Saturday 19th March 2011

Pretzels look like twisted hearts covered in sweet sticky syrup. Sometimes bitter when covered in salt, sometimes sweet when covered in sugar, dark and sweet when covered in chocolate but twisted nonetheless.

I’ve never been a fan of pretzels, nor twisted hearts, because I’ve only ever tasted the ones covered in salt, I’ve never had the pleasure of indulging in a sweet pretzel.

You do get used to the taste of the salted and dried pretzels but you get to a point where you stop eating. You forget about the pretzel, what it tastes like, the scent, the texture, every single part of the pretzel becomes non existent in your taste memory, you only remember holding it in your hand and seeing it covered in those mahoosive rocks of salt, which require you to drink a gallon of water after each packet to rehydrate because every single pretzel in the packet is covered in gigantic rocks of salt.

Would you prefer another packet of Pretzels, one which hasn’t been open to invasion by the atmosphere, a closed tightly sealed packet, or a different flavour perhaps…

What happens when you’re in the midst of a sweetened pretzel?

Will you test the pretzel flavour placing it on the tip of your tongue, or shove the whole pretzel into your mouth and wait for the surprise?
Will you gamble all you fear on buying that lottery ticket for the chance of having a winning ticket?

How can you differentiate a twisted bitter heart from a pretzel when there’s no comparison, didn’t you say that you forgot what a pretzel looked, tasted, felt and smelt like, surely you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference?

How on earth could you compare a pretzel to a heart, how do you even remember the word pretzel and not have any idea of its associated images?

There are so many inconsistencies in your statements.

Story of my life…

Pretzels – twisted and bittersweet: broken, repaired, recovering, shattered, tarnished, mending, healing, sweet, warm, cold, lustful, loving, nurturing, bright, heavy, light, sour, misused, heartless

Friday 25th March 2011

The sun still shines after the darkest night, even after the darkest of grey clouds obstructs its view, its there in the midst of a storm shining bright, illuminating the path of life.

The sun still shines in the clear blue sky, on the brightest of days, when my mood is contrary to the weather, the sun shines brightly whilst I remain inside.

I don’t want to smile, I want to lay here in this duvet, wrapped in my own melancholy for a while.

I don’t want to climb out of my duvet, to glance out of the window to see the sights, I wish it was night time, I can’t seem to hide from the light.

Away from the sun I prefer to hide, today I feel like I’m hollow inside.

The sky outside of my window is bright, I feel like a stranger to the light, so I squint my eyes.

I can’t stop it from happening, revelations are bright, time to get out of this duvet and open my eyes to the light.

The sun still shines.

Sometimes we hold the power in our hands but we’re afraid to use it. Imagine that you have a set of superpowers but you’re scared to use it because with great power comes even greater responsibility.

Use the force to inspire change in the hearts and minds of others. Use your skills to carve a clear route through the impermeable present to a bright future.

Sitting beneath that dark cloud from to day has got you trapped within a set of self inflicted woes. Transform your mindset from victim to victor.

As you stand on that cliff edge with nothing but an abyss of possibility ahead of you and an orchard of woes behind you, what will you do?

There’s no parachute, rescue helicopter or absail, allow your wits to become your wings and fly.

3,2,1 jump…

Sunday 16th January 2023, 10:47am

Bismillah
What I say when I start my ayah
Showing praise to my creator
I’m grateful, words inspire
All praise is due to Allah
I show gratitude in my ayah
I don’t ask Allah is provider
Protector, teacher and guider
Bismillah ar-raheim ar-Rahman

Islam reflects what’s in nature
Which helps me understand creator
All praise is due to Allah
Bismillah ar-raheim ar-Rahman
The way I open my ayah
I’m grateful for my creator
Seek guidance in holy Quran
It flows so I fill up my cup.

Shortlands to Victoria station (Friday 1st March 2024, 11:12)

At the intersection of want and need
My career feels like stand still,
A process testing my patience and will
No matter how fast I run
I’m standing still…
Career on treadmill.

Interval sprints, start and stopping
Accelerating and slowing
Hanging on to what feels like an empty promise
I made to myself
I’ve just been grafting catching Ls
Setbacks and Lessons
As time goes by and I lose track of myself
I feel like I’ve failed.

