00:00:00
Speaker 1: Quest Loft Show is a production of iHeart Radio. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Quest Loft Show. I'm here at iHeart Studios, LA today. My guests maybe one thousand miles away, but he's right up here on your screen. An Oscar, an Emmy winner who's left to mark on film and TV. Be it the Night of Sounds of Metal, the Long Goodbye. You already know the range. And this artist is using his talents and to raise discussion and awareness. And right now he's bringing Hamlet back to theaters, starring in and producing a new Amazon series Bait, and beyond all that, he's a musician. Two awesome MC. We're going to get into it. So many people tell me how amazing it is to talk to him, and I got to see for myself. So please welcome Rizama to the Quest Love Show. How are you doing, brother?

00:01:02
Speaker 2: What's up doing well? Man? It's an honor to be talking to you.

00:01:05
Speaker 3: Man.

00:01:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for the kind intro.

00:01:08
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. Where you talking to me from? Right now?

00:01:12
Speaker 2: I'm in New York. I'm here doing press for.

00:01:17
Speaker 1: Hablet okay, and I know that's a taxing thing, so I appreciate you taking the time to do this for us. My first question to you is what is the early snapshot you have of yourself as a kid as far as your memories are concerned.

00:01:33
Speaker 2: Now, one of the most prominent memories I would have I was a few, you know. One of them is like playing cricket and basketball in my driveway with my big brother and spending the whole summers doing that. But another thing I used to do on my own the whole time is act out movies, fake movies. So I would like kind of decide on like a genre, like this is a crazy violent like action movie, or this is like a Home Alone had just come out, so I was like, this is like a kid comedy or whatever, and just like act out these elaborate entire stories from start to finish. I used to make a note of it. I used to I used to name the film, give it a title and a rating. If there was you PG parental guidance to twelve or eighteen. And I had this teenage mutant Ninja Tell's like book notepad with all the list of all these, My favorite, the banger that I was most proud of was Black Dragon. There was a Motorcycle Kung Fu Trilogy. And this is like from when I was young man. I just always used to do that when I was like into like Bruce Lee films and then Jackie Chan. So yeah, I used to do that.

00:02:39
Speaker 1: Wait, did you film these or you just imagine them that you were in it yourself?

00:02:43
Speaker 2: No, no, this is much less impressive than you imagining. I'd neither wrote these things down nor did I film them, just run around and acting out the entire story and playing all the different characters of these weird movies. The only evidence of them left behind is somewhere in that the turtle's note pad. It says black Dragon one, Black Dragon two, Black Dragon three, eighteen R rated. Or you know, it was just like this. I just was obsessed with it, and I used to just make these, you know, action explosion sound effects like that. Was My mom's nickname for me, was Tush.

00:03:17
Speaker 1: Tush, just because you were your own a fixed guy.

00:03:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was my sound guy. I was. Yeah, wrote the theme tune.

00:03:27
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah. What was the vibe in your house growing up? What did your parents do for a living. Were they artistically inclined or they.

00:03:36
Speaker 2: Weren't overtly artistic in a sense. But a lot of my early memories with my mom would be sat down in front of the TV watching VHS cassettes of Bollywood films or of Pakistani TV that had been sent asscross from Pakistan. My dad was a way a lot. He was in shipping. My mom was a homemaker, and she was a career for her sister, and she lost her mom young, so she was kind of like the oldest sibling holding a lot of different things together at the same time without my dad around as much as he would have liked to have been as well. He was working on ships and stuff in different countries. And I just remember like sitting in her lap watching these Pakistani comedy sketch shows, soap operas, pop music videos, Bollywood films, and the Bob Marley legend VHS tape with all the music videos on there, like one of the earliest music videos. I remember, the Buffalo Soldier, and yeah, it was just it was so it was the TV and the music and the film and the comedy and the drama. They were all mixed together always, you know, on whatever VHS cassette had just been sent over from Pakistan or whatever, or someone had gone there and visited and brought it back. That was like a happy place. You know, that was a happy place for my mom, and you know, me and her are home. You know, my older siblings were at school, so it was kind of present in the house, even though they weren't performers themselves. But you know, it's interesting I say that, like sometimes there's this trope that kind of like immigrant families are like often not artistically inclined or kind of dissuade the kids from doing that because it's unstable or whatever. But culture takes many forms, and like we're steeped in culture obviously, from our food to the fashion, to the clothes, the music, to the religious songs to the you know, so like culture was in the house. We brought so much culture with us as an immant family, even if it wasn't kind of turned into our over way.

00:05:35
Speaker 1: What was the cool kid item that you always wanted in your household that you never got to have?

00:05:42
Speaker 2: Do you remember Mask Mask? Ask the movie Mask Mask. Yeah, it was like it was like an animated non not Jim Carrey. There was an animated there was an animated action kind of cartoon.

00:05:58
Speaker 1: Called Mask Okay.

