The fourth annual Youth Music Awards is taking place tomorrow, 18th October, at the Troxy, London. Celebrating the most progressive projects and up and coming individuals within the music scene. From those who are trailblazing grassroots projects, young leaders, entrepreneurs and artists, the Youth Music Awards recognises an inspiring range of talents across the industry.

With the core belief of the organisation being that every every young person should have the chance to change their life through music, the Youth Music Awards is a much needed event that sheds light on those who can’t because of who they are, where they’re from or what they’re going through. The brains behind the event have crucial insights, influence and investment in grassroots organisations and to young people themselves – meaning that more 0–25-year-olds can make, learn and earn in music.

At a time of increasing inequalities across line-ups, from festivals to awards ceremonies, the Youth Music Awards is calling on the music industry to take note of a more diverse, more inclusive and more creative future of music. The awards are open to anyone who has been directly funded via the NextGen Fund, or has taken part in a Youth Music funded project since January 2018.

This year you can expect to see an exciting array of celebrity judges at the ceremony including Amelia Dimoldenberg, Fleur East, Hot Chip and Kojey Radical. We had the honour of talking to the alt-rap trailblazer and creative director, Kojey Radical himself about his approach ahead of the event, his own experiences of award shows and what exactly he is looking for from the budding contestants…

Read the exclusive interview below…

Hey, Kojey, how’s it going? How has 2023 been treating you so far?  
Pretty cool. Pretty breezy. 

What would you say has been a highlight for you so far this year?
I’m so bad at acknowledging anything that I do that’s good or successful. So, there’s probably a million answers for this question. And in my head, all I can think of is that I cleaned out my shed recently.

Yeah, that’s huge. 
And I’m really proud of that. I’ve got a really clean shed. 

Yeah, we don’t prioritise the sheds enough. 
Yeah, and I really got to them skirting boards, you know…

Congratulations on being a judge at this years Youth Music Awards. What incentivised you to be a part of such an incredible organisation?
In my head, I feel like I’m still a youth artist. I improvise, I feel their journey and I feel their struggle. So, personally and intensely, it feels like an honour to even be acknowledged as an opinion or a voice that matters in the subject of art in general.

What does it mean for you to be a judge and give back to the younger generation?
It’s cool. I spent a long time hating judges, so it’s a bit of an internal conflict. Because when you’re at an awards show and you’re nominated for something, you do think, “who picks this anyway? What do they know?” I’ve been that guy in that position. However, at the same time, if I knew sitting in that position that it was someone like me or artists that I found to be contemporaries, I’d feel more calm in the fact of winning or losing.

What have been some situations you can reflect on in the past where you have been judged and felt that kind of pressure from an award ceremony? What is your opinion on them? 
Just go, eat, drink and be merry. It’s an award show. 

The best example I remember is the first time I got nominated for a Mobo and I didn’t win, I was so heartbroken. Then I went travelling the next year. People were asking me about how my year went as an artists and I’d be trying to explain to them, “Oh, yeah, I was up for this award. This really big award that means a really big deal…” And then I just thought, music still exists without this award, you know? Art still exists. People are still creating every day and they have their own hierarchies and achievements. 

All of these things are just acknowledgements to let you know that you’re on the right track. It’s not the end of your career not winning. I feel like a lot of these kids, hold a lot of weight on these awards, because it’s going to be the first time they’ve been acknowledged for anything. I hope they see the achievement in being a part of something like this as a whole, rather than looking at the win or the lose. It doesn’t really matter. 

What do you wish you personally had access to when you were younger and starting out your creative and music career?
The Youth Music Awards! And guidance. There are artists that I know now that received no help and that probably made them better artists.  Everyone’s journey is going to be different to a certain degree. I feel we’re all just looking for opportunities to be heard. 

You studied at UAL, London College of Fashion. Would you say you received guidance and support at that stage in your life?
I remember just feeling like I failed, but I ended up passing, and being top five in the university, finishing with one of the highest grades in my class. Don’t quote me on that, it was 10 years ago. I just know I did really well. I got a first. 

I spent that whole summer thinking I was a failure, thinking that what I created wasn’t good enough. There’s a mould, and you can exist outside the mould, or you can exist within it. I took a chance to exist outside that mould, and luckily it paid off.

I always tell that story as a way of encouraging people to just try because, I was doing fashion illustration, creative direction and cultural historical studies of fashion – completely unrelated to music. I had an idea one day, and I wanted to make this piece happen. It ended up being my first EP. That’s what I handed in for my final project. I remember because it was music, they said they didn’t have the marking parameters to be able to grade it. I remember thinking, “If they can’t mark it, then surely it’s going to fail.”

It just made perfect sense to me to hand in music. That’s why I always big up Daniela, my lecturer at the time, because I remember the first project consultations that I had, I saw the life leave the other two lecturers, but Daniela was looking at me like, “I get this.”  She would give me films to watch, and she would give me little scores to listen to and things I could use as points of reference.