Yo fam, What’s good, what’s popping?
When’s the new ting dropping?
I don’t when cah I ain’t been creating
Recording or writing
I’ve been swept away tryna get promoted
Inspiration ain’t been arriving…
As regular as I’ve wanted
Can’t say I ain’t had time,
I just ain’t been focused on creating.
I ain’t been disciplined
I haven’t been intentional with what I’ve done
Too much experimental creating whilst streaming
I went offline to align my feelings
Now I’m on this train
Journaling what’s in my brain
In the aftermath of feeling like
I’ve wasted a thousand days

(Amazing how much life can change in a year)

Sunday 7th August 2022, 03:33am

Time is an odd concept. You grow up in a lot of ways but in pursuit of virtues in order to find meaning and purpose, you forget that what you were chasing was the virtue you had assumed all along. At this point in life I’ve reclaimed my child-like innocence of eye and spirit.

When I approach my birthday I’m always in an indifferent place mentally, spiritually and physically because I’m just beavering away forecasting my next set of moves.

I’ve definitely come to the conclusion that I will go all or nothing in all my pursuits because I owe it to the 12yr old Khalid who was naive with dreams.

I may not drop something on my birthday, however the next set of drops you see whether it be music, beats, vlog or podcast will be purposeful.

Peace

Monday 17th October 2022, 13:41

Life revolves around cycles.

Nature is one big cycle and being part of it, it would be unnatural to assume I am above the divine process of life’s cycle.

Just as water evaporates, condensates and precipitates, so do we go through a cycle.

Does it depend on what or who you are that determines the type of cycle, it’s length and scale of intensity but I suspect that it’s relative to the part you play in the production of nature itself.

I know this seems abstract but looking out onto the life outside of my own, especially as the autumn leaves begin to start their descent to the soil.

I can’t help but to reflect and appreciate the cycles we go through. It makes me appreciate every little moment because each stage, each season, serves a divine purpose.

The leaves that descend from the branches to the soil get a chance to provide sustenance to it. The same nutrients feed the roots of the tree and make it stronger in time for it to go full cycle and blossom on the branches once again.

Embrace your cycle.

For me I guess I go through cycles of creative outlets. Sometimes it’s the beats, sometimes it’s the words on the beats, sometimes it’s the self reflective podcasts and then I go back to the source which is the poetry.

That’s my cycle at the moment.

I feel this need to write as we approach the season of hibernation. Reflect on the seasons previous, scribe the notebook poetry to my journal app and then get that into a manuscript and possibly record. That’s what it’s about that’s my autumn to winter motive. Compile and schedule so I got a drop per month, keep me on my toes.

Friday 6th December 2024, 1207

The best way to achieve anything and avoid suffering from burnout is to concentrate on doing a little bit often rather than try and scale the whole task in one go.

Many times through life I’ve crammed for tests or in the case of my dissertation left it until the very last minute to start.

I misinterpreted my procrastination as ‘thriving under pressure’ or laziness but most often the rush of anxiety it gives you ultimately robs you of the sense of achievement after you’ve accomplished something.

The above is a result of a lack of fundamental prep and planning. I can attest to that, I lived that first hand.

My failure to think and operate with any form of long term planning and goal setting had me scarce in a survivalist mindset.

I was robbing myself of the joys that came with my accomplishments, I was simply relieved I made it over the obstacles.

Now imagine if I had plotted and schemed to scale these mountains, how better prepared I could’ve been. I would’ve excelled and exceeded my potential tenfold.

I’m not saying I haven’t had long term think or vision or even dreams, I just didn’t connect all my attributes strategically to excel.

I love where my journey is now and sitting on this train, enroute to work, I’ve finally made the connection.

It took me years to get here and now I’ve arrived at this epiphany I feel like it can only get better from here.

Self awareness and reflection, the gift that keeps giving.

Keep Going

Tuesday, 3rd December 2014, 08:13

Whatever you’re doing don’t stop, keep going.

Despite you feeling like you’re building your beach grain by grain, keep going.

Focus on the moment, action by action, keep going.

Focus on the journey, step by step, keep going.

Sooner or later when you pause to rest and reflect, you’ll discover how far you’ve travelled.

The road that seemed to have no end, seems at least to have gifted you a change of scenery.

Look at how much you’ve grown.

You’ve got many tales to share.

Keep going, keep sharing, keep creating.