00:06:00
Speaker 2: It was like central you know that kind of thing, and it was one of them toys. It was. It was just like it was like a car that fired plastic discs or whatever. You know. I just loved it. It was kind of like a night Rider rip off. Really, okay, I wanted that or the RoboCop truck. I never got the RoboCop truck. Never got that. I've probably watched a lot of violent films too young to be honest, if I think about it. I remember my uncle was just showing me Nightmare on Elm Street when I was like six years old, and I'm watching like like RoboCop like too young, you know, and RoboCop too, and so I just wanted the RoboCop toys, but I never got them.

00:06:34
Speaker 1: You want to know something now, that Nightmare on Elm Street just had its fortieth anniversary, like maybe a year or two ago. I went to watch it for the very first time in a movie theater, and I'm so shocked because I don't know if this is general knowledge. I've already seen those things because I thought, like, I don't like bludgeon films or anything. Nightmare on Elm Street you literally see no act of violence. Like I didn't realize that at no point does he ever stab someone or whatever, Like he'll grab someone from behind a curtain, you'll hear screaming or whatever. But I just realized that the genius of that whole thing is that all the violence we think happens is inside our heads, Like besides the suspense music. I never knew that, at least for the first one. I've not watched the other one, so you know, as far as I know, he was on a stab of mission. But wow, I didn't realize.

00:07:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I always remember just being so terrified of it. This day, I can't watch horror movies. It was like, yeah, my uncles would like be renting these movies and babysitters and they were on Elm Street on one after another. But I'm still kind of like remembering some crazy like images. But you're right, it was more like images and the imagination and the sound and the suspense. It wasn't like people having their heads culled.

00:07:55
Speaker 1: Right, even the Johnny Depp see with the blood, like it's just blood splattering everywhere, but at no point does he get stabbed. And halfway through the film, I was like, Yo, this is no violence.

00:08:08
Speaker 2: We're disappointed by that. Or is it like what did you think? It's just kind of like a masterclass.

00:08:13
Speaker 1: When I left, I was just jaw drop that, like, wow, there's no And I only noticed this only because Tarantino. I told him a story about you know, verse of our dogs or whatever, and he's like, no, correction, you never see the ear getting sliced off. And he's like, I turned the camera away. You hear it, but you never see it. And I was like, oh, I never knew that, but yeah, but still, yeah, that's even scarier to me. Who's the one person in your life that keeps you in check no matter what that grounds you?

00:08:52
Speaker 2: I mean I feel like most of my family do that, you know. I mean it's good and important to have people in your life do not give two ships about your quote unquote success, right, you know, who were just like there to like have the same relationship with you before you started doing you know, any anything or any note and and kind of anchor you in that, you know. I remember when we won an Oscar for Best Short Film. I remember my cousin's group chat. Someone was like, yo, you know, congratulations Risman PI four winning and one of my cousins was just like really, not up on that kind of stuff. Was like, okay, cool, is that like a big deal?

00:09:34
Speaker 1: Is that?

00:09:35
Speaker 2: Is that like when I won Regional Employee of the Month.

00:09:41
Speaker 1: They know what.

00:09:43
Speaker 2: Direction this actually wasn't when I Want? Is when I got nominated for Sound of Metal? And I said, is that like when I got when I Want Regional Employee of the Month. And then just before I could respond, another cousin came in and said, now it's different because you actually won that. You need people to take you in that way and keep you know, it's important, and you know, I don't want to be surrounded by like sickophants and like transactional relationships. I'm kind of most of my friends kind of kind of pre date any of that or any of this.

00:10:18
Speaker 1: So right, Yeah, I've visited or at least performed at the Oxford campus twice, but I've always wanted to get a different perspective on it. So, as a person of color, what was the reality of being in an environment such as Oxford?

00:10:39
Speaker 2: I felt like a fish out of water? Really yeah, on a cultural point of view, but also on a class point of view, because actually you have different people of color there from like different countries, like you got the kids of princes and kings and dignitaries and the zero point zero zero one percent of Bakistan or Nigeria or whatever. They're there as well. But in terms of like Black British Pakistani British like particularly that in that time, it's like twenty something, you know, twenty years ago, twenty five years ago. I definitely felt like an outsider, and in many ways it was a great kind of lesson for me, for like a training ground for going into the film industry, where like, okay, your difference is also something that can no know that can empower you. I remember basically at Oxford I had been kind of like m seeing at raves and on pirate radio stations and stuff in London, and the whole kind of grime scene was just exploding. Dizney Rascal was coming up, BBC Radio had just launched music station Radio one Extra, and it was just whole. There was just all this energy around, this kind of boom of UK rap and UK sound system culture going mainstream, and I was I felt missing out on it. So I said, you know what, that doesn't exist in Oxford. Let me let me try and stop some of that. And so I started a club night there was like hip pop and drum and bass, and every week I was there on State, you know, hosting and emceeing of a drum and bass and stuff and got to like hone my craft. And it was a kind of reminder in a way that if you feel like you don't belong in a place, you can kind of like try and I don't know, stretch, stretch the parameters of that environment, you know, to make space for you and others like you that actually that space might be hungry for that. It might just you to stick around in it rather than just be like, nah, I don't belong here and leaving. So it was. It was I think it was a gift and a curse in many ways. It was. It was lonely at times, it was challenging. It was a lot of friction around like just be existing there, I felt. But it also drove me to kind of like kind of, yeah, create space for myself and people like me, And in many ways I kind of continue trying to do that. In the film business, what.

