Get Up Let Your Body Flow You Know You Can Do It Like Me Eeny
"DO I SEEM confident, fifty-fifty correct at present? I drank a lot of wine yesterday so maybe it'due south nonetheless in my organisation." I'grand sitting in the recording berth of Root 73 in Dalston with 26-year-sometime Enitan Adepitan, better known to audiences equally Enny. It'due south the morning after an industry event and she's explaining to me that, despite her success, she's all the same a little shy and introverted, her humble nature adjoining on imposter syndrome (though she's working on it, she says).
Equally we discuss her career so far, information technology's clear that Enny is still struggling to grasp her rapid trajectory. It's the second time I've spoken to the artist this year, and I'grand learning that self- deprecating jokes such as the former announced frequently in her conversations. "Jokes" is how the creative person very oft describes her electric current positioning as one of the most prominent rising stars in the country. Only last night she picked up an A&R Award at a ceremony attended past the likes of Stormzy, post-obit on from the GRM Rated Award she bagged back in September. She'due south also been nominated for a few MOBOs, and at the end of 2022 is set to be on tour with Little Simz and Saba of Pivot Gang. She's excited, but all the same adequately reserved well-nigh it all. "I don't experience famous. It's not like I'yard Billie Eilish," she laughs.
Nosotros're in a poignant setting; it'southward in this very studio that Enny started her journey equally a musician, where she'd come to work with director-producer hybrid Paya, who briefly pops in while we speak. Whatever other artist would be inflated by this point, but she'southward keeping grounded; in person she's softly spoken and speaks nimbly, such is the yin and yang of her on and off-stage personas. I bespeak to a recent operation I'd attended of hers at The Lexington where she'd commanded the crowd with ease. It's in that location where the shyness melts abroad, she says. "Performing, I would say it's powerful. Y'all feel powerful," she says wistfully. "You can exist as crazy equally you lot want and no one'due south gonna judge you. When you see people looking at you lot, and you know they encounter the music, the lyrics and see the story, it feels like I'k seen."
That form of seeing is likely common. Many of Enny's fans dearest her because of her subject affair, which often reflects the trials of young adulthood for many other Black women of our age, covering dearest and relationships, gentrification, body-image problems. The appeal is that naught about her is manufactured; she says exactly what she thinks, bolstered by a clear lyrical talent that surpasses many of her peers. This frankness is what we get with Enny, even though that confidence is still in development underneath.
In terms of biographical facts, her story till now is well known. Enny is native to Thamesmead, south-due east London, the youngest of four siblings in a Nigerian family. She became attuned to rap in her younger years via the music played by other family members at dwelling, soaking upward crud artists like Linus through the pirate radio her older sister would go out on at night.
As she struggled to make her way in music, Enny worked a regular 9-5 in a banking company, employed past an uncle, all the while releasing a drip- feed of freestyles online and performing at open up mic nights effectually London. These are the experiences that shape her lyrics: the time she's spent living with family, having dreams of making music and hanging with her secondary school friends that she's been close to for "over a decade".
It's this that culminated in terminal yr's 'Peng Blackness Girls' with Amia Dauntless, a blowout single eventually remixed by singer Jorja Smith. The unmarried came as a rallying weep for her own demographic, inspired by her feelings around the presentation of Black women in the media. As a nighttime-skinned woman, she realises hers is a face that represents the darker girls who themselves were never seen. "It's so ill to run across Tems, Simz and Amaarae, all these nighttime-skinned girls doing their ting. We never got to see that growing upwards; young, Black, dark-skinned girls just doing their ting. That'southward why I've gotta take information technology as far as I can."
It'south this same subject field affair that's had her widely pinned as a "conscious rapper", her music a supposed foil to artists whose content is more leisurely or recreational, especially if there's any mention of sex, partying and drugs. As a adult female in the rap industry, the phrase is peculiarly used to form a dissimilarity to her female counterparts, who are oftentimes denigrated for this style of rap. "I don't like the 'conscious' affair, because it'south deffo just mutual sense," she offers. "I'g not, like, talking about deep, deep, deep stuff, I'thousand proper merely saying, 'Don't gentrify the expanse.'" She points to her most recent single 'Bernie Mac', a social club-gear up take on Mr. & Mrs. Smith with Odeal. She doesn't desire to be put in a box: "Hip hop is so diverse. You lot look at people like Kendrick Lamar, who can do songs like 'Humble' and and then do songs similar 'Alright,' and then 'These Walls' or a freakin' song with Maroon five."
