A celebration of Supreme

Name: Ghadir

Age: 21

Hometown: North London

What do you do?
I’m a music scout for XL Recordings and a producer and researcher for On Road, as well as part of the events team for Recess – a party in London.

How did you get into the music business?
I was vocalising that I was into music and kept my ear out for people that were hiring. Luckily I was introduced to someone at XL by a friend of mine who was looking to hire a young person to show the ropes. I’ve been there ever since!

How do you spot talent?
A song has to make me want to know more about the musician – it has to be intriguing and have a different sound.

What’s the best thing about your job?
I get to go to gigs for free!

What surprises you about the young people you work with?
I’m constantly surprised by the work rate of people my age and people younger than me. Most of the time they don’t have any money or resources, but they’re constantly getting projects done.

What album is getting you going?
King Krule’s 6 Feet Beneath the Moon.

Do you ever miss iPods?
Not really. When I had an iPod I had a phone as well. Now that I can put that into my phone, I’m fine.

What do you think of AirPods?
I hate tangly headphones, but AirPods are easy to lose. I’m such a new-gen kid. I love AirPods, hate iPods.

London: what’s good about it?
Everything is within reach. If I have an idea there’s always someone I can call that can help me with it.

Name: Pearl de Luna

Age: 24

Hometown: London

What do you do?
I do music and I’m a painter.

What’s your star sign?
Taurus.

How are you feeling most days?
Good! New year, fresh start.

How did you get into music?
I’ve always done it – I come from quite an artsy family so music was always around. It was quite a natural thing.

How does music make you feel?
It’s the one thing I really enjoy doing. My favourite thing is being in the studio – it has a good energy.

Who is always on your playlist?
Andre 3000. Weird, spiritual jazz from the ​’60s and ​’70s like Lonnie Liston Smith and Bobby Humphries. That kind of vibe.

Are you listening to Andre 3000 while painting a masterpiece?
A lot of the time I watch documentaries – something that can keep running for ages.

Who are your favourite arty-farty artists?
Francis Bacon – I love his colours and perspectives. And Kerry James Marshall.

Looking into my crystal ball, I can see you collaborating with…
Andre 3000!

Congrats – you’ve just won a Grammy. Who are you thanking?
My family and my producer because he puts up with me when I’m crazy.

Name: Scuti

Age: 19

Hometown: I live everywhere, bitch.

What do you do?
I’m a rapper.

How did you get into rapping?
A lot of my family members do music, so it was kind of inevitable. My uncle brought me to the studio and I liked it.

What’s great about where you live?
Nothing. In the words of slowthai, fam.

What is a typical day in the recording studio for you?
We just get high and make good music. TN doesn’t get high, but he probably gets high off the fumes sometimes.

Who inspires your music the most?
Me.

What was the first album you remember listening to?
Lil Uzi Vert – Lil Uzi Vert vs. the World

What gets you going on stage?
Bit of Travis Scott.

What three tracks get you pumped?
Travis Scott – Can’t Say
Jackboys – Gang Gang
And probably my tune, which is out soon.

Who would your dream collaboration with?
Young Adz.

Any advice for our readers?
If you want to do something, don’t let anybody tell you no. I was homeless and I still quit my job, didn’t listen to anyone and now I’m signed.

Name: TN_​490

Age: 19

Hometown: Lewisham

What do you do?
I’m a producer.

How are you feeling today?
I’m feeling good, I’m lit. Always lit. Especially when I’m with Scuti.

How do you stay humble?
Wanting to always go harder – I’m never satisfied, you know. And also working with youth, being able to help and give back.

How do you fill your days when you aren’t producing?
I’m either working or networking.

How do you chill?
No chilling! Not until we’re millionaires, billionaires, trillionaires…

How did you get into producing?
Shout out to my guy Kyodi who showed me about producing when I was young, in Year 9.

What track do you wish you produced?
Drake – Sneakin’

Who would your dream collaboration be with?
Producer-wise it would be Metro Boomin, artist-wise it would be Young Thug – I have his name tatted on my wrist.

Name: Nigz TG

Age: 22

Hometown: Lewisham

What do you do?
I’m a musician and a skateboarder.

When did you first pick up a skateboard?
When I was 11-years-old.

When did you get into music?
I’ve played the guitar since I was nine. My dad taught me Natural Mystic by Bob Marley. Rapping-wise, I started in about Year 10.

Where do you think you’ll be in 10 years?
Hopefully in my house with my mortgage paid, double gin and tonic and playing my expensive synths that I spent all the money I made off of music on.