00:12:59
Speaker 1: Was the best album that you purchased yourself?

00:13:04
Speaker 2: I remember purchasing cassettes of singles, okay, more than albums. Does that count? Do you definitely want an album? No?

00:13:11
Speaker 1: No, what's your own money? Like, what's what's the first single you purchased? Would you?

00:13:14
Speaker 2: I remember? Was it Jade Don't walk Away?

00:13:19
Speaker 1: Yeah? Of course, yeah, I remember that.

00:13:24
Speaker 2: And then also it was actually the first album might have been a Prince album. It was Diamonds and Pearls? Was that an album? Was it a single?

00:13:33
Speaker 1: Ninety one? Diamonds and Pearls the album?

00:13:35
Speaker 2: I think it might have been that, And to be honest, I think I just it was like I was in Woolworths or whatever and it was just like on sale and you don't. I was like it was cool, But Jade was like intentional. I bought the cassette. I accidentally put myself onto Prince. It was just like the in the like bargain bucket or whatever. But that and I remember I had I had that, I very much like kind of loved, but they would been gifted to me. And that was Michael Jackson. That was Michael Jackson.

00:14:14
Speaker 1: Bad Okay, that was.

00:14:16
Speaker 2: The one that I was just like kept, but I didn't I didn't buy that amount of money?

00:14:21
Speaker 1: Yeah I got it?

00:14:22
Speaker 2: Remember what yours was?

00:14:24
Speaker 1: I mean, look for years I've lied to the press and said, like, it was a Jackson five record, but my first Gifted Records. Yeah, my mind was a Neils. I liked Neil Saidaka's bad Blood because I like the way that the logo looked spinning on the forty five.

00:14:49
Speaker 2: I meet my diamonds and just thought that's cool. I mean, I like the colors, dude.

00:14:56
Speaker 1: For me, I'll say that the first ten years of record collecting, like was just based on if I like the way that the print of the logo looked on the turntable, and thus I didn't like Capitol Records. So I was not into the Beatles until actually until I moved to London. Then I got into the Beatles.

00:15:15
Speaker 2: But yeah, like, wow, we're just buying books.

00:15:20
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, I group. Yeah, well, yeah, I judge. I judge books based on exactly. It's funny to say that because one of my favorite films, Ega Wright's Showing of the Dead is a brilliant Prince joke where I guess they're trying to fight off zombies and they ran out of weapon, so now they have to use records, and they're going through the entire alphabet and they get to the letter P and the guy's like, I can't waste my Prints records, And then even as their lives are on the line, they're like judging Prints albums, like, well, this album was shited, so let's use the Batman album and like so.

00:16:02
Speaker 2: Hearing oh the Batman. The Batman Album was at a special place in my heart because I was a kid when that came out. What do you feel about that album? I loved it, man, you know, it's so weird and cooler, like had this weird, like acid kind of situation going on in it. And I just remember the hype around that Batman film coming out as a kid, and you just feel the biggest deal ever that you know. It just it was special to me at the time.

00:16:31
Speaker 1: As a long like long time Prince fans kind of say that that's the beginning of the end, But I see that as a necessary album for him to have a longer career, like Purple Rain sustained him for the eighties, but then he needed another platform album to sustain him for another decade. So from a term of effectiveness, I'll let it go. But as as a knowing what Prince is capable of, and as Cannon, we were kind of indifferent on it at the time, but I loved it only because the day after I graduated high school, my dad let me he My dad was a world famous like music being shopper, so basically that was like the last time he let me just go ape ape shit inside of a record store and buy whatever I wanted because I graduated at high school and so that album came out that day. So I still have like fond memories of that album, even though it's not in my top five Prince albums of all time, but you know, it just it just.

00:17:37
Speaker 2: Had a special place in my heart because the memories.

00:17:39
Speaker 1: You know, I can see that, what was the very first live show that you attended?

00:17:46
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a good you know. I don't know if it was like the very first one I attended, but it was. I mean the earliest ones I attended would have been like some Pakistani pop kind of bands, and like Bollywood, there were a lot of like touring Bollywood shows. So I grew up in Wembley right and so close to the arena and stuff like that, and so back in those days, how a lot of the Bollywood stars would make money is they would go on world towards where they would perform the songs from the hits, the hit songs from the hit films, right, so you'd acts like Saman Khan whatever, these guys would come to London and like do song and dance kind of things. And I remember those for sure, and going to like Pakistani pop things like Vital Signs and Jannon and these kind of these kind of bands, you know, like nineties like pop and rock bands from Pakistan that would come and play like Wembley Conference Center or whatever, like you know, the whole community would show up. It was like it was a vibe. But really the first thing I thought, so I saw those technically before, but the answer came to my mind. One of the most impactful was I think the ten year anniversary of Ninja Tune Records.