Context (Origins of Autobiography of a Nobody)

In two days I’ve made 2 sales of my EP, Autobiography of a Nobody to some DJs from Tel Aviv that I never knew would’ve known I ever existed, all thanks to me sharing my work via Soundcloud a few days earlier. When I messaged Verti Sahara to say thank you, she shared that I was found on the discovery page and she’d play ‘I’m Mad’ to open her set that weekend. When I think about the circumstances that I wrote and produced that track, even writing and publishing it a few days before her purchase it fills me with an immense sense of gratitude that my music is being heard. Paid for at that. A few days later I received another notification that another had purchased too. This may have been a result of Verti dropping the track at the rave and then maybe asking about the song. Again I sent a message to express my gratitude.

This has been the cherry on top of spending a majority of the past two weeks getting my affairs in order. The collective £8 (£10 before Bandcamp fees) within a few days of each other made me realise that it weren’t a fluke, word of mouth recommendations are equally as important as ‘social reach’ and it also reassured me that there are still DJs out there that search for music. Sounds very ignorant on my part to be honest, maybe because I haven’t DJ’d in years but I’m still amazed. I guess you can tell that when I create and release music my expectations are pretty low concerning listeners and even more purchasers. I knew about the power of Bandcamp as a consumer from my DJ days but now as a creator I’ll be paying so much more attention. It’s definitely given me the boost and incentive to keep going.

Make good music, everyone buys it. – Primark Boy

Stream / Purchase link for Autobiography of a Nobody

Today I re-released Autobiography of a Nobody on Soundcloud and I tell you what, it was definitely a trip down memory lane. This EP is a compilation of all of my struggle songs I wrote and recorded throughout my time in the Retail sector, 20 years to be exact!

Foreword

As it’s an autobiography, I wanted to create an intro of sorts so after creating a beat on the MPC Live 2 one sunny afternoon, I ripped the audio from one of my old vlogs. I didn’t know it at the time but that would become the moment I decided to compile the Autobiography of a Nobody.

I Can’t Stop

This was my first ever solo song which I wrote and recorded whilst attending an institution for people that weren’t working, formal training or education. I’m not sure how I got involved but I heard it was £25 to sign up and you could make beats and record. For me it was a no-brainer. It was at PMA (Positive Mental Attitude) that I met Moaner who shared a crack-copy of Reason with me. This was the era that I stopped using Fruity Loops, well Moaner uninstalled it off of my PC tbh. However if I’d of kept it, no doubt my edits would’ve been next level as I’d already made Humps, CNEO and Hard to Beat which are somewhere on a random MySpace alias (Slimebx) that you can’t even listen to. I don’t even have them in my personal collection as they’ve either been deleted when PCs have failed or I didn’t save them onto Hard Drives. The session itself, I still have the footage somewhere on a mini-DV tape and who knows if it’ll see the light of day. Knowing me it probably will and judging by the re-release of this project or even it seeing the light of day for the first time when I put together Autobiography of a Nobody, it isn’t such a bad idea.

I recall burning this onto CD and heading to a friends house and members of the old crew happened to be there, along with some folks from around the way, and I played it. I looked around awaiting a reaction and there weren’t any, this was like my first ever solo song of me ‘talking about life’ and leaving the metaphors behind. It didn’t affect me much, I just went home some hours later and got stuck in to writing and producing more. Funny how when you’re young you seek approval from folks in comparison to nowadays where you just do you thing with zeros f-coins to give.

Fast forward to a few years ago and I made the production itself on a Twitch stream when I was testing out new layouts before eventually putting the acapella on top.

Primark Boy

This was the one! I feel like I need to fish out what the original sounded like because that was made when I came home from a music production course at The Midi Music Company. This was somewhere in the mid 2000s when I was deep into Reason 2.5, I had the loop going and all of a sudden my older brother came in and started chanting something like ‘Primark Boy xyz’, and I definitely had one of those moments where I was like like ‘I gotta do something’. In this era I was rolling with an A5 notepad and after grabbing my Mini Fillet meal with hot wings from KFC, I sat in the break room on a Saturday afternoon and started writing the first verse.

On my PC, I had installed Sony Vegas or Acid which came with my brothers camcorder and I somehow used it to record and mix my songs, freestyles and ideas using this drum mic, I got from my dad, plugged into the mic input on the PC. The most ratchet of setups but it yielded great results for ideas. That right there is where I honed my skills. I often wished I kept a lot of the hard drives or files but you know how PCs were back then, virus central.

