By Sydney Brownstone
Photos By Nina Mouritzen
Theophilus London won’t let you forget his name: the first track off his latest full-length, Timez Are Weird These Days, is an ode to it. But before his eclectically sampled mixtapes began blowing up the blogosphere in 2008—before he began designing shoes for the likes of Cole Haan and charming the crowds at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival—London was just a kid from Brooklyn, growing up one of 20 cousins in Flatbush, insecure about his first name. We recently took a stroll around one of his favorite neighborhoods—Vinegar Hill—to chat about how far he’s come and how Brooklyn remains central to his identity as an artist.
Why are we in Vinegar Hill of all places?
Because it’s a very calm neighborhood. Where I live now, it’s not very calm.
Where do you live now?
Soho.
Why’d you move there?
You know, after leaving Brooklyn, I thought Soho would be a good place for me to go to just chill. Because everybody in Brooklyn kept recognizing me… You know, I didn’t want to get recognized at the local fried-chicken spot anymore. I came to Soho to get out.
So how did you discover Vinegar Hill, and what’s its significance to you?
I’m a Brooklynite, man. It’s all about Brooklyn for me. I’ve been to all the little cracks and creeks where nobody’s been before. So yeah, this is just a nice, cool, calm place. I’d bring a girl on a date here to chill. The cobblestone streets, the gardens… I used to work at a studio two blocks away from here.
Can you tell me about your childhood in Flatbush?
I was one of 20 cousins. I had two brothers and I didn’t grow up with either of them. But I grew up with 20 cousins. It was a very competitive home. It was fun. We had a lot of playtime. My grandmother would leave at 7 a.m. and come back at 4 p.m. So we had the whole window to just get wild. Fight, play wrestling. Watch MTV a lot. Watch hip-hop videos: the Snoop Dogg, the Biggie, the Puff Daddy. We wrote our own raps there, we’d draw our own sneakers. We would take 30 minutes to draw a new sneaker line and then present it to all the cousins. I had maybe my first kiss there with a girl in high school.
How did that go down?
Actually, my first kiss was in the back of a van, headed to the movies. There was this thing called the dollar van, so I was in the dollar van…
What is the dollar van?
The dollar van is like a big cab that costs a dollar. At the time it cost a dollar. Now it costs like $1.75. At the time the dollar van would only run up from Flatbush. So people don’t want to take a cab, they don’t want to take a train—they want to take a short cab, the dollar cab. So, I was on my way to the movies and I was in the dollar cab with this girl that I was with.
How old were you?
In junior high. 15? Girl was 17.
What was your first musical memory?
Me and my mom used to live with this lady, and she had this Michael Jackson Bad cassette tape that I could only look at for five seconds—if I looked at it for more than five seconds, I would freak out. It was such a scary cover when I was younger. You know, every day I would look at it and freak out. I don’t know what the fuck is so sexy, so hot about that cover, so scary… It was like, “Oh my god. This guy deserves all the attention in my life.” That’s how that cover made me feel. That’s my first memory. I knew that was music.
What about your first fight?
First fight… I got jumped by 20 people.
What?!
It was maybe, like, fifth grade. I got off the schoolbus and these French guys fuckin’ set me up. Fuckin’ French-Haitian dudes. They were fuckin’ crazy. I was walking past a kid and he bumped me on purpose and I thought, “What’s going on?” Someone came up behind me, beat the shit out of me. I just came home and went through fuckin’ armaggeddon, right, told one of my cousins I got jumped. So one of my cousins said, “Yo, this is the rule: Anybody comes home beat up, we gotta fuck you up more. Or, we take you across the street and teach you how to fight. (…)
So this kid taught me how to fight. It helped out. But I’m a lover, not a fighter.
I can tell by your music. Actually, something I wanted to talk about—a song, not on your most recent album, but “Humdrum Town.” What was the inspiration behind that? It’s a beautiful song, lyrically.
Thank you. I was in a place where the city… the city could potentially bring you down, you know. The inspiration for this song started from a Morrissey line. [sings] “When the rain falls hard on the humdrum town, this town has brought you down. When the rain falls hard on the humdrum town.” “William, It Was Really Nothing” was the name of the record. You know, I think every teenager should discover The Smiths. So after that I was like, I’m gonna take this one phrase that is “humdrum town” and turn it into a whole motion picture.
“Humdrum Town” is a very emotional song for me. I got all my first emotional points out. Like how I never liked my name. At that point I didn’t have any money. It was more about hunger, more about passion, me coming up with all these words out of love…
That song’s interesting, because you say you’re not doing it for money, you’re not doing it for fame, but now it seems like you’re getting both. How do you keep yourself real? Do you ever check in with yourself?
Oh, I check in a lot, unfortunately. But yeah, man, I don’t know. I’m honest about that, and that’s why a lot of people became fans of the song “Humdrum Town,” because as much today as we got luxury rapping, you got Watch the Throne out now, you got bullshit about how luxurious you are in a cool way. “Humdrum Town” for me was an honest point.