00:18:58
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah Tune yeah yeah.

00:19:03
Speaker 2: I think it was like a ten anniversary or something of that. And I went to that and Kid Kowala was playing ah yeah, and I bumped into Talvin sing over there, and Talvin Singh, who's like, you know, incredible like Doubler electronic fusion artists from you know, big part of that South Asian nineties kind of wave of music. Him and It and Sonia and people like that Asian Dub Foundation. I remember there was a cipher of teenagers that we were like freestyling on the staircase, right, and I remember Talvin sing like we stood there watching really saw me, and he like yeah, and he like complimented me. And I remember just feeling so gashed and I'm just so encouraged. Like that sustained me for five years.

00:19:52
Speaker 1: You know.

00:19:53
Speaker 2: That was like Talvin Singh thought I was doing something, you know, and he was like a cool guy in the underground of that.

00:20:00
Speaker 1: Have you ever still go back and seen him since or.

00:20:04
Speaker 2: You know, we connected once like many many years later, but not not really not particularly. Yeah, I don't know if he's listening, you know, shout out Talvin Singh's like a real innovator there.

00:20:16
Speaker 1: You go, shout out to Talvim Singh, who are your north star? Well, I would ask for five who are your five north star mcs?

00:20:28
Speaker 2: It's just ems well I meant for you Yeah, yeah, okay, just as.

00:20:35
Speaker 1: A lyricist, like who are your north Stars?

00:20:38
Speaker 2: I feel like it's changed a lot. I feel like before it was just all about kind of lyricism, and you know, you know, as a teenager, it was just all about kind of common and most entirely quality and you know, the whole raucous kind of camp and all of those guys.

00:20:55
Speaker 1: Right And to this.

00:20:55
Speaker 2: Day, I think Most Death is up there for me. But I think it's changed now because it's more about the range and the versatility of these artists and they're kind of big bench that's really interesting to me now. So whereas I would never have said this before, I think now one of them is probably Mike Skinner from the Streets.

00:21:13
Speaker 1: The Streets, you know what I mean.

00:21:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say Mike Skinner is up there. I would say m i A is up there. You know, I'm interested more now more than ever the genre bending. I guess you could call them mcs who are kind of like bending the form to their style. But I'd still say Most Death. I mean, you know, honestly, I'm a I'm just a huge, huge Kendrick fan again because of the range of what he does and how he bends as well. And I think I know someone who I just really really love and rate that's like kind of more contemporary to right now is Jay huss.

00:21:50
Speaker 1: In the UK.

00:21:52
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's that's not necessarily my all time top five, but off the top of my head, I mean I think those a some mcs just always kind of think they're just themselves, do you know what I mean? I think that's the thing that I rate more than anything now is someone who sounds like no one else, someone who's like that could only be averse by them. You know. It's just immediately distinctive in that way, in the way that ODB was. I think, more than anything, I'm inspired by people who are unapologetically themselves and doing something different, Whereas before it was all about just lyricism and I was skilling them junkie, right, yeah, just just just like technical craft, you know what I mean, That's what I was a big junkie. I think it's a different skill to be like purely yourself.

00:22:37
Speaker 1: Yourself, Like, yeah, I feel for you.

00:22:42
Speaker 2: What was Can I just pause? Was going to say, I'm talking to quest Love. I can't move on from that question without asking you the same question me, I really you got an all time top five.

00:22:55
Speaker 1: Well you just reminded me. I totally forgot when like my period in London was between like ninety three and I think we gave up our flat ninety seven ninety eight in kennish Town, and but coming back I definitely remembered. I think we did some shows with the streets. You reminded me how much I used to listen to his first record, his first few records. I like weird EMCs, you know, like I dig and I'll chance, yeah, of course, like I know that I have a world class athlete in my own band, which I think because Tarika is so technically proficient as an MC, I'll tend to champion those that might not ever wind up on anyone's like top ten list, even though I think, you know, I still early cool Keith Edon Cool, Keith Paul Barman, Pastuus of De La Soul, you know, of course, like Doom, like just anyone that's like super weird like that too out into Right now, I'm going through like my Doom phase again, so I'll go through stages.

00:24:12
Speaker 3: But you know what's really interesting about Doom is that he's right in the middle of that ven diagram of weird m season like technical masters that like just really headsy lyrically oriented fans would always also turn to.

00:24:23
Speaker 2: It's interesting, you know, I can't move on without talking about Black dought for a minute because I think in that period when I was most just like purely listening to rap, I think, you know, most it would have been Black Dot. And I actually got to tell you that that Things for the Part album was just a life changing album for me. Man. It was life changing on so many levels in particular, like, yeah, just to find a certain period of time in my life. And I tell you something that I was just really gassed off, and so many people in London were so gassed off. Is I'm sure you heard this. The drum and bassed lick at the end, the drum and bass break at the end, Yeah, yeah, worry about me, you know what I mean? Yeah, And so at the end when it just drops and drummer and it only does it for like twenty seconds or whatever. But I just felt, I don't know, you know, that was that was like mid nineties, right, so it's like the heyday of jungle and drummer bass. I'm going to this and it just brought in together in a way that was just I don't know, man, it just felt like I felt seen. I feel like it made that track even more beloved in the UK that it just went into that double time drummer based thing at the end of that track. But yeah, I mean that's that's probably one of the first That and I think the Mystery of chess Boxing were the first two things that I like learned off by heart, you know what I mean?

