When my mum used to come into my bedroom and tell me to get out and do something constructive I knew she was talking rubbish, if only I had had the foresight, strength and firm belief in heavy loafing, things may just have turned out differently.

Graduating from a course in Design Studies, Hip Hop beats supremo, Jadell, almost fell into a career as a photographer but instead took to his bedroom and got his head down to some serious laziness.

Having bravely struggled through harrowing times riding BMX and perfecting consummate Bboy skills of breaking, scratching and graffiti, Jadell managed to release two albums on as many labels as well as countless singles and remixes. He is currently in his bedroom trying to work on his third album while people disturb him by flying him around the world to play records.

Steal-life caught up with him at the Orange Brits snowboard championships in France to find out how the bedroom lifestyle helps merge the arts of photography, art and music.

“I started djing in ‘85, when I was about 14. I got into Hip Hop in ‘84 and just started buying those Street Sound Electro albums and the Rock Steady Crew and that sort of rubbish and just learned more and more about it and then started getting those old Bronx breaks like Apache and Dance to the Drummer’s Beat and all that”.

Did you buy Rat Rapping?
“Yeah I’ve got two copies so I can mix them down like yeeeeeeeeaah”.

So you fell into Hip Hop in a big way?

“Yeah, I did the whole thing, I started breaking and doing graffiti and learning to scratch all around the same sort of time. I didn’t start properly bombing (graffiti) and doing pieces until I was about 15, when you really start going off the rails, staying out late with your mates and going about being naughty. Doing the underground trains was around ‘87/’88, I got arrested in ’89 for the 6th time and it was a £600 fine and 2 years probation and so it was like, that’s the end of that. I still do stuff on paper and the occasional legal piece”.

“When I stopped doing graff I got really into BMX in a big way and signed on for about 2 years and just got up about 11 and did BMX until like, midnight. But I had to stay at my mum’s house”.

So how did you make the transition through to actually making tunes?

“In the end I bought a sampler, just a £50 box which went on the back of an Omega computer, which lets sound go in and you can get this 4 track programme which lets you put loops on 4 different channels. So using that with a beat looping on one, bass on another, some strings and a guitar, I could scratch over the top with different vocal stuff. It was enough to get a three-track demo. I mean if you were to do that today they’d be like, ‘fuck off’, unless it was something really special”.

“I just started building up tracks and parried them around to a few record labels - that whole instrumental Hip Hop thing was kicking off around that time so I got signed and started putting out singles and then put out my first album, ‘Gentleman of Leisure’ in 1999”.

“I took a break and went to be resident DJ in Manumission for a season, when I came back, I signed to Illicit records and finished my 2nd album ‘How do I do’, in 2002. I have been putting out singles through them since then”.

It’s this sort of success story that really mess people up and make them drop out isn’t it? It’s like, ‘yeah, I just did graff, a bit of breaking, signed on for 2 years and rode BMX and then got a record deal and started getting flown out around the world’.

“Yeah but then you forget about all those times when you’re really skint for ages and your bird’s really pissed off with you coz you’ve got no money and you’re like ‘hey man I’m a fucking artist ok’. It does take commitment to be a fucking dosser – if you do nothing for long enough though, you’ve got to get good at something”.

“Don’t you?”

So, do you think that the way you approached the design course, the graffiti, the photography, was similar to the way you put your music together?

“Oh yeah, definitely, especially when you look at semiotics. Me and my friend James, who I used to write graff with, had this thing where we’d try to translate all the different styles we were into, like trying to translate music into graffiti and do pieces while listening to the stuff we were working on, sort of make it into 3D. It was definitely worth doing”.

And what about the photography A Level, did that ever come in handy?

“I always had a photography aspect to my design, I used a lot of that with the computer graphics. I miss it actually, I used to set myself little projects to keep it ticking over. I got a few freelance photography jobs when I graduated, but that’s a difficult field to get into, you have to start off assisting people and then move up and I was like, ‘bollocks, I’m going to do music, maybe sign on a little longer’”.

“The good thing about it though, was every time it came to doing the artwork or the photography for my album, I knew what was going on and was able to properly direct it to make sure it represented me accurately, not just some picture of me wanking myself off or whatever”.

So you’re pleased with your album artwork?

“The first album art was good but the second was a bit of a rush and we didn’t have so much money to spend on it, but it is kind of funny, I was trying to bring across the sense of humour, that I didn’t take myself too seriously as an artist, that I just enjoy making funky tunes for people to break to”.

So how was it that you got in to photography in the first place?

“A lot of it was from taking a lot of drugs and that, you start to notice stuff that you usually just walked past before your eyes got opened a bit more. It was mostly acid, you’ll be like fucking hell, look at the way the angle of that stupid rock matches up with that bit of sky at this particular moment, so we’d be taking photos of it. We used to do loads of photocopying stuff and mixing it up with graff and sticking bits of stuff with it. I don’t know why. I really enjoyed it though.

So aside from the obvious chemical inspiration were there any particular points of reference that influenced your photography?
“Yeah, I used to look at the photos in iD and The Face, Nick Knight, the old lot. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s stuff is really lovely to look at. I was really into the old war photography as well, Robert Capa and the old Magnum lot that went around the world in the 50s and 60s. But I never really got the chance to do war photography in West London”.

“Mind you, someone got their arm shot off on my doorstep the other day. The funny thing was that it was on firework night and the police came round doing a door to door the next day and were like, ‘Did you hear any loud bangs last night?’”

So I suppose the lesson is having courage in your convictions, being steadfast in your beliefs and doing what feels right really. I mean, no one had a go at Jesus for wandering off into the wilderness for 40 days did they, he came back and played a blinder and Nelson Mandela, nigh on 30 years without going out, then he comes out and frees a nation. Just think how differently the world could have turned out if they’d been persuaded into different pursuits in that time. So next time you are hard at loaf, getting nagged about your ‘future’ think twice before accepting that job, you may be changing history in a disastrous way.

http://www.illicitrecordings.com/jadell