END. caught up with Skepta ahead of his END. Talks with Alhan Gençay, delving into the visionary’s boundless approach to creativity.
Skepta has never been one to do things by half measures. Since the halcyon days of grime’s origins and his genre-defining rise to fame, his creative output has continuously evolved and expanded, with branches that have sprouted far and wide with fervent curiosity. Alongside cementing his vanguard status as the godfather of UK rap, Skepta has founded multiple genre-spanning record labels — including a recent venture into house music under Más Tiempo — created his own fashion label, MAINS, sold one of his paintings at auction and even released his own short film, “Tribal Mark”. The term multi-hyphenate is one that gets thrown around quite frequently, though it’s safe to say Skepta is the true embodiment.
The event in Shoreditch was important to me because I believe what I do has always been about community, it’s always been about subgenres. With genres like grime – it’s even more important than the shoe itself, you know? The fact that many people would show up and wear the shoe for grime is even more important than the shoe.
I feel grateful, appreciative. I also feel like I proved myself at the place I was before — the shoes that I made there were bangers and are going to be remembered in culture and referenced for years to come. It was only right that when I came here, they understood I was tried and tested and gave me that scope to do what I wanted.
"I’m blessed to be able to come from a sound and a genre that’s a real thing on the streets, you know, before the whole internet was a thing."
The iridescent is something I’ve been doing on all the shoes from where I was before. Also, a lot of my artwork has that oil spill effect in it as well as the chrome details. It was a design language I wanted to continue with the making of these shoes. When I moved here to PUMA, it was great that I already had the language of the iridescent and the chrome and people knew exactly what they were wearing.
I’m a firm believer that there isn’t anything new. When I’m designing, I’m definitely telling myself that to start with: there isn’t anything new and I’m not going to make something that hasn’t been done before. So, it’s all about looking at archives, going into the history of PUMA and finding the gems that were there — because there were a lot. Especially a lot of the soles, they had some fire soles that I’d never seen before. It’s like a basis of my design: when I start the process, I’m always going to look at archival references and adapt and update.
I’m blessed to be able to come from a sound and a genre that’s a real thing on the streets, you know, before the whole internet was a thing. There was a lot of sounds, a lot of flows and a lot of drums that I can still use today. In 2014, my reinterpretation of that was “That’s Not Me” and “Shutdown”, and then now it’s like what do those grime sounds sound like today? If someone was making a song today in the current climate, you know, with drill and mellow grime, what would that sound like today? So that’s what people can expect.
"I feel like through me growing and maturing, it was a natural progression for me to get into DJing house"
I think before I was ever DJing, I always remember house music as being a getaway space for me. Whenever me and the guys felt like we needed to go and party and be in a space where we didn’t have to think about trouble and stuff like that, it was always house music. So, I feel like through me growing and maturing, it was a natural progression for me to get into DJing house.
I couldn’t really predict what’s next, but I’m lucky to always be around creatives with bare ideas. I feel like sometimes I get into a space where I’ll be in with the right creatives to make a shoe, so then we’ll make a shoe. I think early on, I found myself surrounded by different creatives in music as I was in studios a lot, but through meeting different creatives and working, I got into a space where I can make shoes, because I met this and that person and I said “we should make a shoe” and they were like “yeah, I think we should do it”. I might be in Chiltern Firehouse tomorrow and meet somebody who works in furniture, and I’ll get my marketing team in and we’ll make a sofa, you know? I just let it naturally happen — I’ve got ideas for whoever meets me and wants to work with me.