Kindness

Lauren Martin

Hey everyone, thanks for coming. On the couch next to me is somebody who writes, records, and performs music. But also tells stories about himself and all the people that he works worth. So please help me welcome Adam Bainbridge, aka Kindness.

Kindness

Thanks.

Lauren Martin

Thanks for warming up earlier with some records. We’ve got a lot to get through today. But before we do, I would like to start with a difficult question. What do the words “where are you from” mean to you?

Kindness

OK, um. Well. Can I just preface one thing by saying that I was a little bit nervous about this, so I went out and got drunk last night. It’s not helping today, because I really thought I would be able to come in here talk about lucidly about things. But it’s going to be harder than I thought.

Lauren Martin

OK, thanks man.

Kindness

I’m just telling you. I might have had a good answer to that once upon a time. I’m from Peterborough in the east of England, and it’s a small town. It wasn’t a very fun place o grow up. It was very small towny. There wasn’t much music, there wasn’t much culture, there definitely wasn’t a real sense of multiculturalism or of alternative culture. That was important to me because my mother’s Indian, my father is English. I was growing up mixed race in a town that didn’t really — like white people full-stop, and was further confused by mixed race people. It was a good place. There’s a quote by Robert Mapplethorpe, the photographer. He says that growing up in Queens — he was talking about Queens in New York — he said, “Growing up in Queens was great, because it was the perfect place to leave.” And that’s kind of how I feel about Peterborough.

Lauren Martin

That’s a good quote. You mention that your mother and your father — even if you feel out of place in a place, the people that are around you are the most important to you. Your family’s got very strong musical and political stories. Could you tell us about the people you grew up with?

Kindness

I can see where you’re potentially trying to get me to go. My dad was a DJ in his 20s. Not a massively famous one, but I’ve seen pictures of him and it looks like the peak of Italo with the kind of crazy DJ booth with the lights around it. It’s kind of cool because his record collection is behind him, or maybe it’s the nightclub record collection which was the old thing. Paradise Garage, all the records were behind and anyone could pick them out and DJ. Unless, or Larry Levan would probably kneecap you before he actually let you do that, but it was an option. Seeing my dad in that kind of environment I was like, “Ah, OK.” It was real. It took a few years to get to that point. When we were younger, me and my sister would just roll our eyes and be like, “Yeah, of course you’re a DJ. Right. What kind of music were you playing?” And even then not really understanding some of the tracks that he tried to put us onto. He used to play the 19-minute album cut of “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” by Isaac Hayes, which is just an organ drone with a heartbeat kick drum underneath it and then it kicks in at like 16 minutes. I was like, “How did you play this in the club?” He was, like, “Well, you have to remember in the 1970s, people were smoking a lot of weed. They weren’t necessarily dancing all the time.” I was like, “Oh! That kind of DJ. All right I get it.”

Then on my mom’s side. Well, my mom was also heavily into music and it came in useful when I was a teenager because she told an anecdote about how she used to spend a lot of her money on records. Her food money, her money to actually buy groceries. I would go to HMV and spend all of my money on vinyl and she’d be like, “You were out buying records again?” I would be like, does this seem familiar to you? So I got away with buying records then. She was heavily into jazz. She was brought up in South Africa until she was 14 to Indian and Malay parents. The worst of apartheid started happening and my grandmother was arrested by the police for collaborating with her lodger, who was then thrown from the 10th floor of the police building in Johannesburg and died. My grandmother was in interrogation in the next room and this happened, she remembers that going down. After they killed him they put her, a 50 year old woman, in jail for five years followed by five years of house arrest.

At that point in time, my mother and her siblings were just, they had no choice. They had to leave. Their father was dead, so it’s like, well, the family is kind of being forcibly being broken up. And they all came to Europe. My mom and my two aunts to the United Kingdom and my uncle to Sweden. I think that has definitely left a mark on me and my family and how I perceive things like race and social justice even. There are friends who are going to watch this and it’s going to raise a wry smile because I guess I have a reputation amongst my friends at least for being somewhat overly-zealous about these things. When it comes from that family background, at one point you start to understand why it matters and why you’re not just going to passively stand by and watch people display racism or prejudice or whatever may happen. To this day, I won’t take that bullshit, basically. Can I say bullshit?

Lauren Martin

Yes.

Kindness

All right, so what did I bring the swear jar for? Oh yeah, and Lauren had nothing. I knew that there was going to be some moments in this interview where I might go too far. Either I was going to get really depressing and dark, or legally unsound. You just have to hit this bell. [pulls out a bell] Just save me. Because I’m ready. Today’s going to be only real talk, but I’m a little scared of where that might go to be honest.

Lauren Martin

Well if it’s only real talk, we won’t need the bell.

Kindness

But real talk can still get me sued.

Lauren Martin

OK, I’ll bear that in mind. Thank you. I appreciate the gesture of the bell. Before you sidetracked me with the bell. Actually the quote about Queens, it was a great place to leave. Before you left this town in England that you didn’t really like and you don’t really feel attached to, you might have had music as the classic escapist idea. I can’t imagine the streets of Peterborough were really popping. What were you listening to at the time that gave you a sense of a space where you could explore and belong? Is there any music that you’d like to play out the bag?

Kindness

Yeah, I could probably find something. I talked about this with other mix-raced and British Asian kids. We found that white music culture — by that I mean mainstream indie and rock & roll — kinda didn’t have anything for us. It didn’t speak to us in any way. As much as I was going to underground shows in Peterborough, going to see hardcore and punk and noise music. At one point I was like, “Nah, this is some weird white people shit. I don’t really understand it. Is there something else?”

It’s funny that you mention Westwood. It was mainstream hip-hop and R&B and eventually garage and drum & bass and jungle and those things. To be fair, mainstream British radio, Radio 1, where doing a pretty good job of it in the ’90s. Even John Peel, to a certain extent, would play one of those awful noise records followed by a jungle tune and you’d be like, “All right John, nice. Yeah. That’s diversity, I like it.”

Peterborough did have a tiny bit of that trickling through. I remember for about three weeks, someone tried to open a record shop that only sold garage records. I would go in and I would go, “Oh, yeah. There’s that big garage tune coming through. Can I buy it here?” And they’d go, “No mate, why would you want to buy here? It’s 12 quid here. It’s going to be at HMV for £2 next week.” I’d be like, “What? Don’t you want me to spend my money?” That’s why record shops didn’t stick around for long in Peterborough. I don’t know. It could have been garage, it could have been hip-hop, it could be house music as well. I remember hearing — this might be a good one. Let’s play this, this really reminds me of growing up in Peterborough. And buying records in HMV, and Our Price, and Virgin Megastore.