00:25:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know my I've told the story before of you know, I was. I was fortunate enough to kind of be there at the very beginning of when like jungleists and drum and bass were like starting to be a thing, and when we decided to move to London for real, for real. The first thing we did was we went to a nightclub and they started playing Anita Baker and we were like laughing at London, like, oh my god, why are they listening to like slow jams? Why are they playing sweet Love in the in the in the nightclub? And then when that hook came up, Yo, I was scared for my like, we I wish did you guys.

00:26:22
Speaker 2: Meet to London? Why did you meet to London? You guys just wanted to change up, taking some new influences.

00:26:28
Speaker 1: You know, it's weird. Okay. So we had spent two years in this massive bidding war. We got the record deal of our dreams and then the album was finished, and then we realized that the label not only did the label who just started a black division we were on Geffen Records, that they weren't prepared to really promote us. But then on top of that, you know, ninety three was kind of like a shifting year for creativity and black music, of which we got by because suddenly it was a novelty being a band, like we were one of that when we got first got signed, I think seven black bands still had a record deal, whereas you know in the seventies there were thousands, you know what I mean. So we just decided the very last minute, we have to do what Jimmy Hendrix did. So the second we finished our album, we met Giles Peterson. We booked a week at the Jazz Cafe, and then with the money we made from that, we just got a flat in Kennish Town and just never came back home. We decided to make London our hub, and then we just worked Europe literally for four years, and eventually the label was like, all right, you guys got to come back home and like be for real. So for things fall apart. We finally came back to America, but for the most part, Like I don't think we would have made a dent had we just relied on on whatever buzz we were going to get America, Like we felt we had to go to London to the world and then come back home newly, newly improved, and you.

00:28:12
Speaker 2: Know, asol, I love that. I love that. Yeah, And it's so it's so kind of amazing to see more of that cross pollination between you know, music coming out of London in the UK and the US and seeing the moment that the UK rappers also having as well over there just out of interest, would you say you got me? Is still like the most played and like beloved.

00:28:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's our most popular And I literally did it. Like when we left London and you know, came back home to start recording, I knew that, Like the last project I worked on that was like London Base, I did something with Ronnie Size, and you know, I was just like, yo, man, I want to I want to do something that you know, it gives us a a tip of the hat or not to where we came from. Like I thought Jungle was going to be like the biggest thing ever. So I was just like, I want to come out the gate before like America catches on and America didn't. However, I do believe now that we're flirting with like Jersey house, especially where like where lil Uzi Verd is going and like these artists that are using Jersey House music and the speed of it. I think maybe now we might be ready for it, because at least where we are as far as where the country is, even though we're trying to remain zen and calm through this ordeal that we're going through. I almost feel as though the soundtrack to junglest is like this is the time to unleash it, like that feeling of urgency in the air. So yeah, man, I just wanted to do it just as a tip of the hat to the place where we came.

00:30:01
Speaker 2: From a ran that deep. I thought maybe you guys were just playing around with different drum breaks, but it's so beautiful to know that it came from being steeped in that and around that.

00:30:10
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:30:11
Speaker 2: I mean, jungle music is like, you know, a very particular, very UK thing, and I think it caught on a lot more in Canada, Toronto in particular, because the kind of Caribbean kind of connection. It's obviously, so much of UK black music comes out of that connection to like dance or and Caribbean music and how that blends with like electronic music. But but of course it's always been that bridge. Like if you think of garage, garage came out of like what it's called garage because the Paradise garage, right, and it was like US H and G as they see H and G was house and garage that was American stuff and your two step carriage which is called UK garage, right, and then that was just you know, slightly different. But to this day, I would say that Gabriel, that the Roy Davis Junior pevn ever Itt sung is at least for my generation, a lot of people's number one track, you know, of all time. That's the kind of redemption song or whatever of garage heads. Do you know what I mean? Is it's a US track, is Roy David Junior and Peven Ever So, yeah, I'm glad to see that kind of like that dance floor kind of cross put pollination more.

00:31:15
Speaker 1: It's funny you mentioned him because one of my favorite songs of his that I spend there's a jazzy tune that he did call you get Me, which it's more of a two step uh production. But yeah, that's that's a song that I think has fallen under people's radar, and I feel as though that song is waiting to be discovered.

00:31:40
Speaker 2: So is this a Roy Davis Junior's track or.

00:31:44
Speaker 1: Yeah you got Yeah?

00:31:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's kind of like he's just he's so incredible and so talented and and from what I understand, it's like, you know that there was like a whole crazy backstory around that track, and yeah, I.