What’s the most surprising track on your playlist?
Madonna – Into the Groove. It’s one of my favourite songs.

What track gets you on the dancefloor?
Honestly, I’m not much of a party person.

On that note, do you have any party tricks?
I can turn one into two real quick. That’s all you need to know to survive in the ends.

Does anything frustrate you about the current music scene?
The fact that people think they should be refined to make a certain type of music due to their cultural background. Don’t make what you think someone thinks you should make. Make what you want to make.

What makes you happy about the current music scene?
Anyone can do it. You don’t need to be someone that knows Simon Cowell to hopefully get a meeting with some guy that drinks black coffee and is probably a wasteman.

Do you use AirPods?
No! I don’t need wireless earphones.

Name: Omari Lyseight

Age: 22

Hometown: Streatham at the moment, but I’m from Tulse Hill, London.

What do you do?
I’m a musician, producer, singer, rapper and DJ.

How are you feeling today?
I’m feeling good. It’s been a relaxed day.

What’s your phone background?
It’s a picture of me holding money.

What artists are on your most-played on your phone?
A lot of underground SoundCloud artists from America.

What makes Omari Lyseight, well, Omari Lyseight?
I feel like I’ve always had a natural way of doing things differently. When I’m producing I don’t produce in a style that everyone else does. I have to do something different – I can’t stick to the norm.

How did you get into a producing?
I studied music pretty much my whole life, starting at Brit School as a singer. As I got to my college years I started producing, using Logic and making hip-hop stuff. After that, I met my friend Lsow, and we made a label together called Track Out Records making UK R&B and hip-hop stuff for a lot of years.

What are you excited about this year?
Really getting myself together and putting myself back out there. The last couple of years I’ve kind of been hibernating and perfecting my sound and everything.

Name: Goya Gumbani

Age: 29

Hometown: New York, but I live in London at the moment.

What’s making you smile these days?
Life, learning new things and learning about myself. What certain trials and tribulations are trying to teach me and being accepting of what life’s presenting to me.

Are you a poet without knowing it?
Nah. Just good with expressing myself through words.

What’s your favourite word?
Devious.

What do you miss most about New York City?
I miss the bodega and I miss turkey bacon, egg and cheese bagels every day.

What’s a surprising fact about yourself?
I can cook a really good canned tuna vegetable stew.

What track gets you on the dancefloor?
Roc Marciano – Muse.

Where is your favourite place to perform?
Out in the open.

What’s your star sign?
Leo.

London or New York?
Brooklyn.

Name: Sam Sitayab

Age: 23

Hometown: East London.

What do you do?
Skateboarding, I work on designing and operations at a clothing brand called Thames and I have an IT start-up that I work on outside of that.

Which is your favourite?
I’ll go with skateboarding.

What’s your star sign?
Scorpio.

Where are you mostly hanging out these days?
I spend 95 per cent of my time working. I have an office in Soho and I have another office for other work in Whitechapel.

When did you first skate?
I think when I was eight years old.

Growing up, did you play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater?
Absolutely.

Who did you play?
Eric Koston. I started skating because of him.

Who would you most like to skate with?
Lil Wayne.

Have you ever had a skate-related injury?
Yes. A time where I fell off a rail from some height and hit my head in two ways on the floor. It wasn’t great.

What’s your favourite trick in life?
Manipulating my sleeping pattern so that I sleep, say, two or three times a day and it multiplies productivity. That’s a trick for me.

And that’s how you maintain three jobs?
Definitely.

Tell us a fun fact about yourself.
I secretly left school at 15 and my mum didn’t find out until I was 18.

How did you keep that a secret?
I wrote a letter to the council telling them that I was going to be homeschooled and I was never in the house so my mum just believed I was in school.

How do you chill?
Whenever I’m sick of London, I’ll drive to Switzerland or the Alps and spend two or three days there with no one around. Silence.

Name: Theo

Age: 26

Hometown: London

Star sign: Gemini

What do you do?
I’ve been doing animation for a while, and recently started making clothes with my friend and studio mate, Eden, under the name Fungibles. I’ve been focusing on embroidering and doing graphics for that. You can see what we’re doing on @fungibl35.

Why do you do it?
I get a lot of enjoyment from drawing stupid stuff and wearing clothes, so Fungibles feels like a good combination of that.

What makes you happy?
Spending a day at the studio, on my own.

What’s the best advice you’ve received?
I can’t remember.