(music: Faith Evans — “Love Like This” / applause)

Lauren Martin

If you were trying to buy garage records in Peterborough, what was it about that era of R&B that really spoke to you?

Kindness

I think there’s a direct lineage between this kind of like Bad Boy records of era R&B and sampling and production and what I do now. I’m trying to work more on an alternative side of production, but they were doing such smart and hooky kind of sampling. I love the original Chic record that this is from, but I think the Faith Evans hook is way better. No disrespect to them, but that is the best use of that guitar riff. It was just my eyes opening to what sampling and production could be, I guess.

At the time, there were other things like Stardust and Daft Punk where I started to understand that these records were made up of samples rather than played instrumentation. When you don’t have a great studio, when you don’t have instruments, the option to sample stuff becomes a freedom. Especially when you’re flying under the radar and you can still get away with sampling stuff and not clearing it.

Lauren Martin

Once you started to absorb these idea of how to make music through sampling, when did you start making music? What were the first instances where you felt you could do something like this?

Kindness

I went to Berlin around 2003-2004 and a friend of mine called Ramsey saw me struggling to make music in GarageBand. He said there’s this new software called Ableton, you should try it. It was like, Ableton version 3 where you still had to manually bookmark every piece of music you were working with, where everything was kind of janky and off. But it was amazing. It was so intuitive and so different from music software that I tried in the past. I just started working then. But I was working more making DJ mixes, because I didn’t really understand how you produce music. I think layering different elements from different tracks in a DJ mix made me start thinking, “Well, I guess what I’m doing is sampling, if I’m taking this drum part and then fading it into this four-bar loop from the beginning of this record, and blending it with this vocal.” I could just make songs this way.

Eventually, living back in London, that’s what I started doing. I was living in a house with Sam and Rory from a short lived British band called Test Icicles. Which, my good friend Dev Hynes was also part of. We used to play PlayStation in the evening and we thought that the sound affects in Quake or whatever we were playing were kind of lame. So I was downloading much more outrageous explosions and gun shots and nonsense from LimeWire and then just layering them on top of the game as we were playing so that it was a little more bombastic. They were like, “Wait, that sounds great. Why don’t you do this over our shows?” I was like, “Wait, what do you mean?” “You know, play gunfire, and explosions. The air horns. We’ve always wanted air horns.” I was like, “You want air horns? All right.” The next day we left on the road and I was now the DJ. That was fun, that was interesting. That was my first experience of sleeping on the floor while the rest of the band sleep in the beds. But it was still a lot of fun and it was really nice just to be taken along on what was a short-lived roller-coaster ride for those guys. And that’s how I got to know Dev as well. That was quite an intense baptism by fire into their world.

Getting back to London after these tours, that band was blowing up at the time and they had all of these remix offers. People were offering them crazy money to do remixes and they didn’t have time to do it, or maybe they didn’t want to do it. I said, “Look guys, why don’t I do the remixes and we just say that you did the remix? Why not?” They were like, “Yeah, all right. Split it 50/50?” Done. So I started doing all the Test Icicles remixes. Please don’t look any of them up on YouTube. See, maybe the bell is going to get me in trouble. So I was doing these remixes and I guess that got me into production properly. I started to think, I can do this. Maybe I could put my mind to it and it can be a career. Little did I know that was just going to be my first attempt at making a career in music.

I’m going to preface the next part of this story by saying if anyone here is doing this for the first time and it’s not quite going the way that you wanted it to go, don’t be discouraged. I quit music once and I went away and I had to reset my whole life and get my head straight. Then I came back with a different name and stuff is working out in a kind of roller-coaster way of its own. Maybe sometimes you have to have a failed first project to get to the second project that actually is who you want to be or the sound you want to have.

So, Test Icicles were also collaborating a lot with grime M’s at the time. That ended up being my first release proper, was Test Icicles remix with Ruff Sqwad. I’ve decided I really don’t want to hear it, but I know you have a part of it.

Lauren Martin

Yeah, I do have it.

Kindness

Let’s not.

Lauren Martin

Well is there something else you’d rather pay from that time, because this is actually a really interesting time. Before you...

Kindness

This.

Lauren Martin

Yes, let’s play that. We’re talking about the new rave era, the birth of grime, the growth of grime as an underground industry. This amazing independent spirit. While new rave was like a field project.

Kindness

You’re going to get me started on new rave.

Lauren Martin

Some interesting people came out of it, so let’s keep it happy.

Kindness

No. No. We’re not going to keep it happy. I’m going to go in in a second.

Lauren Martin

Have a bell.

Kindness

Just try and use it.

Lauren Martin

Just play the record.

Kindness

The only thing about this is this is an instrumental for people to MC over. It’s just a loop, but it’s one of the greatest grime loops of all time I guess.

(music: Dizzee Rascal — “Wheel (Instrumental)”)

That instrumental, which was released by Dizzee Rascal — I think Dizzee produced it. I don’t know to this day.

Lauren Martin

I think so, I think it would be fair.

Kindness

Dizzee is known more as an artist and performer now. But back in the Boy in da Corner days, doing insane production like that and that was really a moment. That was the thing about living in London in 2003, ’4, ’5, ’6 is that what was happening and black British music was just insanely exciting. And it was more progressive and a lot more futuristic than anything anyone had ever heard before. It had been years since the mid-’90s and jungle and drum & bass. It had been years since any electronic music had come out of nowhere, or seemingly come out of nowhere, and kind of brought this whole new sonic template. Which I guess we still hear echoes of today in Night Slugs and Fade to Mind and other people.

I mean, it’s crazy to me, I hear MikeQ edits of grime tracks and I’m just like, “Well, we’re in grime. I guess it was going to happen one of these days.”

Lauren Martin

Night Slugs is a crew that you’re really intimate with. Could you explain to those in the room who might not be so familiar with the climate of black music in London at the time when they were starting and what you’ve learned from the Night Slugs crew? I guess hanging out with them is quite an education sometimes.

Kindness

Oh yeah, for sure. Myself and Alex Sushon, Bok Bok, have been close for a number of years. He was around at the same time that I was pulling out these first productions and he was very supportive. We had a good dialogue about music at that moment in time. What’s kind of fucked up is after this impending tumble comes and I didn’t feel good about the music I made anymore, I just stopped going to those raves and listening to that music. And I remember one day we were having a text conversation and he’s like, “You coming down to Night Slugs?” And I was like, “Man, I’m too old for that. I just don’t understand. I don’t think it’s for me.” He got angry with me and to this day he was like, “You’re such a loser. Why would you just shut off a whole side of your musical personality?” Partly because you got burned. He understands that I didn’t feel good about the music. It’s kind of taken me years to slowly get back to that place.

