Flavours of Hackney by Leke Apena

Author:Leke Apena [Leke Apena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Urban Intellectual Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

The cruelty of a rejected boy

February 2008

Nasher leaned against the swivel chair in the recording studio.

Using the fingers in his right hand, Nasher crushed small, hard chunks of weed in the palm of his left hand. In front of him, in a small separate room called the isolation booth, Harris recorded a grime track. Nasher could see Harris through a transparent soundproof window. Large, black headphones, almost half the size of the average person’s head, were placed over Harris’ ears. In front of Harris was a mic attached to a long stool. He was spitting rapid-fire bars over a melancholic and sparse grime beat with all the energy and bravado of a seasoned MC like Skepta or JME. Out of everyone in his gang, Harris was probably the best MC, secondly only to Nasher, of course.

Nasher poured the contents in his palm into the rizla paper and licked the sticky part of the paper so it would hold together. Finally, he rolled the thin, tightly compacted rizla in his fingers into a cylinder-shaped joint. After he had rolled up the joint, Nasher inspected his handiwork. Rolling a good joint took true craftsmanship, the same way being a good MC took true craftsmanship. It required skill and artistry. Nasher’s two older brothers had shown him how to roll a joint when he was around ten years old, and he had been smoking weed ever since.

Nasher turned on his swivel chair to face Nina, who was sitting on another swivel chair beside him. All of his gang were in the recording studio in Dalston. They were chilling in the control room, where the sound engineer mixed and mastered the tracks. The air in the room was heavy with the satisfying smell of weed and McDonald’s. Skilla and K Dot were sitting on a brown sofa, both with McDonald’s brown paper bags between their legs. They were wolfing down their fries and slurping on milkshakes. The sound engineer, a sixteen-year-old British Chinese boy from Bethnal Green, named Timothy Wong, but everyone called him ‘Wong’, sat by the control panel in front of the isolation booth. The control panel contained dozens of buttons and a large monitor screen in front of him. Using music software, Wong could see the skeleton and meat of a song visualised by block squares. Wong had at least twenty chicken nuggets in front of him in five separate boxes. Everyone in the recording studio was high and eating fast food. For Nasher, this was the perfect environment for creating banging grime riddims.

“Oi Nina, I beg you pass me your lighter,” Nasher said.

“Yeah, of course. Say nuffin, my G.” Nina dipped into the inner breast pocket in her school blazer and withdrew a transparent blue lighter.

Nasher took the lighter from Nina and sparked the joint by lighting its tip with the small flame from the lighter. He gave the lighter back to Nina, placed the joint in his mouth and took the first toke.

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