I wasn’t one of those rappers who was like, “Check out my car, check out my rims.” You know, I’m not doing this for a check or fame, this right here is my pain. It was a point in my life where I really wanted this. I really wanted to start a career. But now I’m getting paid a lot, I’ve been everywhere around this world and back since “Humdrum Town.” And I’m thankful for that, but my lyrics change—I can no longer go to the place of “Humdrum Town.” My town is no longer raining, you know. I mean, Cannes, in the fucking south of France, on the beach, there are people coming up to me who are like, “I know who you are. I like your music.” And I’m like, “Whoa, that’s tight.” And my lyrics are changing. They’re about wine and chocolates, flying overseas, communication errors with girls. I mean, I’m into women, I’m into food, I’m into culture, I’m into clothes, I’m into jewelry now. Stuff I always wanted to do, that I did as a kid, it’s connecting now. Now my mother looks at me and is like, “Man, you were always doing this as a kid. You’re just doing it on a budget now.”
at Vinegar Hill House
What’s been inspiring you lately with your clothing?
I think aesthetically I know how I wanna look. […] I have an in-house design team. I design all this stuff and then they get together and sew it for me and like, “this works, this doesn’t work. Try this, try that.” You know, Prince William and Prince Harry, they don’t shop at Walmart or like, Louis Vuitton. Their shit gets made in-house.
What about that idea of patchwork—you’re a unique sampler and collaborator. You’ve sampled old stuff like Marvin Gaye, and then on this most recent album you approached Sara Quin of Tegan and Sara. So how did you approach her? Because that’s something that she’s never done before.
Well, I think collaborating is a very spiritual thing. It’s like having a friend. When you do something with someone it kind of lives forever if you want it to… So I had seen a Tegan and Sara concert in L.A. And I was like, “Wow, this is very interesting. It’s so dope. I like everything about it.” And I’m that person [that] when I hear stuff I wanna learn more about it.
So I wanted to reach out to Sara. And at the same time I was talking to Warner Brothers and I knew she was on the label. And I wanted to cut another record, I sent her this thing… I wanted to take her out of her element and just let her live on this track, cause the track is very funky. Rick James has his protégé on this track, and it sounds great, and I just needed a girl who was gonna have that fight with me. The song is about communication battles. It’s about not picking up the phone. It’s about a lot of questioning, uncertainty—and she did an amazing job. I don’t do collabs for the money, I don’t do collabs for the art of radio.
Can you tell me a little bit about the album you’re making now? You’re working with members of the Budos Band, people you’ve met through Mark Ronson… How will it be different than what you’ve done before?
There’s no Pro Tools, no laptops, no phones. There’re only instruments; only players; only musicians. And we’re all recording into tape machines and old-school mics. It’s like when guys performed on a record, that’s what it means. Like a James Brown performance, he did that all in one take. Like, today, we have rap, rap, rap, stop. Rap, rap, rap, stop. Sing the chorus, stop. With these guys, they only have one track for that. So I have to do it in one take. My performance has to be good, we have to be satisfied with me recording for three minutes straight, and that’s gonna be the song. All that energy I put into those three minutes is the song.
I read that for “Lighthouse” you had to work with a vocal coach. What was it like working with a coach for the first time?
It’s like getting an ass whooping from your mom. Like, “You can do better. You can do better.” [makes ass whooping noises] It’s about learning right from wrong. Like, “You’re doing this wrong, you’re doing that wrong.” You get to this really frustrated point, like, your voice is one of the most amazing instruments and if you learn how to use it you could be like Marvin Gaye or somebody.
How much control does Warner Brothers have over your music now? Is it different than before?
It’s not different, actually. I’m still hands-on. I’m still interactive. I gotta update my Tumblr, my Hypebeast blog, my Twitter, my Facebook, all that stuff every day by myself. Some of it stays un-updated sometimes because I’m so busy on other stuff. But you almost have to be delusional to control everything. You know, I’m not just a control freak. It’s like, you know, Warner can’t really come in and tell me anything. I signed there so they can sell my records, and that’s it. They really appreciate my input, what I want to do, how I want to do it, how I don’t want it to get too big, where it feels like it’s out of the fans’ hands. I have to have this emotional, personal relationship with my fanbase. We’ve been working on that, it’s good. This is how artists are built. There’s room for failure, but that’s what makes the artist perfect, you know, when he fails and comes back hard and boom.
Has failure changed you as an artist?
Oh, I failed a lot. I got booed on BET. It was the Spring Bling show, five years ago or something. I don’t know, maybe because my outfit was weird, but it was like a setup, really. It was a talent show where they had judges and you could get booed and shit. So they already threw out three acts and I was one of the acts. And they had this whole huge audition they taped, and 5,000 people lined up to audition. Only six people could make the show and the three people who were included didn’t have to do it, but we still had to fake in my audition as well.
That’s… weird.
Yeah, it was written into a script. I went on and did my songs and everyone was like [makes booing noise] on live TV. It was like that [makes sound of screeching brakes] moment, like, “Wow. Just to get booed on TV, what are you going to do about this? Oh my god. Everyone back home is going to see this.” As soon as I walked off stage there were cameras in my face, people asking “How do you feel, man?” “Oh, it’s all good, man. You know, I don’t think the crowd’s ready for me, or they’re not ready for what I’m about to do.”
How’d you bounce back from that?
2011. Theophilus London. This month I’m in L’Uomo Vogue. I’m in fuckin’ Nylon. I’m in Details magazine. To give my mom a L’Uomo Vogue, huge, thick magazine, like, Beyoncé on the cover, and all the words were written in Italian. And I’m standing there in some Jordans like, “What’s up, this girl is good.” Or to even be on a huge billboard at the beginning of the year, before my album was out, I signed a deal with Bushmills. They put us on these huge billboards all over the city, all over the train stations. I got a shoe coming out with Cole Haan next month. Man, you know, that’s how I bounced back from that. •