Now it’s great. I’m actively working on music with Alex. I get to spend time with Girl Unit and with Jam City and just hear the exciting places that they’re taking music. Jam City, especially, I think is pushing the envelope so much with sound design, and song writing, and production. Can I just talk about the bad shit in 2005 now? For a second?

Lauren Martin

Sure, go ahead. I was going to ask you, but if you’re happy now.

Kindness

I want to get it out of my system. I think once I’ve got this off my chest I’ll be ready to go to a happier place. This wasn’t going to be easy.

So, 2005 and 2006 in London, I just associate with being completely toxic. In my mind now I’m just like — that was a bad time. New rave was just a side show to that, but it was kind of a part of it. New rave, if it stands for anything... I don’t know if anyone in this room actually ever listened to that music or followed it, but it was kind of a bastardized indie version of rave music. It would be guys in fluorescent trousers and American Apparel shell suits playing kind of breakbeat stuff with air horns and sampled phrases from old rave records, and it was horrible. It was the worst music of all time.

I was living there at this moment trying to be open minded, trying to be positive about music and just thinking, “I feel like such a fake. I have to go to these parties and keep a smile on my face when I see this absolute douche-bag walking in the door who is kind of destroying everything about pop and alternative music.” This is also where it comes into identity and things like sexuality. I just feel like — Peaches said this in an interview the other day, “New rave music was electricoclash with everything gay sucked out of it.” I liked electroclash on a songwriting level; the production of it grated on me after a while. But it was at its heart originally a queer scene and it had a diversity and open-mindedness, even the producers making that music.

New rave was 90% straight bros that had seen this opportunity to get famous fast, and do it by adopting all of the signifiers of an underground and at the time a queer culture. There were parties called things like Bimbox and Family which were 90% gay men dressed that way. Then bands like the Klaxons and Hadouken! and stuff came in and were like, “All right, we’ll have that.” And, here we go. I just thought it was a bad time, it didn’t feel good. What made it worse for me is that I was struggling with my identity and my sexuality at the time. There was a blog called Style Slut, and I’m going to name the guy now. There’s this guy called Donald Crunk — that’s a pseudonym, that’s not his real name. I’m not going to say his real name, but he still writes under that pseudonym. Now, this motherfucker is making short style films with young girls and trying to pass it off as some nowness thing, but it’s just ugly exploitation. Back then, in 2005-2006, he started this blog which was kind of recounting what was going on in London. New rave, grime, hip-hop, alternative bands. But this blog was the most virulent, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, trans-phobic piece of shit I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s still online if you want to go back and look at it. And one day this guy decided he was going to pick on me. He started talking about me in homophobic and trans-phobic terms, and I was just like, “Wait, what? Where did this come from?” What was even more fucked up is rather than being angry at him I was like, “Wait, how did he know? Do people know this? Shit, what am I going to do? I can’t be a grime producer if people know I’m gay. If people know I’m queer. If they know, fuck.” What took it another step deeper was that at the time, again with questions about identity, I was researching hormones. I was thinking about going there, and this guy is not just abusing me in homophobic terms, he’s abusing me in trans-phobic terms. And I’m like, “What the fuck? I gotta get out.”

And over night, I just shut down. I stopped my music. I left London. I was scared. I was actually scared. Like, I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to be in a place where people can be in a position of power and have these platforms, widely read platforms, with a shit load of positive comments on every article from other people that seem to appreciate this kind of base, racist, misogynist abuse.

Honestly, to this day, I can’t believe that this guy got away with this shit. That’s why I want to talk about it now. This guy got picked, by the BBC, to be one of the panelists on what they call their annual “Sound of.” Which is music people from the industry talking about who they think is going to be the next artist for the next year upcoming. It’s bullshit. It’s always very commercialized and it’s kind of rigged. But for me, it was more like the industry and the media could take one look at this guy’s blog and see how toxic it is, and yet they embraced him and his writing and his thought process. And they give him a platform where he can now be influencing what happens in music, where he can choose the next artist coming up.

And I’m just like, “That’s not okay. We shouldn’t give people that power to fuck up people.” If you are a racist, if you are homophobic, you shouldn’t be allowed to work in the music industry. Full stop. Because the music industry — and this goes back to blues and Motown — is based on the talents of non-white people, of people of queer identity. That’s where so much of good music comes from. House music comes from disco music, which comes from black gay men. So how can you allow people that don’t like those things and want to go on record saying how much they don’t like those things, have any influence within that arena? For me that’s not possible. That’s part of what we really need to solve now.

I look around this room and I see non-white faces, I see women, and I’m happy to see you here, but I’m going to tell you it’s going to be tough. It’s still not a smooth ride, especially when even in the younger generation that’s working in music and management and record labels now, they’re still predominately straight white guys. They have a language and a vocabulary amongst themselves. They don’t even know how to talk to you, or talk about you, or understand your issues. I’ve spoken about this, especially with black women. Black women in the industry, they’re like, “My manger is a white guy. And I have to sit him down and say these are things that I need to see you actively defending and pushing back against. And if you don’t do that, we can’t work together.” And the guy will go, “Oh funny, I didn’t realize that might be an issue.” She’s like, exactly. All right, rant over.

[applause]

Lauren Martin

Thanks for that, I appreciate you talking...

Kindness

I can see your worried eyes to your colleague.

Lauren Martin

No, not at all. Thanks for being so honest, I and everyone else really appreciate it. I didn’t ring the bell once.

Kindness

You could’ve.

Lauren Martin

That’s how real it was.

Kindness

Should I play something happy?

Lauren Martin

Why don’t we play some music, yes.

Kindness

Let me see, what happens next in the sequence?

Lauren Martin

What happens next, for you. You left London, you cut it all off, it was a bad time. What did you do to make amends with yourself and what happened?

Kindness

It has to get worse before it gets better. My father died the same year, so I was just like, “All right, I’m out.” I’m out of music, I’m kind of out life. I went to work back at the Hotpoint factory back in Peterborough. The washing machine people.

Lauren Martin

The washing machine factory, OK.

Kindness

I was telling my mom about it the other day I was like, “You remember when I used to work at Hotpoint to make money?” She was like, “Yeah, I kind of remember that. You must have been so bored.” I was like, “Mom, I was asleep.” After a few days I realized that the women working in our port cabin, as our boss didn’t care, so I would come in and earlier every day I would just put my head down on the desk and sleep until someone woke me up and was like, “Come on mate. It’s not cool. You got to do some work.” So I kind of reset that way. That was quite a good way to just start afresh. And I saved some money and then I moved back to Berlin.