Primark Boy probably went through 2-3 different modes before it became what it became. The first was my Reason 2.5 prototype, then there was the collab with Ray Ruckus which was heavily pop and then the final iteration was the one featured. If it wasn’t for one of my classmates in Uni, Juan Santiago, who worked out which notes I’d played I probably wouldn’t have been able to go to the studio and get it done. Thanks Juan!

I took it to Orpheus Studios on Kingsland Highroad, Dalston and recorded it from scratch with Richard Campbell who mixed it and gave it the radio friendly polish. Although it’s very pop and upbeat it still maintains the grit and perfectly illustrated where I was at the time of writing. I really did work there and it was also chosen for Homegrown track of the week by DJ Target. The previous iteration was the track of the week for Veena V and whilst I was doing an on air interview, I had to start my shift in M&S. Crazy times.

I’m Mad

I had several eras of life in the retail sector: trying to find a job, having a job with dreams of being a star, graduating from university and wondr=ering where the guaranteed £25k per annum I was promised to then going full circle and searching for a job again. I’m Mad is definitely the post graduation blues. It’s also the era where I’m probably at my sharpest lyrically from writing and recording songs consistently. To this day I believe that’s definitely the pinnacle.

By the time I’m recording this I’m between jobs too, six months from final interview to start date, having handed in my resignation on a napkin. Also I’m in a darker place without knowing I’m in a darker place as no job equates to no £ and I’m surviving off 25p packs of noodles and no haircuts. I’m grafting hard and I’m reconciling with the facts of what my next steps are because the twinkle of doing this ‘music ting’ full time has lost its spark and I’m enjoying it being an explorative hobby much more. On the upside my production style is maturing too as I’m at a point where I’m able to get the ideas from my head to Maschine and Logic, graduating from Apple loops and going further beyond the presets. It’s not until a few years later that I listen to this and think, rah you were down bad but the lesson is to keep pushing forward on your journey regardless because better days are ahead when you have faith.

Superreality

I was no stranger to signing on, having done so when I got fired by Barratts, so I understood how it felt going there to be grilled and interrogated. I also understood how it felt to be judged by the people on the other side of the desk and the embarrassment of being there. I didn’t like it at all. Especially when your arrival time coincided with someone you knew or saw around the ends. I think it was knowing that deep down I was destined for better things. I was young, I wanted to work but I just didn’t get the opportunity. I wasn’t really thinking of careers at the time, I just wanted to get paid. The narrative although draws upon my experience of signing on, does lean heavily on the folks I’d observe as being on the dole and my assumptions. I never did smoke now pay later with anyone, however I saw it happen a lot. I also saw how some became trapped in the box of what they’d get for their JSA, how they’d go to the cash point at midnight to withdraw and get their fix… I’m probably painting a picture far more harrowing than it was but to those on the outside the stuff we feel is normal is light years from normality.

If the timestamps are anything to go by, I created this and recorded the first verse just after midnight on 30th April 2012. By then I’ve left Topshop to do Up In The Ear full time with no business plan, ended up back in the Job Centre trying to claim JSA but I was ineligible as I resigned rather than be terminated. The night I recorded this I remember my brother asking me whether I’d smoked something which I thought was hilarious. I’d stopped smoking for a while by this time. I was just in the zone to write an observation banger about life.

Cover Art and Title

The title itself isn’t self-deprecating by any means, it’s just that the tales told here could be about anyone so in reality I’m nobody special. A lot of the time people are shamed for having normal lives and experiences as we’re so used to soap operas, movies and hypersenationalism. When I think back to going solo and breaking away from the band, my exact words when asked what I was going to do were “I’m going to spit bars about life”. I had no idea I’d go on to make this but I Can’t Stop was definitely the official catalyst all them years back.

If you look closely, you can see all of my passes for some of the places I worked and also some of the places I studied at. The Maschine MK1 makes the cover as that piece of kit was an important investment in my music production journey. I could only feature the ID cards from the workplaces that I held onto but I’m not even sure how I came up with the concept, it sorta just happened. Come to think of it, my university pass didn’t even make the cut and I have no idea why as that’s a major part of this phase.

Reflection

At the time of recording these songs, there was no route to the masses besides maybe Soundcloud and pressing up CDs or even getting onto radio like I did with Primark Boy. I was just creating as an outlet for how I was feeling, to explore and express myself as I didn’t really talk much about how it was that I felt. What I love about digging through the archives now is that I can distribute my creations across all platforms via DistroKid and connect with people who feel the same, providing a soundtrack for their lives too.

Stream on your preferred music service