00:31:59
Speaker 1: Got one day and find out about it. I finally connected with him, like I think like two or three years ago, finally got to meet him and give him his his flowers. I always wanted to know, So, what is the one lesson in life that you had to learn the hard way?

00:32:28
Speaker 4: So many man, but I think I think, like I'm trying to find a way of saying is that doesn't sound super basic, but I'm gonna say it.

00:32:40
Speaker 1: Just come with it.

00:32:42
Speaker 2: It's about kind of like not of like just just just not the power of not performing. And what I mean by that is I grew up code switching a lot, you know, I grew up in a certain kind of word that was not privilege, but you know, it wasn't like crazy intense or violent or anything which was not privileged. And I've got a government scholarship to a private school. So there was like this class code switching that came from an immigrant Pakistani background and household. But I was in Britain and there was that code switching, and it was the nineties of it said, and it was like, you know, this explosion of South Asian British culture and you know, garage and drum and base, and there was that, and I had all these different identities and I feel like for so much in my life I had been code switching, so much so that when I was starting out both as a professional actor and MC, I was really eager to keep those two things different, just kind of some kind of just like instinctive compartmentalizing I would do. And I think I feel like I'm almost making up for lost time now of just really bringing together those supposedly contradictory parts of myself in the things that I'm making and bringing together the music with the film, bringing together the just those unapologic sides that I would sometimes instinctively like edit right. And it sounds like a kind of pretty basic lesson to learn. But even when I thought I was being unapologetically myself, I was still kind of like shifting gears instinctively, you know. And I want to kind of like come into the room with all of my mess and just be like, yeah, this is my mess, this is it is all of it. And I think that's something that has just helped me feel more calm and in touch with who I am, you know. Yeah, so like with a show like Bait that we made, you know, bringing a soundtrack together around that and having tracks on them myself and bringing to my favorite artists from around the world into that, or with the Long good Bye the short film, you know, just kind of blending almost like soliloquies and spoken word with like that action thriller kind of film language and just trying to kind of put it all in one part. And I think that's what I like, you know, I have that kind of eclictic taste, and I have those different sizes of myself and I want to kind of express it all and not kind of whole different parts of myself back.

00:35:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you have to build your own platform so that you can express all the facets of yourself.

00:35:17
Speaker 2: Thank you very succinctly put yeah.

00:35:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's understandable. You once said that you'd rather be broke than to be type cast. Now looking back, what was the hardest what was the hardest know you had ever had to say? And you know, I know how integrity and personal code is to manage in an industry in which, you know, minorities are constantly having to jump hurdles and codes, which but like for you, what was one of the knows that you had to give that would have been like either lucrative for you or.

00:35:59
Speaker 2: I mean, I I guess I'm just wondering if I should say it, But like there's a there's you know, I mean, I don't want to say.

00:36:09
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you don't just say the movie or whatever.

00:36:13
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I mean, when I came off the back of the Night Of, I offered a big lead role in a big TV series on net Please, playing a lead roles like an actually kind of thriller thing, And it went on to be a huge, huge, huge hit, and it was very successful, and you know, I think it probably would have done a lot for me kind of straight off the Night Of into something like that, And and I couldn't do It wasn't even so much about the role that I was playing in terms of type casting. It was definitely for me kind of like would have been a great look. It was just the basic storyline was was about terrorism, and it was very stereotypical, and it's portrayal of Muslim characters. And even if I would get to transcend that stereotype and I would get to play that, you know, just kind of like lead guy role and be unshackled by that, I saw what it was doing to everyone else around me and the story, and it was I just do it, And sometimes I kind of look back it was like, man, that would have you know, that would have been a great look. But if you at the overall of my journey, I'm very pleased that I didn't do it because to me, like having a career is not an end in itself, Like telling stories, it's kind of not an end in itself. It's about what you're saying with it. It's about how you're trying to push culture and try and challenge people, challenge yourself, you know, and like falling back on some of the lazy narratives for me is like that's the opposite of what I want to be doing with my time?

00:37:43
Speaker 1: Are you given agency to have a conversation with the screenwriter or the director or the producer that, look, I'd like to adjust some things in this character or given more of a soul.

00:37:57
Speaker 2: Course I've done that loads, But I mean, I just like, sometimes it's baked into the story. You're not going to change a thing, Like do you know what I mean? If it's that is it's not like icing on the cake. It is the cake. Sometimes it was that okay.

00:38:12
Speaker 1: So Baita is a series that draws some parallels frankly that you know that we're living in right now as far as like you know, xenophobia, anti immigration views. But when when did the idea start to crystallize as far as you developing this.