I can condense this a little bit. In Berlin, at that moment in time, the climate was good. I fell in love again, I was happy, I had a new relationship. And I was like, “Alright. Maybe I’m just going to music for me, for fun. I’m not going to play it to anyone. It’s just for me.” And I started messing around and one of the first things that came out of it was my version of “Swinging Party” by the Replacements. I was like, “Hm, all right. You might be on to something.” I had never sung before in my life. To this day, I’m going to put my hand up, more real talk. I know I’m a pretty mediocre singer. I’m not a great singer. I’m a producer, I’m a music fan, I’m not a singer. It kind of sucks to have to play shows in front of ten thousand people. There’s other... You know, Taylor Swift can’t sing. [laughter]

Lauren Martin

So shitty.

Kindness

She deserves it. What was funny about that was, because I had been making these productions thinking maybe I can find another vocalist to sing on them. I didn’t think I would ever end up singing on them. Which to this day, might not have been the smartest idea, but it started coming. I was like, “Alright, well the melody will kind of be this. I guess I’ll finish it.” I ended up with three or four tracks. I sent them to two places — this is quite funny. I sent them to Red Bull Music Academy, didn’t get in. But, look guys. What it did do was it gave me this amazing deadline where I was thinking, “What am I making this music for?” There was this submission deadline where they wanted X amount of music and this kind of brief about who you are and your personality. And writing that helped me figure out what my music was and finishing the tracks for it helped me figure out what my music was. To this day it doesn’t really matter that I didn’t get in. It got me going.

The other place I went was, I got an email from a label that I had actually been dealing with in my grime days and they said, “We’ve heard this track on MySpace, we’d like to put it out.” That lead to a 7" single coming out on Moshi Moshi records. Off the back of that, things just started happening. We can go there in a minute, should I maybe play “Swinging Party”? I think I have it somewhere.

Lauren Martin

Yeah, sure.

Kindness

This is brave of me, I hate the sound of my own voice, so. Let’s see.

(music: Kindness — “Swinging Party”)

Lauren Martin

Are we doing the b-side or are you just having a flip?

Kindness

No, I’m getting it ready for the other song. But, I just realized that... We’re only up to 2009 and we’ve already been here 40 minutes. Alright. Quick fades, more condensed talking about shit.

Lauren Martin

What did we just listen to? Talk us through that a little bit?

Kindness

That was the album version of “Swinging Party.” The 7" version is way more crazy sounding. I really couldn’t sing then. I prefer this version.

Another thing that I thought about talking to you guys today was I thought I wanted to break down some stuff that might happen to you as you come into the music industry. If you get signed, if you’re going to put out a record. Stuff that doesn’t normally get talked about. I think as much as it might be slightly boring, it could also be really valuable, because if anyone had sat me down when this stuff was happening to me and just gone, “That’s a red flag,” I might not be in the position I am in today, which we’ll also get onto later.

Off the back of putting out this record in an independent label, some majors came calling. Apparently what had happened was that 2009 was a terrible year for music. There was just no music worth signing. All of the A&R guys have a signing budget and they have to assign a certain amount to money to artists within a year. They have to; they get into trouble if they don’t. October 2009 comes around, and I start getting all these phone calls and I’m like, “Wait, what the fuck is going on?” I think it was just that they hadn’t signed anyone that year, so they were like, “Alright, this guy is getting some heat on the interet, let’s sign him.” Things started to get really out of hand. People started bargaining off of each other and the money starts getting higher and higher and higher.

Here’s interesting; it doesn’t matter to me anymore. It’s going to sound completely outrageous because no one gets signed for these sums, at least not an alternative artist anymore. I got signed for £100,000 by Polydor and £150,000 by Universal Publishing for my publishing. Which is a shitload of money. But I didn’t know the reality of that, which is that 50% goes to tax, because you’ve reached a certain threshold in the year. Twenty percent goes to your manager. So, of £250,000 you’re left with 30%, which then has to last you the three or four years until your record comes out. You’re not getting any more money. Something that seems like a ray of light coming down from the heavens is actually way more practical than that. That’s kind of like a regular salary to keep you going. I can’t imagine what it is now when people are getting ripped off for label deals and for publishing. I know people getting signed for £5,000 now.

Here’s another bit of real talk. If some independent label, naming no names, is coming at you for £5,000 to sign your publishing and you’ve never put out any music but you believe in your music and you know it’s going to go somewhere — don’t do it. There’s a guy at one of the labels who used to look up “New Band of the Day” at the Guardian. As soon as it came out, get on the phone and call up that band and be like, “I’ll sign your publishing. £5,000.” Same thing. Do you know why they were doing it? Because they got tax breaks on it. They didn’t do it because they believed in anyone’s music. Because the label that owned that publishing company — maybe you’ll want to hit the bell soon. By doing that, they didn’t have to pay the £30 million of tax that they had outstanding. Now that’s kind of fucked up.

Lauren Martin

Where do you fit into all of this? Your first album was released independently —

Kindness

No, it was released on a major.

Lauren Martin

Was released on a major, sorry. The first release, not the first album. And then you went to —

Kindness

No, the first album was also released on a major. Someone didn’t do their fact-checking.

Lauren Martin

Don’t be shitty. [rings the bell / applause]

Kindness

I deserve it.

Lauren Martin

I know more about you than you do, sweetheart.

Kindness

I’m not, come on.

Lauren Martin

Whatever the hell you put out, who cares at this point. You went between indies and majors with varying success in quite a short frame of time. Apart from these lessons you want to tell what did... This is all like a hindsight if you’re telling us this now. What were you doing at the time within that world where you went, “No, I can’t do this. I have to go back doing this myself and I have to figure it out all myself.”

Kindness

I got dropped. That’s what happened.

Lauren Martin

Obviously you do know more about you than I do.

Kindness

I should probably just play some music and talk about making music in a minute. But at the same time, seriously, there’s going to be people in this room who are going to get approached to do similar things to what happened to me. No one is ever going to sit you down and break this down to you. Part of it is admitting that you were foolish and you didn’t know what was going on. I just assumed that I could trust my management, which was also a foolish thing to do, and that I could trust the best intentions of an industry to be putting out music for the right reasons. That’s not necessarily the case. In some places, yes. Album one didn’t really go the way that the label wanted it to. They sacked both of my A&R men that had signed me. Oh shit, maybe that was a bell moment. That’s another thing — if you were to sign a contract with a major, there’s a thing called a key man clause, which is kind of empowering for you, which says that the person that signed you and believes in you, if they leave the company you have the option to leave as well. I think that’s really important. I can think of other artists this has happened to where you get signed by a big label, maybe even get signed by an independent, and the guy that was really your champion and can take the finished record to the head of the label and go, “This is what we’re doing with this.” If they’re out the door for whatever reason, you no longer have a champion. And you’re literally just a CD-R in the corner of the office. And you don’t want to be that person. You need someone that who’s there every day just saying, “All right, things didn’t go the way we wanted with this first video, first single. Let’s keep going.”

