”, he says, “but like, obviously I was born in England.
Raised by his mum - his dad moved to Jamaica as a young child - he’d visit the island during the school holidays, recalling a sense of duality that permeated his early life. Before, I knew what I was doing and where I was going, where as now I feel like I’ve still got a direction, but maybe less of a plan.”Įlijah was born in Hackney and grew up in Leyton in East London, the son of Jamaican parents. I seem to feel different about things every three months or so, in terms of things like direction but also how I feel about life. Now? “Ah it’s my home, definitely, but it’s still something I’m adjusting to. Pre-2020, he recalls spending two or three nights at home a week - “it was just the place where my stuff was” - such was the nature of his schedule and the demands of working in multiple industry spheres. Mitch, Moony, Royal-T, Elijah, Last Japan, P Jam, Rude Kid, Spooky, Skilliam, Flava D, Faze Miyake and Darq E Freaker at Rinse FM in 2013)įor Elijah, the pandemic has not only brought about a shift in perspective but also a total recalibration in terms of how he lives and works. I was reading back over those interviews and features from before and it was just chaos, innit? I thrived on chaos I think, but even then, everyone has their limits.” (L-R Mr. Has that been a blessing in disguise, I ask tentatively? “Nah”, he says firmly, “…it’s just an adjustment really. “Before I was on auto-pilot, I just enjoyed so much stuff and I was busy to a point where I wasn’t thinking as much, where as now I’ve got downtime so I think more, sometimes unnecessarily”, he says, reflecting on the past two years. So, as our cameras come into focus on a frosty winter afternoon, it comes as a surprise to us both that it’d been almost five years since we’d spoken, person-to-person. I felt it was how grime could not only sound, but could also be presented, shared and enjoyed – and for all Elijah’s influence and achievement in music since, the label still ranks, in my opinion, as his greatest legacy. “There’s a lot of us on the internet after all these years”, he quips.įor me, a wide-eyed grime fan with an outsider perspective on the industry and moreover, grime’s ecosystem at the time, Butterz was the blueprint. “I got a message from someone in Idaho at that time, too”, he says, before sending a host of other links to interviews and features we’d collaborated on since Butterz – the label he has pioneered with close friend and sparring partner, Skilliam – was first established in 2010. The title? ‘I’d Rather DJ In Kent Than Idaho: In Conversation With Elijah’. Just before we spoke for this piece, Elijah sent me a link to an interview we’d done for Hyponik back in 2014. On Skilliam, Butterz, Jamaica, London, community, curation, radio, technology, daily thoughts, legacy, breaking down borders and the future of music.
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