00:38:32
Speaker 2: Well, crystallized quite late on. But I've been scribbling down kind of ideas and anecdotes for about since about twenty fourteen. Obviously what started happening started to become more well known in America, and kind of there was this widening gap between my public and private self. You know, it's I don't know. The same week that it got announced I was in Star Wars was the same week I got banned from my local Tesco supermarket for suspected shoplifting just because I was like wearing bizarre clothes. My washing machine had broken. I was dragging around a massive laundry bag full of dirty clothes. They thought, like, who is this guy? Is he like unhoused, like you know whatever. It was. The whole thing was just it was just like you know, people think as soon as people think you're going to be on a yacht with hand solo, but it's like you still go to your laundry washing me see still breaks. It's still human world. Yeah, And so that gap between your public and private self started creating more stressful and kind of slightly hilarious situations, and I just kept starting making a note of them. And I knew I wanted to make something about that. And someone once told me that gap between your public and private self is how much shame you carry, right, And I knew I wanted to make a kind of suppersive comedy within that playground of shame, and and and so I started drawing from all these very very specific and personal things, and so many things in the show. I mean, I remember in the end of You doing My Kennich Town at the end of episode one. My character has a panic attack at Kenish Town Forum. Okay, that that happened to me when I was booed off stage supporting Wu Tang clan. What yeah, yeah, Wu Tang were like two and a half hours late. So when someone finally came out on stage, you know, I came out and I was like, yeah, that's not method.

00:40:18
Speaker 1: Man, oh you got Oh no, that's unfortunate.

00:40:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I stayed. I stayed the course and just did an a cappella and I knew there would be kind of a more lyric our in the crowd, and you know, the booze turned to cheers. Short set I've ever done two minutes, turned the booze around some cheers.

00:40:35
Speaker 1: And got out of it.

00:40:37
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.

00:40:38
Speaker 1: That was me.

00:40:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, too many, thank you. And and so there's so many things like you know, my character gets jumped as a kid in a park in Wembley. That was the park behind my parents' house. You know, it's a sweet shot they do to get sweets on Eve. We'd go there like it's even being approached by m I five to spy for them. That's happened to me like three times since I've becoming actor.

00:40:59
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you, as you mentioned that, have you ever unfortunately had to name drop who you are in terms of getting out of a situation that if you weren't who you were, it would have gone downhill?

00:41:17
Speaker 2: This is what I'm talking about is the opposite. They approached me because I was an actor that was increasingly well known. When when the security services were approaching me, they were like, you're an actor with a profile almost can you can you inspire for us? Can like? Can we talk to you? Can you help us with messages? So? And I just kind of shut the door to that, you know, But that's why I's depicted in the show. Right, let's happened to you several times. But what in terms of name dropping who I am? Now, it wasn't that, But I had a weird thing happened actually once at the airport in America. Was in Canada, Canadian border.

00:41:51
Speaker 1: Next thing he threw, Yes, they're the most intense he throw in Canada.

00:41:58
Speaker 2: Canada is intense, and MYAMMI is intense. Miami with the Cuban staff there who are like super like you know, Patriot, like there's a whole thing there.

00:42:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's ass backwards.

00:42:11
Speaker 2: I went to this thing while I was getting pulled aside in Canada or something, and they will keep you there for a long time. And this guy called me up and he goes. Finally, after the age is waiting and being rude, he goes and usually talk to someone. And I took the phone from him and it was a woman and she goes, can I tell you at home we have a light sabered pizza cutter.

00:42:32
Speaker 1: Oh my god.

00:42:35
Speaker 2: What. I was like, okay, And he took the phone back and he goes to my wife and I was like okay, and he starts nodding and filling in the paperworkers. Okay, now you've done that and performed for me in some way like you can bounce. And then I go with your wife, yeah, he goes, yeah, he goes, she's over there, and he points down the desk and like five kiosks down it's his wife is also a border control person of the desk, didn't me. I was like, this is so surreal. So it probably did help it go me out in some situations. And I didn't get stopped as much off that. But it was like a decade where coming to the US was like three and a half hours.

00:43:14
Speaker 1: You know, I apologize it, trust me. It got different once I turned forty five and suddenly people my age were the border patrol people. But even then I knew I had to look like questlove. So I had to wear a lego heart and have my afro pick out and you know.

00:43:35
Speaker 2: And yeah before your public self. Yeah, it's guess what bait is about. Really, it's about that, you know, Yeah, trying to see what people expect you to be.

00:43:44
Speaker 1: You made this for me wearing like a so let me ask. So, Shakespeare has been a passion of yours since your teens, and this year you're in Hamlet. So what about the classics, especially for this one attracted you to this role and in this particular interpretation of it? Like, what was the journey that it took to get here?