So, yeah. I got dropped by Polydor and Universal, but in a way that was a blessing. It was a genuine blessing. One of the things my ex-manager did, bless him, was he went into Polydor and he said, “Look. We don’t really think you’re engaged with us on this record, you let go the people that were going to work on it with Adam. This is going to sound crazy, but we want the rights back. Give us the master rights back to the record.” Because when you sign a contract with a label, they get to own the copyrights and the master rights kind of in perpetuity. For whatever reason, the guy said, “All right. The masters are yours. We’ll give it back to you.” Now I own my first record.

Lauren Martin

To be honest, for all the major label things, that deserves applause. [applause]

Kindness

That never happens. It’s like winning the lottery. To this day, owning the master for my first record and now owning the master for my second record and licensing it, means that I can survive. I don’t make a lot of money, but stuff like streaming — if you own the master rights, because that’s really where the money comes from streaming, you take home 90% of streaming income. If you’re signed to a label like Universal, maybe if even if you’re signed to an independent, you’re taking 5% of that 90% home. You’re not getting paid. No wonder you get these checks at the end of the month, like Spotify, 3 P. Because it’s 5% of 90%. So yeah, where you can, if you can self-finance your record and self-release it, do it. Look around. People are getting huge off of self-made, self-promoted music.

If you have a vision, unless you think that a label is going to help you catapult yourself to the next level, it’s not necessary. It really isn’t. You can be your own team. You’re the best PR, the best A&R, the best stylist, the best musical director you have. Because you have all of those talents within you. It might seem scary, or maybe you don’t want that responsibility, but honestly you could find that team. And if you can find it, more power to you because a good team is the best thing to have of all. But it’s so hard, and you can’t necessarily trust the people that you’re even close to in terms of a work life. Maybe we’ll come to that later.

Lauren Martin

OK right. Now I’m going to do some real talk. Let’s talk about some of your music. Could we please run the first video?

(music: Trouble Funk — “Still Smokin”)

Now that wasn’t you. Evidently.

Kindness

Should I... Maybe this... We haven’t had a lot of music. Should I play this?

Lauren Martin

Hang on, I’m talking to you now. OK? Who was that and what was that song?

Kindness

That was Trouble Funk and the song was called “Still Smoking” and that performance was from, funny enough, from Sunderland in 1986, I think. There was a British music TV show called The Tube. Trouble Funk got signed to Island Records and they were one of the few go-go bands to actually start releasing music outside of DC and internationally and to also gain a worldwide recognition. Does anyone know what go-go music is?

Lauren Martin

I was just about to say it would be really great if you could explain it, because it’s such a regional sound.

Kindness

Again, this kind of comes back to LimeWire era of file-sharing where stuff started trickling through that you might not of have had access to, in the United Kingdom especially. And I remember hearing “1 Thing” by Amerie, produced by Rich Harrison, and thinking, “What are these drum breaks? These are crazy.” And researching more and finding out that Rich Harrison was from the DC area and that he was influenced by go-go. Go-go is basically live music that’s performed in clubs in the DC area where — it was started by a guy called Chuck Brown. The band plays continuously for about two hours and it’s all based on this one groove. The drum beat doesn’t really change. Some of the percussion elements on top like the congas and the cowbells change, but the drum break is fundamentally the same on every song. There’s a load of bands, and Trouble Funk are just one of a number of amazing DC bands that are still going actually.

What happened to go-go was it couldn’t get out of its regional scene and it also doesn’t really work on record. To this day, I have a lot of go-go records, they don’t deliver 1% of what it is to see a band play live and communicate with the audience. Because a lot of it’s based on audience participation as well. So, go-go. Trouble Funk.

Lauren Martin

Once you found this track through LimeWire and finding this Amerie record, you went on to make a track that samples that track. But it’s not just a case of sampling, and how a lot of people in this room might make a record through sampling. You actually went out there and met them and worked with them on this track. Could you talk about that experience and within that, where do you differentiate between finding a track and sampling it and asking for permission, and then actually seeking out the people and working with them on the new record? Because that’s what you did.

Kindness

I’m all for it. I was telling someone the other day that everyone I sampled on the first record, I ended up meeting and working with. That’s a hot tip. Sample some of your heroes and maybe it will happen. With Trouble Funk, I actually met them later when I wanted to make the music video. The studio version of this we did from a high quality wav file of the song and then me and Philippe did all the production here in Paris. The first record I worked on with Philippe Zdar from Cassius. When the song was done and it was time to make a video for it, I thought, “Well, this would be kind of nuts. What if I could get the band that wrote the song and made the audio that I sampled from, what if I asked them to replay the song with the new hook and the new lyrics and the new arrangement.” They were up for it, so I went out to DC and did that with them. Amazing people, great guys. Just funny how stuff happens like that.

Lauren Martin

Should we listen to your version of it? I think that would be quite interesting to see the difference because we saw the original. I have it, but do you have it as well?

Kindness

Yeah, I have it. This is a version here.

Lauren Martin

You’re so ahead of me, thank you.

(music: Kindness & Trouble Funk — “That’s Alright” / applause)

Thanks very much for that. So that experience of working with Trouble Funk and performing with them and having you present to them a new version of something that they’d work on many years before, that’s not the only kind of way you collaborate with people. You’re very hands on. Who else have you collaborated with, and how has those various processes shape what you do individually?

Kindness

On this new record, that was kind of my collaboration record. That was where I decided to get it all out of my system and just work with everyone. Predominantly with Kelela, with Dev, with Robyn. And then also, on an equally creative, and in terms of contribution, just great session people. People that I’ve met now through the music community who play on the top of their game. I think a really soulful professional player can just do something incredible. This may a taboo around using people do gigs, but, I mean, they did it on Motown, they did it on Phil Spector, they did it with Chic with studio musicians. It didn’t mean that “I’m Coming Out” wasn’t a great record.

Collaboration has definitely become a good way to hopefully bring the best of what I do, which I guess I think is more on the production side, and the best of what other people do, which is normally like songwriting and incredible vocals. This is a good example of hearing someone’s music for the first time and saying, “I have to work with this person.”

