Sometimes music can’t be labelled. In the case of Emmeline, for example, it’s pointless attempting to box her artistry into one genre or sound. Her roots lie in poetry and spoken word, leading to a constantly evolving musicianship and lyrical outlet that transcends style. She’s a rapper, singer, vocalist, and everything in between, resolutely shaping her own path towards commercial success and artistic refinement.
Since a chance meeting at an event, Emmeline has worked exclusively with renowned producer Fraser T, Smith, who in turn has aided in sharpening her sonic identity and pushing her creative output. Last year’s stellar debut EP, “Satellite Navigation System” has today been followed by a sophomore body of work. Entitled “Small-Town Girls and Soft Summer Nights” – an Easter egg Frank Sinatra reference – the EP sees Emmeline truly come into her own as a confident and conceptual narrator.
The themes of innocence, nostalgia and self-progression flow through the five-pronged project, based around Emmeline’s recent move to London, as she reflects on the past, dissects the present and questions what’s to come from a Metropolitan existence, flaunting a diverse vocality that sees her as comfortable rapping as crooning in the process. The EP’s lead single, “Dust” boasts a typically impressive turn from alternative rap stalwart Kojey Radical, a first collaborative offering, and a clear indicator of the boundless reach of Emmeline who is still early in her musical journey.
We had the pleasure to meeting Emmeline in East London; poised for the release of “Small-Town Girls and Soft Summer Nights”, she explained her musical roots and ensuing progression, delving into her writing style, and the creative process and ideas behind the sublime new EP.
Listen to the EP…
Read the exclusive interview…
How did you begin making music that was supposed to start?
Well, I guess it’s always coming from a lyrical place. Before it was ever music in question, I would write out the lyrics to my favourite songs, learn them off by heart, and then I got to a point where I’d start changing the lyrics around, morphing them into my own. When I was 17, a friend of mine joined a spoken word collective in Manchester called Young Identity. I started going too and writing spoken word, and the feedback I was getting was that what I was doing had a musical impetus, but didn’t have any music to it. So with a new energy I tried to write lyrics and started finding beats on SoundCloud, asking around for producers, and putting these sets of lyrics that I’d made to beats.
What felt natural about constructing your writing as spoken word?
I think the spoken word came to me from a really rhythmic place. I was very attuned to the patterns of words, the cadence of language, the metre and the form. I’d always been interested in acting as a child as well, so I had this idea of speech as performance. I always wrote with specific beats or specific rhythms in mind, so it was kind of a natural progression for me to think about music. But I didn’t know, because the language I was writing was so dense and so intense, whether it would be too much to add music to those words. I think that the challenge was finding how the music can complement the words, and vice versa, without become a sensory overload.
Was it a lot of trial and error and finding the pocket that you now create and perform in, or was it a seamless process?
I suppose the answer is a bit of both. I was trying to figure out how my particular voice and my particular style of writing could lend itself to music. I’m not saying that I’m limited to a box or that there’s a specific set of music that I can make, but I think that I had to find where the tone of my voice sits naturally, I just found myself being drawn to certain types of beats, certain kinds of sounds, certain rhythms. It’s always just been a bit of a gut instinct. Then working with Fraser, I think he’s developed an understanding of the sounds that I like, and he’s then been able to make those richer and more interesting. With this EP particularly, we’ve come up with a slightly more varied landscape of sound while we’re pushing things in different directions based on where we think everything might be able to sit cohesively.
Working with the same producer all the time is quite rare. Why have you continued to work with Fraser this whole time, coming into your second EP?
I think that Fraser was really foundational in helping me understand that I might be able to make music in a serious and professional way. A lot of the conversations that we’d been having about the music but also emotionally in where I was at, naturally progressed into us making the second EP. I was having all these conversations with him about leaving home and how I was able to see my home and my childhood with a kind of clarity that I’d never had whilst I was there. Then experiencing nostalgia, having these really vivid incidences of remembering the music I used to listen to you when I was growing up, or the films that I used to watch, how I was really in that headspace. Then he started sending me music that really complemented those discussions we had been having. It just felt natural that this body of work was really close to all those discussions and the theme. Before we knew it, we had the EP just as an extension of a conversation.
What is your essence as an artist?