00:44:10
Speaker 2: You know, it was a long journey, he said. Like when I was a teenager, I felt like Shakespeare was the exact thing that I was. Epitomized everything that I was on the outside of. Right, it's like this stuffy British establishment thing. And I had an amazing teacher, a white Jewish guy from Wolverhampton who happened to speak fluent Punjabi. He took me under his wing, he gave me the plane, said, you feel like an outsider. Well, actually, sort of the characters the heart of these plays. So this guy Hamlet, you know, the most famous was Revered Shakespeare plays the heart of all this stuffiness you feel like doesn't belong to you. Check it out. He feels like you feel, And like so many teenagers and so many people of all ages around the world, like I saw what this guy's feeling, and I think it's actually how we're lot also feeling right now, which is like, is the world going crazy? Or have I lost my mind? You know, that's the central kind of thread in a way in Hamlet, and that feeling is something I latched onto and I've felt to different degrees throughout my life, and I think we all feel that way right now, and so I just really connected with it emotionally. I created connected with the language, the rhythm, the flow, the percussion of it. It reminded me of rap music in that way. But also a thing that really kind of struck me was that this quintessentially British play felt like this is the brownest thing I've ever read. This is like growing up in Wembley. This is about family due to honor, love kind of being you know, who you can and can't marry, being a family decision. You know, spirits in the afterlife feeling like they're part of people's lived experience. It just felt like very very relatable to me coming from an immigrant community. You know a lot of these old classic feel more relevant and more real almost setting some of these kind of just now. So yeah, all of those things kind of blew me away and it changed out how I saw myself in relation to the culture, and I thought I wanted to. I want to make a film of Hamlet, Like when I was seventeen, I remember thinking that. I was like, I want to, you know, yeah, kind of blow it open and create a version that like a lot of people can see themselves in.

00:46:26
Speaker 1: Right now, What is your relationship with making music?

00:46:29
Speaker 2: I just put out of track two days ago. It was my first track in about four and a half years with Cass is Dead. You know Cass, the UK rapper.

00:46:37
Speaker 1: I've heard, but not not overly familiar.

00:46:40
Speaker 2: It's amazing, man, you You've got to checking stuff out. He's like a cult kind of figure.

00:46:44
Speaker 1: Okay, UK.

00:46:45
Speaker 2: So yeah, we've got the Bait as a soundtrack, and I've got a couple of tracks on there, so I exec produced the soundtrack. Georgia Smith is doing the lead song on it.

00:46:56
Speaker 1: Ah damn sure you know, of course.

00:46:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a Bond themed TV show, right, so we needed a Bond song. So Georgia is doing our Bond song. It is a timeless, four blown Bond song.

00:47:06
Speaker 1: It's like nice, she's doing her shairly bassy thing.

00:47:11
Speaker 2: She's doing that full blown.

00:47:12
Speaker 1: Yeah nice.

00:47:13
Speaker 2: And then and so I just dropped this track with cass is Dead. All we good. It's just dropped two days ago. And that's also on the Bait soundtrack.

00:47:20
Speaker 1: Okay, My second to last is how has fatherhood changed you?

00:47:25
Speaker 2: It's maybe a lot more tired.

00:47:32
Speaker 1: Just look on your face right now, tell.

00:47:34
Speaker 2: Me, you know see how he's changing broke Like I mean it just you just have less time to like fuck around with stuff that you can't be bother to do, or you just start at the time, just you just start stripped back to the essentials that what do you really care about? Who do you really care about? It's just that you know, and if you're going to kill yourself make a TV show over like ten years or a movie over fifteen years, you better really care about it. So I'm proud to say, like these two things that are at the same time, they're very different, but I'm deeply passionate about what they have to say and putting them out there in the world. And yeah, I hope people can feel that when they experience it.

00:48:13
Speaker 1: Well, my final question is food related though, what is what is your local food heaven destination spot.

00:48:21
Speaker 2: Local food heaven destination spot. Yes, I'm going to shout needus. Grill Needs is a classic East London curry house and it features heavily an episode four of Bait. It is like every episode of Bait is like almost takes place in the different genre. And episode four is like Richard Lincolay a walk and talk, and it's a walk and talk through immigrant East London rather than like touristic Paris, right, And so it starts in Needs and it's in Needws and it's just banging Beryanni and Helem and Nihari and my mouth is watering even talking about it. But yeah, sharing Needs, man, it's just one of my faves.

00:49:01
Speaker 1: Well, I thank you for doing this, uh, I appreciate your artistry. Man, and you know, hopefully we can have a longer conversation about your because I have a billion questions about sound of metal. But I really admire you as everything that you've done in music and in film and and your artistry.

00:49:20
Speaker 2: Man, And thank you so much brother. Likewise, man, you know your music and what you what you've created, it has been a has inspired me for years and years man, And what you're doing now is doing the same thing.

00:49:33
Speaker 1: So thank you, Bro, appreciate it. Ris I met on the Quest Love Show and we'll see you guys next Gogram, Thank you. Quest Love Shows hosted by Me Mirror Questlove Thompson. Executive producers are Sean g Brian Calhoun and Me. Produced Brittany Benjamin Jacob Payne. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown, Edited by Alex Conroban. iHeart Video supported by Mark Canton, Logos, graphics and animation by Nikol and Loewe. Additional support by Lance Cordon. Special thanks to Kathy Brown. Special thanks to Sugar Steve Mandeli. Please subscribe, rate, review, and share The Quest Love Show wherever you stream your podcast, make sure you follow us on socials that's at q LS. Check out hundreds and hundreds of QLs episodes, including Quest Love Supreme Shows, and our podcast archives. Quest Love Show is a production of iHeart Radio