Lauren Martin

OK, lets play that then.

(music: Kelela feat. Kingdom — “Bankhead” / applause)

A gorgeous record, yeah. Who is Kelela, for somebody that might be unfamiliar? We’ve heard her voice, but who’s the woman behind the voice?

Kindness

Kelela is probably my favorite living vocalist. She’s a black woman of Ethiopian heritage originally from Washington DC in the States. I just remember hearing that track, probably on SoundCloud, and thinking, “Holy shit. I will move heaven and earth, how do I work with that voice?” I guess what was nice, either serendipity or just — it still took a bit of work, but she was collaborating on her first release with a lot of the Night Slugs and Fade to Mind guys at the time. I remember putting an email into to someone saying, “You’re working with this Kelela girl, right?” And they were like, “Yeah, she should come meet you in LA.” She was living in LA. Literally the first day we met, we cut some vocals that ended up being on my album. Which I don’t normally do. I like to get to know people first, and maybe hang out with them, get drunk. Once we’ve been drunk together and hung over together you’re like, alright.

Lauren Martin

It’s like a level playing field.

Kindness

Yeah. We know each other now. We’ve seen the best and the worst. She came into the studio and I played all the demos I had at the time for Otherness in one long strip. We turned the lights down, and she sat in the back of the room with a handheld mic like this, no fancy vocal mic, and just improvised. Once or twice she said, “Oh, can I have that again? I have some more melodic ideas.” Her vocal parts and adlibs on “Geneva,” for example, that is the sound of her hearing the song for the first time. There was no second take, there’s no edit. It’s just purely the melody that came from her mouth is in the track from start to finish. Not just the voice, but that kind of melodic gift, I remember sitting there going, “Oh, what? Oh dear.” It’s a bit like Ghostbusters, what if we cross the streams? The universe is going to end.

Lauren Martin

With Kelela then, to be kind of... You obviously want to collaborate the best people possible. The people that you think are the most talented or could have an affinity with you, rather than something in common. You say you’re really in awe of her voice but you don’t really like your own. How do you feel singing on your own music when you’re working with other singers? There must be an anxiety you have to work through with that.

Kindness

Yeah, I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t really have any choice. The thing about music now... You get so uncomfortable every time I go to real talk.

Lauren Martin

I like the real talk, it’s cool.

Kindness

Part of it is that... I guess what people want from you is also partly your personality. They don’t just want melody, or production, or songwriting. I can’t justify releasing music that I don’t sing on at all. People might be able hear a little bit of my personality in my production, but if there’s a song that’s kind of in my vocal range, I might as well have a go. And knowing that I can kinda get some support from better vocalists to layer things and make it sound good. I mean, it would sort of be dishonest of me to not try, knowing that I can even if it’s not my favorite thing in the world. I think that’s also part of being honest. If you’re making music, you might as well make yourself vulnerable. You might as well be open to the things that scare you. It’s what the singers were talking about the other night. Even for great singers, who was in that studio session with them? What was interesting was that when they broke it down to just the four of them alone in the room and they were trying to do the takes to the song, I don’t know if you picked it up, but they were as shy as we were. At one point they were like, “I don’t want to sing that part. Don’t make me ad lib.” She was starting to hold back on the mic. Even the best singer in the world probably has hang-ups about their voice.

That’s also part of collaboration. I think for me, I was really glad that we did that session together, because I think it does show that people who that are mainly producers all of the issues that come into producing a vocal. It is emotional and it can be kind of scary and kind of intense. But you have to be real and you have to be kind to the person and just hope that you get through it together. And when it does work, it’s incredible.

Lauren Martin

You don’t just work with other vocalists though. You work with producers, engineers, live musicians. Is there anybody in particular that really stands out for you? I know we have a video that you’d quite like to play of somebody that you work with.

Kindness

What’s special about this video as well, is when Dev finished his last album, Cupid Deluxe, we had been hanging out in London he week before and we were looking at pictures of Eddy Grant in Georgetown in Guyana. And he was like, “Damn, that image is amazing. What if we just went to Georgetown and shot a video for the new record?” And I was like, “Sounds crazy. How?” He was like, “I don’t know, you film it.” I’ve only directed video for myself really. He’s like, “I don’t care. Come.” I was like, “Are you serious?” And he had to leave to go back to the airport and all the way in the cab we were texting. “No really, are you serious? This is going to cost money. We can’t just fly halfway across the world and make a video. And you know I only shoot on film as well because I’m an idiot.” And he’s like, “You can do that if you want to.” Let’s show the video.

Lauren Martin

Can we have the fourth video please?

(music: Blood Orange — “Chamakay”)

Lauren Martin

You worked on that track and directed the video, and what I find particularly interesting and inspiring in regard to that is how you present yourself and the people that you work with in as a direct and honest as a way possible. By directing your own videos and being the face of them, that’s a form of empowerment within your music. Could you talk a little bit about thoughts that you have when you direct these videos and come together like that?

Kindness

Yeah, I mean, working on that one, it was just a gift. I really thought he was joking, and then all of the sudden we were on a plane. It was intense and it was a lot of work, but imagine going to the country your mother is from with your friend — his mother is from — and meeting his family for the first time. The whole thing, start to finish, was like, “This is a trip. I can’t believe we’re doing this.” And it’s nice to document it as well. In a way, I think what was more important for him was going. The fact that we got a video out of it was a bonus.

I think in terms of music video as well, and self-directing, because he just self-directed his new one that came out a couple of days ago, which was amazing. I think this is the thing, maybe there’s people in the room that are starting to make music videos for their tracks. Maybe you’re still doing it on your own, and that’s amazing. Don’t think that there might necessarily be a better alternative. There are really great directors out there, who do frequently make incredible pieces of work for people’s tracks. But on the flip side, if you make your own video, you know how much you’re spending. You get to choose what you spend it on. There’s just no reason why not to. A lot of who you are comes across in those kind of mediums. And also, it’s a financial thing. A video that a production company might ask £10,000-20,000 for, you can honestly do for £1,000 if you cut out all of the middle men. It’s not in the interest of your label to tell you that. I think this is the normal way it works, but a video is paid half by the artist and half by the label. So the label puts up the money for it, but whatever it costs you are now in debt for half the cost of the video. Which is fine if you manage to keep the budgets small; it just adds a little bump to the total amount that you have to recoup with your label. But if — and again, I’m not going to say who it is — if you’re a label that makes their major label artists spend half a million dollars on a video that never gets released and you as the artist and your management where like, “OK, we think this is a good idea.” Now you’re another quarter of a million dollars in debt to the label. You might manage to clear that, but you just got to be careful.