I’m very keen on world building. The songs that I write are personal and fantastical at the same time, it all comes from my own perspective or my own thoughts or feelings on a certain topic. I like to expand that out into a visual or sonic world that other people might be able to enter into, explore and inhabit in their own way. I’m really interested in a lot of juxtaposition, I’m interested in were rap meets spoken words. I’m interested in where hip hop/drill/grime meets pop/folk/balladry. It’s a lot about pushing two things together that might not ordinarily make sense.
Would you consider yourself a rapper?
That’s a difficult question. I’m very hesitant, at this stage of making music, to put any label on what I’m doing because I think that I’m so new to it and we’re in such an experimental phase of figuring out the sound that I like to let the music do the talking. I think there are some tracks where it’s in the realm of rap. There are some tracks where it’s more in the realm of spoken word. Right now we’re still figuring out the boundaries of the sound.
What was the story behind making this sophomore EP?
We were talking about this feeling of nostalgia and of growing up but still being young. He sent me the beat for “Small Town Girl” and it was so evocative of that feeling. I came up with the concept of leaving home and growing up but still being young and reflecting on that time. I told Fraser that that was what I was feeling creatively, he sent me more beats, and the world kind of expanded. I also pulled through some old stuff, for example, “The Dance” is actually a spoken word piece that I wrote when I was 17 or 18. We made it into this garage track essentially – that has a nice journey, it’s from that time that I’m meditating on, but I brought it into this new world.
How did you approach writing this EP in comparison to the first?
Well, I think that these projects have come around surprisingly quickly. For the first EP, we actually only spend two days in the studio making it. For this one, I think we probably only spent five days in the studio making it. We became a bit more intentional about the recording process, we tried to keep the music fairly true to the demos and to the initial versions that I’d made on GarageBand by myself. I think it felt quite personal and youthful, naive and tender, and we wanted to keep it true to how it was written.
Where does the EP title, “Small-Town Girls and Soft Summer Nights”, stem from?
It is a Frank Sinatra reference. I was listening to a pile of my granddad’s old records and there’s this Frank Sinatra track that has a line in it that says, “When I was 17, it was a very good year for village girls and for small town girls and for soft summer nights”. I became quite fascinated by this phrase, because it felt very evocative of a childhood that you might glorify or fantasise, you know, a sort of version of childhood that may have been present at some times, but certainly wasn’t childhood all the time. It felt sort of Shakespearean and literary, but also youthful and sweet. I just became really obsessed by the concept of the song, which is also about ageing; he basically walks you through the stages of his life and in the end, he’s an old man reflecting on his youth. I thought it was interesting how this very short song encompasses a whole life. So I became quite interested by the idea of growing up and growing down, of reflection and nostalgia. Also art as legacy and how it can stay permanent.
Why is legacy relevant to you?
For this EP it was rooted in my granddad, who passed away around two years ago. His function in my family was as a storyteller. He was a pantomime writer, a big character in the local village community. He was always a champion of me going on stage. Every year, he’d write all male pantomimes that went up in his local community and we’d go and watch them. When he passed away, he left me a set of documents and manuscripts that he’s written, and I think I was thinking subconsciously about the idea that art is something to pass on, to pass down. I was thinking a lot about village life and how that’s how he’d made his mark on this small community, which trickled down into this idea of small town girls and soft summer nights, and how I might fantasise a way of keeping that experience permanent.
Are you a small town girl?
Yeah, I’m from a small village in West Yorkshire. I would never call myself a small town girl growing up, I was always resistant to the idea that I would stay in my village. I always wanted to leave, to get out to the city. I think that is the juxtaposition that I’ve been writing about – it’s always grass is greener. You’re isolated in a village environment, but your mind can wander, and then you move to the city and you’re still isolated just in a different way.
Where do you want to take your artistry?
I just want to expand the world and expand the sound. I’ve become really fascinated with the way you flesh out music. It’s not just the track, it’s the music video, it is the live performance, it’s taking it to a festival, it’s the writing prose around the track, creating an outfit, creating artwork… I’ve become really interested in that process and I love all of it. I think I’m embarking on a slightly more confident musical process of having spent some time in the industry and figuring out a sound that can be played on stage, at a festival and on the radio. The ambition is to create music that is confident and heard, but coming from a place that is still authentic.