On a personal level, entering the music manufacture has set her on a transitional phase in figuring out her identity and dealing with the lifestyle; the concern of making music, the hectic schedules, the narcissistic nature of constantly having to talk about yourself. "Interviews, stuff like this, can be the things I don't think are benign to people's egos," she says. "To talk nearly yourself so much, I but don't call back that's something people should practise. So, when the job requires it, it'south a lot."
Information technology'due south like shooting fish in a barrel to get distracted from what grounds her. In this example, information technology's her Christian faith, the very thing that pushed her to leave her task in the bank when she did. Every bit information technology'south a religion we both share, I wonder how her behavior mix with her mounting success, and whether it still grounds her now. "I think that's where my struggle is," she confides. "Sometimes I but like going with the catamenia because it's easier to say, 'What will exist will be.' But I'thousand trying to become back to the spiritual side and organized religion, just trying to make sure I brand the right decisions.
"Leaving my job, I was in tune [with my faith]. I wasn't at church, but I was very into everything. And then then much has happened, yous don't want to become so distracted that yous tin't remember what got you there, what you lean on and what you're accountable to." Right at present, it's a difficult act of making sure she levels both; she points to imaginary scenarios where her faith might lead her in a different direction from that of her squad. Setting her path in line with religion could be challenging, she shares. "I'd like to believe I would be confident enough [to achieve that]. But I merely feel like in the space I'g in right now I probably wouldn't. I have a lot to piece of work on, on that side of things."
They're big ruminations for someone and so young in the game. The questions of who she is, and where she'll go in her career are immense, if non intimidating; nosotros could easily see the artist on a path akin to Simz, Kano and the like. But on the music front at least, Enny seems set up to start answering them. "My main concern is not losing the integrity of the music," she says. "And I think that it's so piece of cake to practice, particularly when you become to a certain point in your career. I desire to do as amazing equally I can just I also desire to be truthful to the sound; I've been in that space, like, 'Why is this artist making music similar this now?' Merely then you get inside and you realise the challenges and the game, that information technology's truly a game. So yeah, all that stuff is peradventure weighing a bit," she admits before reconsidering, "not weighing, only I'm enlightened of information technology."
For most of her life, making music has meant reverie, catharsis, and has acted every bit a sheet for her life. "When music becomes piece of work, and then it's non escapism, it's your job. You're going to the studio to make a vocal because you need the vocal to nautical chart, or because yous need it to stream. Yous demand people to exist aware of the song you lot're dropping; now you lot're looking at YouTube views, you're looking at everything and I call up that shit isn't salubrious. Especially for the creative person I desire to be."
And is creation still escapism? "When it wants to exist," she replies, wistfully. "I was listening to Lauryn Hill'south Unplugged and she'due south got the interludes. She was maxim, 'How did this thing that I loved so much plough into something that I hated?' And I call up merely feeling, similar, I get that. I but need to recollect to have fun. When you overanalyse it and put likewise much pressure on, that'south when it simply becomes a job, and it'southward not fun whatever more."
For now, it's a case of going where the spirit moves her equally an creative person. My heed is cast back to the video from her latest release; the paradigm of Enny in a sleek two-piece suit and shades, gun in mitt, the daughter who at once talks her shit "just similar the guys do", only to then "flip it like a haiku". She wants to refuse that tricky label of "conscious rapper" or whatever other term that could be placed on her in the future. "That'southward why in that location'southward songs like 'Bernie Mac'!" she says, laughing. "Information technology's about being all-rounded, I don't want to be put in a box.
Source: https://www.rollingstone.co.uk/music/features/enny-peng-black-girls-rolling-stone-interview-9629/
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