And video can be really expensive. Equally, maybe the most appropriate thing for your track could be you shooting with your selfie cam on your iPhone. Don’t let anyone stop you do that.

Lauren Martin

Speaking of expensive, you have a live band that you go on tour with. I’m curious to know, as I’m sure a lot of other people are, how you go from working in a studio on your music to transferring that to a live show. It’s something that a lot of people do, a lot of people have got very ambitious with. But it’s a much bigger undertaking than you just packing up a van. How did you put together a band that you’re happy with and what were the trials and tribulations of doing that to a point where you were happy?

Kindness

Wow, this is Pandora’s box too. Let’s be honest, though, it’s not actually that easy doing this. The reason why I have so many ambivalent stories about things is because it isn’t always the smooth path. I guess I didn’t expected it to be either. Putting a band together. There are ways of putting a record on stage, especially if it is heavily electronic. The simplest way is probably to have you as the vocalist and backing tracks. Honestly, from that point on, you’re just adding things. You might add a keyboard player, you might add more vocalists, a drummer, all of these things. But I think fundamentally, most live acts now start with the original studio version of the track and build on it. That’s what we did as well. I have guy called Blue May who was my musical director for the first record and this one. Then he also ended up mixing my second record, so shout out to Blue. He helped me find musicians for the live band at first. On this time around I ended up working with Chris Egan and Bryndon Cook who play with Solange Knowles as well. Chris Egan also drums for Blood Orange.

Live band, OK. Well, a live band costs money, and again, there’s a lot of people in the room who if you’re solo artist, if you’re starting out as a producer, you’re not in a band. You’re not splitting the proceeds from gigs four ways with other musicians. You are the person who gets paid for the show. So if you’re going to have a band you have to pay them wages, or you should be paying them wages. Over time, it’s expensive. What can I say? I don’t make money from playing live. I do it to support the music that I make, and I want people to see a live show, and I want — again, it’s a really good way to communicate your music to people. I think there are bands that are making money, but they’re headlining festively and they’re two notches better up the bill than where I am. Where I am right now, I’m breaking even. And I’m breaking even until...

Alright, here’s another thing just because I want people to understand how easy it is to go from being totally stable and having a vision for where you’re going and then one day you get a call from your accountant — your new accountant — and he says, “Adam, you’re technically insolvent. You’re bankrupt.” That happened to me two months ago. What happened is that after a year of touring, I had got to the same place. Not really making any profit from my live show but I knew I had broken even. And when you do live shows, you account in the budget for all the fees that are going to come into play in finalizing all of these things. There should be a line in the budget that says accountancy fees X for all of these shows. Well, in my budgets, I guess we sort of underestimated because after all of the profits had come in and we’re back at zero, my accountants turn around and they’re like, “You owe us £60,000.” I’m like, “Well, I have no money. I don’t know how I’m going to pay £60,000.” I try and get out of it and I try and talk to my lawyer. My lawyer doesn’t want to help. So I say I’m going to change lawyers as well. Sorry, I’m off. He’s like, “That’s cool. You owe me £40,000.” And I’m like, “Wait, a week ago I owed no one nothing, now I owe £100,000 to two companies. What is going on?” I managed to negotiate deals with both of those people and now, bless them, thank you very much, we’re done. Don’t worry about it. I’m digging myself out of a hole. I’m not technically bankrupt now, I’m just in debt. But I have future earnings that will offset that.

That’s the thing, you need to know that. I know a few think that I’m doing well. I thought I was doing well. And now overnight I’m like, “I’m not doing well at all.” But it’s going to be fine, and I truly believe that. This also comes back to what I was saying about a team. Get your team straight. Know that you can trust your lawyer, know that you can trust your accountants. Know that they’re not going to present you with the same bill they’re presenting Mariah Carey, because you probably shouldn’t work with the accountants that are working with Mariah Carey. My mistake. Over all of this, watching like a hawk, should be your management, saying, “Maybe they are too expensive for us,” or “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.” I take partial responsibility for what happened. But I also feel like my ex-manager probably should have... Well alright, you chose a good moment to hit the bell. Anyway, just be careful is all I’m saying.

Lauren Martin

That was more of a hover. It’s not been doom and gloom, don’t worry. It’s been informative. I think a lot of people in this room will definitely appreciate your honesty. But putting it a little bit back to your music. Is there something that you would like to play that really demonstrates where you’re at right now? Be it something of yours or something that you’ve bought and you love? Because you’ve gone through a lot of musical journeys up until this point and it would be great to get a sense of where you are right now coming out the other side of whatever all that is.

Kindness

What would that be?

Lauren Martin

One record to solve all of that.

Kindness

Yeah, let’s have something uplifting. Do you want to put this on? OK, all right.

(music: Stardust — “Music Sounds Better with You”)

Lauren Martin

Could everybody give a big hand to Kindness for talking today? [applause] Would anybody like to ask some questions to Adam? Do we have a mic?

Kindness

Can I also just explain that I put my cheerful sweater on. That’s actually what this was sitting waiting for, was just the moment when I need to like, all right. All right. Get started.

Audience Member

That was really refreshing, thank you for your honesty. I have a boring question after all of that, you kind of touched on it already. Kindness sticks out to me because, maybe 2012 after resisting it for a long time I downloaded Spotify and did the radio thing and a track called “SEOD” came up and I loved it. It was kind of my first discovery of the streaming generation. So I’m glad to hear you say that it’s coming to the point where you’re making some money from it. I’m just curious to hear some more about that, because I’m still in two minds about streaming. From both sides, as a musician and a consumer. And maybe some more thoughts on what you have.

Kindness

What’s your name?

Audience Member

Gareth.

Kindness

It comes back to what I said before. If you actually own your music, or the masters, if you’re licensing with someone, maybe if you even negotiated a good deal with the label that you’re working with. Which is possible. You can be signed to a label and actually talk specifically about streaming income and ratios and how much of the royalty they’re going to pay you. You could be in a good place.

That’s what’s kind of dumb about royalty ratios for streaming. A royalty ratio for a physical CD is around 6%, roughly, for every one sold. The traditional reason for that was the overheads and producing it and marketing spent, in things around releasing a record. Well, a digital stream has no overhead. Once it’s uploaded to the server somewhere, it doesn’t cost the label anymore money. Why are they only paying you 6%? It doesn’t make sense. So now there are more progressive labels that if you’re signed to a contract with them and they own the music, they might actually pay you 50% of the royalty on the streaming alone. And that’s pretty good. I mean, that’s better than 6.