To a certain degree, it shaped how I approach music to this day – where I look for source material, I look for magazine cutouts and random old Korean pieces of cinema and watch a certain scene five times in order to kind of figure out what sound would go with that. It’s all like a collage of things. 

Shout out to Daniela!

What do you look for when you are judging? What are you excited to see from the contestants?
I think it’s how well they tell their truth.

That’s a factor in music that needs to be highlighted and encouraged as early as possible, because it’s only going to lead to the development of greater artists and storytellers down the line. 

What is a bit of advice you would give to the contestants ahead of the awards? How do you tap into that inner story and truth?
You’ve got to imagine yourself as a vessel that has reached capacity. If, by the end of what you’re doing, you don’t feel somewhat empty, then you should probably go back in and try again. That’s the way that you tap into your own inner story. I feel like if I get to the end of a project and I don’t feel like I’ve left it all in there [the studio], then I’m not leaving. 

How would you say the industry has progressed and changed since you first started out your creative endeavours? 
I think there’s more room for difference. I remember when I was coming in, and it happens every season, where everyone and everything starts sounding the same. People had no clue what to do with different. It took people like Loyle Carner, Lil Simz, Knucks, myself and so many other artists in that kind of calibre and class to just keep being different.  Keep embracing other sounds instead of just sticking to the same thing all the time.

Go work with the jazz artists, electronic guys, drill guys or whatever. Go do everything. Express yourself. People are inclined to follow success. So if you have more success stories, you have more people going, “I can do that too.”  

The class of between 2010 and 2016 opened the door for what this whole alternative scene is now.

Do you have a key standout moment where you think, “that was me experimenting and really going against the grain”?
There’s two examples that I can think of. One I like and one I don’t like. My second EP, “23 Winters”, was the one that got me perhaps the most acclaim. This project came with a lot of experimentation, but the difference was, I didn’t know I was experimenting. I was just making music, how I heard it, how I felt it and how I felt like it should come across. Which led to something very honest, listeners could get a feel of who I really am by the last track.

Then I made another project called “In God’s Body”, which arguably has some of my best musical ideas but with some of the poorest execution. That was because I was consciously trying to experiment.

I just wanted to be different, and in that, came with a lot of stubbornness. It came with a lot of not listening to good advice, when it came down to things that I didn’t actually really understand. Things like how should the song be mixed, how should it be mastered, song lengths, transitions and all that stuff. I was so headstrong in the fact that I was being creative, that I had something that could have been gold but ended up being bronzy or brass or gold-plated. 

To think that we’re going to hit it out of the park every time we step into the studio to create a body of work, is a complete and utter myth. I had to go through making a very labour-intensive project and getting a result that didn’t guarantee me this dream. In order to prepare myself for being in the industry, being signed and having to make albums under this guise. It prepared me for the layers that were to come. Giving artists room to develop is so necessary.

What do you wish to see more in the creative and music industry as a whole?
Less of a need to see overnight success. Let somebody build. Go through that journey with them. Don’t just see them one day and hope that tomorrow they’re a million followers up. Give people room to grow. 

I think there’s also a lot of people in high up positions who don’t actually know that much about music, and you can get to these places of power without the knowledge so it seems.

It’s almost like, if I owned a plumbing business, and I hire all librarians because they’ve read books about plumbing, I’m probably not running my business correctly. The music industry works similar. As long as people have this kind of quirk, interest or vibe for music – they can get in
and make very important decisions for artists in vulnerable positions. I think if more people in the industry knew what they were talking about, artists would be in better positions.

You have got to be careful and build the right team. Be sure that the people around you understand what you’re doing and understand also what they are doing. People’s intentions for getting into this industry should always be under evaluation.

My sister is my manager. My tour manager, Nisi, she’s been with me since 2013. A lot of my band have been playing with me for close to ten years. I fuck with people I fuck with, you know?

What has been the biggest learning to date for you?
It takes money to make money. Wasting money is… is wasting money. I would say that you’re not always right. And it’s OK to be wrong. And it’s OK to be wrong in real time. Sometimes you’re not going to learn the lesson until you see the effects of the decision.  

There’s records I’ve put out and thought, “This is a big record for me, let’s make another one!”, and it didn’t work out. I thought I had figured out the formula but I hadn’t and I had to be wrong in real time. I had to let that song exist and be out there and become somebody’s favourite that I actually cringed at. 

Lastly, go home. It’s OK to go home. Sometimes we’re just out too much. Go, make an impression, do good work, be your own vibe.

Can you share any exciting personal projects you’re working on currently or what are your next big moves? 
I took a little second to do some other stuff – acting, some bits in the comedy world, writing for people and some features.

Another album is probably necessary, so I’m gonna go do that next week or something. I treat albums very just like, “I should go make one now.” So I’m gonna go make one.