Who’s your favourite artist?
My girlfriend, Minami Kobayashi, who is a genius.

What’s the worst thing about where you live?
The shower can be a bit shit in the morning.

What’s your most overused phrase?
​“That’s stupid.”

Any decent books you’ve read?
Kazuo Ishiguro – A Pale View of Hills, Sally Rooney – Normal People, Shirow Masamune – Ghost in the Shell.

Which five people would you invite over for dinner?
Jarvis Cocker, Rei Kawakubo, Oliver Laric, Björk and Priit Pärn.

Name: Jess

Age: 25

Hometown: London via Exeter

Star sign: Pisces

What do you do?
I’m a writer and a model.

How did you get into it?
I studied English Literature at Goldsmiths, and in a chance encounter in Portland, Oregon with a freshly chopped mullet I was scouted and signed worldwide by IMG models.

What have you got to look forward to?
I’m co-directing a play in March at SET, Dalston, London. I’ll see you all there.

What was Exeter like growing up?
Life can easily become a set of routines in places like Exeter. It’s hard to see beyond or break out of the habit.

What makes you laugh?
Making fun of Bolade.

What advice would you give your younger self?
The same advice I am still trying to give myself now: it is mostly just in your head.

Read any good books recently?
Black Unicorn by Audre Lorde, an anthology on 21^st century Black British theatre and Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick.

Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings?
Film-wise Lord of the Rings. Book-wise, you have to respect J.K. Rowling.

Bus, tube or foot?
I love walking, but I’ve just stepped it up with my bike called Olympia.

Name: Desiree Laidler

Age: 24

Hometown: Brighton

Star sign: Leo

What do you do?
Costume design.

When did you first realise you love designing?
I loved drawing, and that’s because it’s the first medium you have access to when you’re young. Everyone thinks they want to be an artist until you get older and realise you can exercise the same part of your brain via photography, dressmaking…

What advice would you give hopeful designers?
Figure out your process and be confident in what you’re trying to say. Having good ideas is so important, but the winners are always going to be those who can execute the best. (I’m still a hopeful designer).

Who do you dream of dressing one day?
McDonald’s staff members worldwide. It would be great. I talk about this a lot.

Who do you go to for the best advice?
My mum.

What do you do on your days off?
Days off are few and far between – I work for myself.

What’s the best thing about Brighton?
Snoopers Paradise.

…and the best thing about London?
It’s multifaceted. I’ve lived in several parts of London and they all feel like new places.

Desiree, what’s your favourite song by ​’90s R&B star, Des’ree?
My top two are Feel so High and Kissing You. I read that she sued Beyonce for covering that track without asking…

How do you take your cuppa?
Earl grey with lots of milk.

Name: Seb Tabe

Age: 25

Hometown: London

Star sign: Leo-Virgo cusp

How are you feeling most days?
A mixture of all possible emotions.

What do you do?
Skateboarding and making videos!

How did you get into it?
Accidentally.

What’s your favourite pastime?
See above!

Where’s your favourite place to skate?
Stockwell.

Who’s your best friend?
Ellis the Menace.

How would Ellis the Menace describe you?
Problematic.

Do you have any signature catchphrases?
Don’t worry about what I’m doing, worry about what you’re doing.

Name: Umps

Age: 25

Hometown: Johannesburg

Star sign: Libra

What do you do?
Currently working for a print and finishing company, Imprimerie du Marais.

How did you get into it?
I started a publication, Apparently Magazine when I was 17. That was the gateway into my love for print and paper, well that and money. I interned at a branding agency for a year after graduating from my publishing course which wasn’t as fulfilling as I’d anticipated, then found this job through an online jobs board and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it since.

How are you feeling most days?
Grateful, it’s a blessing to see another day so I always try to focus on that energy.

What is Apparently magazine about?
It’s a youth culture publication. I’m currently not producing as I’m taking time to learn a few tricks from my current 9 – 5 but when it relaunches, it will focus more on highlighting creatives from around the world.

Do you have any secret talents?
I don’t know, I’d suggest asking my friends if I do. They notice more about me than I do myself.

What’s the best thing about where you live?
The air is fresh, the people are nice. South East London is and will always be the best part of London.

What is your current phone background?
A picture of a boy fishing in Ghana by Jeremy Snell.

What do you miss about South Africa?
Everything! That country will teach you how to deal with stress and yet the people still find a reason to laugh and party together. I think that’s where I get my ​“nothing is ever that deep” attitude from.