But if you’re going to get paid a couple of million times, which in the US sometimes can do, what if you owned the master? That’s maybe a few thousand pounds a month. That can make all the difference.

Audience Member

I feel like that’s becoming a more common thing to be heard form a musician, particularly of the independent side of things and not, say, Thom Yorke or whatever. That’s really refreshing to hear from those people who are saying, “This works. If you can do it, it works.”

Kindness

It’s more that there isn’t a better alternative. There are things like Bandcamp and there’s ways of selling music directly to people that want to hear it. But at this point, unless something completely unexpected comes along, I kinda see everything going towards the streaming model. I mean, it makes sense. I don’t particularly like it; I think it devalues music overall. It’s the same way that Netflix has become the go to for moving video on TV. Why won’t streaming become a thing for music? I mean, I meet music fans and people in the industry now that said, “That’s great, I actually bought your record on iTunes. It’s the only record I bought this year.” And I’m like, “Wow. I’m honored. But you only bought one record this year?” “Yeah, I stream everything else.” “With the adverts?” [make suspicious face] I mean, anyway...

Audience Member

It seems like more people are using it for discovery and then going out and buying the records. In theory.

Kindness

Potentially.

Audience Member

On a side note, it was the vocals that really attracted me to that record and the imperfection. It was cool.

Kindness

I appreciate that. Thanks for your time.

Audience Member

Hey.

Kindness

Hi.

Audience Member

What’s the most I can do as a straight white male to combat the deeply rooted flaws in the music industry?

Kindness

It’s a really good question and I’m actually happy that a straight white man would ask that question, because I had a discussion with one last night who wasn’t ready. Naming names.

You can’t be passive. If you’re ever on a label, and one of your label mates is getting fucked over, you need to say something. If you’re playing a music festival, and you realize that an artist of color or queer artist is being marginalized and you’re being given an opportunity that they’re not, maybe you say something. Say something to the promoters, say something to the booker. I tried to do this at Pitchfork Festival last year and I made myself another enemy. But some of us are just going to have be that guy that sabotages their career, but does it for everyone else.

I’m just tired of it, I’m really tired. I’m tired that talented artists of color, talented artists of non-heterosexual identity are having such a hard time just breaking through a glass ceiling. Because there is one. And you can just be an ally, be friends with those people. Be honest with yourself if you’re influenced by their music. I think that’s what outraged me the most was this guy was like, “There is no black music anymore. White music can be a version of black music.” I was like, “What are you talking about?” That was what upset me about the Charleston shootings as well. You had a lot of black guys coming out online saying, “This is fucked up. Something has got to change.” And then all of the white artists that make their living off of hip-hop, or R&B, or club music that comes from a direct lineage from black culture are like [hums and looks the other direction].

Lauren Martin

The silence is pretty loud sometimes.

Kindness

Yeah and you’re just like, “Now you don’t have anything to say?” You’re happy to slip into some code-switched Ebonics when it suits you on Twitter, but the minute that nine people get shot in a church it’s not your problem anymore. Well, fuck you. Sorry.

Audience Member

I don’t really have a question, I just want to thank you. You really touched me and I think you touched more people. The time you have on that couch, instead of talking about your own material, you really thought about what you think is important to tell us, and I think that’s... It really got me emotional, because I think it’s so important that someone at some point in your career reaches out and tells you that shit. Because I almost fucked up my own career and I didn’t do it, because someone stepped in and was like, “Yo, do you know what you’re signing?” I really want to thank you for that. Thank you so much.

Kindness

Thank you.

Lauren Martin

Is there anybody else that’s curious at all?

Audience Member

First, thank you so much for being here and being honest. I don’t even know how to ask questions, I just really appreciate you talking about racism and sexism and stuff. I’m from Japan, I’m Asian, and I’m a woman and I had some difficulty working as a musician and also about music industry thing, I also had many difficulties. I’ve been living in Japan and tried releasing some of my records in the United States, and tried hard to learn English and learn how indie music industry works, how media works, how publishing works, but it’s always really hard. And I already made some mistakes and I lost my money. I still want to make music and I have to deal with it.

My question is, I want to do everything about a lot of my music, as much as possible by myself. But, there is a limit what you can do and at least in Asia you can find trust. I’m difficult to trust people. How you could find your manager that you can trust or how you can trust people?

Kindness

That’s a really good question. I just want to say, I don’t think there’s anyone in this room that hasn’t made mistakes. What’s amazing is that you’re still here now; you didn’t give up. If you gave up, you wouldn’t be sitting here. I think everyone needs a round of applause, because I don’t know what you’ve been through, but... [applause]

We’re all going to get there. I feel like we’re part of a new generation. There’s a new generation that’s going to look out for each other. I see it coming up on the internet, and I see it on Tumblr, and places like that where I’m like, “Damn, this bullshit with racism, sexism and homophobia that I experienced in 2005, it wouldn’t be allowed now.” People would just shut it down, and that’s what we need to start doing.

In terms of finding people that you can work with, managers and labels, I think you just have to ask around and people have to be honest with each other. I feel like, like I said, people are sometimes shy talking about the mistakes they’ve made because they don’t want to seem foolish. Privately — I maybe did it too much publicly today — I would talk about people that I think are bad news in the industry. There are other people that are as toxic as that blogger I was talking about, but they’re heads of labels and they’re lawyers. And they feel the same way about women and gay artists, but they’re in positions of power. And if you said to me, “I’m thinking of signing with X label,” and I knew that that guy was like that, I would be like, “No, no, no, and these are the reasons why.”

We just need to keep our ears open and talk to each other. Now that I’m looking for new management — which I probably just made harder for myself — I went around the industry asking artists that I trust and I was like, “Who have you spoken to? Who do you like? Can you name me anyone that actually likes their management?” There were a few yeses, and I was like, “Ah, that’s good to know.” When the time is ready, maybe I’ll go and have a conversation with them.

That’s the other thing. Management has its role if you’re ready to do something and it’s going to get complex and the logistics of it are difficult. If there are a lot of things happening at once. But at the same time, if someone’s just going to come in and take over and tell you what to do, and how to dress, and how to present yourself, and what is your strongest single, they might not be the right person for you. And that person can equally damage what you have and what’s unique to you. Like I say, one day you can trust someone. But just be very careful and maintain your guard until you know that it’s right to let that person in.

Audience Member

Thank you so much.

Lauren Martin

I’m just quite conscious of time, so if there were any more, now’s a good time. OK, well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed that, I genuinely did. And thank you so much for being honest. Everybody, Kindness.