Live Lans and Bacary Bax of Bud Sugar
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Bax and Lans are best known in Hull as two members of the band Bud Sugar. The brothers have roots in two African nations: Senegal and Sierra Leone. They both describe with affection the determination of their unorthodox English mother who took them on twice yearly visits to Africa so that they could connect with aspects of their culture and heritage. Bax and Lans talk about the importance of these early experiences and how it taught them that you can be happy without material wealth and that music can be deeper than just the tune.
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Video
Transcription: live lans and Bacary Bax Interview
Interview with Live Lans and Bacary Bax from Bud Sugar
Interviewer: Jerome Whittingham
Date: 2016
JW: So if anyone's been to a festival in Hull they will know you guys from The Sesh or Freedom, yeah, from the band Bud Sugar. But of course not everyone that will be listening in to this project will have come across you before. So what I normally like you to do is to ask you to introduce yourselves. But actually, on this occasion, I'm going to - ask you to introduce each other, as you're brothers - so, you know, so you know, tell us your names and - then introduce each other.
LL: Right, well I'm Lans.
BB: I'm Bax - this is my younger brother - great guy, by the way! - Dunno what can I say about Lans? Good looking, obviously! We're brothers so there's a lot of contrast. He's the good looking one -you know, good with money - creative, dresses well, sort of knocked me into shape, fast learner, web designer... have I missed anything?
LL: No...vegan.
BB: Vegan, yeah! Because of me though! I've had influence! It took 10 years, but...
JW: Go on then Lans, give your brother the same treatment.
LL: And this is Bax - creative, vegan... What can I say?
BB: Basically you're gonna list off the same things, aren't you!
LL: Yes like, he's just like the older version of myself I guess. 'Cos, I'm like, followed his footsteps kind of thing into what I wanna do, but being my own creative guy
BB: He won't usually admit that though, I think he's trying to be nice.
LL: No, no, I'm not!
JW: I think perhaps we'll come on to influences just a little bit later. So tell us now what your connection is to Africa?
BB: Well we're both mixed raced. Our mum's from Hull. We have different dads. So my dad's from Senegal, his dad's from Sierra Leone. But we've basically had the same sort of experiences and upbringing, even though our dads are from different places. -we've never been to Sierra Leone, we've been to Gambia, we've been to Senegal a few times. And our, our mum sort of like used to take us to Africa a lot when we were kids. Like maybe two or three times a year.
LL: Yeah, I always tell everyone and they get sort of surprised like. I was, I went to Africa like twenty times before I was ten.
BB: Yeah, and obviously like, I think she, she just felt like, you know....because, our, I say obviously, our dads wasn't around and I think she wanted us to...have a sense of like what our identity was. And she didn't push it on us or anything, but she just wanted us to know like, this is the reason why people are singling you out or the way you feel you stand out or whatever. So she used to take us. We used to just like basically go into the bush in Gambia. Which like at the time it made sense, but looking back, she was, it was quite - sort of outlandish - like it was quite like a big thing to do what she was doing.
LL: Yeah, very.
BB: Because, she, she was just taking us to like you know, relatives or people she'd met over the years and stuff and we just lived with them in their compound and you know mingled with all the African kids. And basically just become African for like two weeks, four weeks, however long we was there for. And I think that's just had a really good sort of effect on us later down the line. 'Cos it's sort of made us, you know, I think quite well rounded, and sort of like got our heads screwed on. 'Cos we've seen, not like poverty, because it wasn't like poverty, but just you know, just people living with less, but still being happy. Even though that's like, you know...
JW: Tell me a little more about family backgrounds. So you say dads weren't around, mum's being the strong parent to you.
BB: Yeah!
LL: Bax has never really known his dad, whereas my dad, I knew him briefly for like two years, I guess, between like, nine and ten - and then like he left when I was like eleven. So they're the only two like years that I really have memories of him.
JW: And that was meeting him back in Africa was it?
LL: No, he used to - work - on the ferry. So he was like a supervisor on a ferry. So like whenever he'd have like his days off, that's when I'd go and meet him. We'd like meet near like the HMP prison. He'd give me some money, say, " How you doing?", this and that, and then he'd go.
BB: Yeah, obviously, I, obviously I'm the oldest one, so like my mum had already developed this thing of like taking me to Africa. Because my dad is from Senegal and I think she said that it was difficult to get flights to Senegal, so we used to go to Gambia and then he would, sort of like come, drive down from Senegal to Gambia. I mean unfortunately, quite a lot of the times he didn't make it. But then sort of after a while my mum was just like, "Oh well we're just gonna go anyway, because you know like, I want you to know your culture", you know, we really liked the people. They were like a second family in a way. And yeah, she just would take us. And she, she, obviously she's white, but she you know, just, just existed in this African world, even in Hull. All her friends was like Africans from different countries and she knew how to cook all, all the different like food from all the different countries and stuff. And she was keen to like, you know, make sure we was eating it and we understood what it was, where it came from, that we were like grateful for it and stuff like that.
JW: What were your memories of, or your earliest memories of going to Africa? So, how old were you when you first went to Africa? Were you old enough to appreciate the fact that...
LL: My earliest memory was probably when I was like, about seven. 'Cos I just remember being at school and like they'd always make a thing of me going to Africa. So they'd give me like this book to write about it and stuff. I'd draw pictures and stuff like that - that was always a thing like every year they'd give me a book that I had to fill. Which was pretty cool! Wish I still had 'em!
BB: Did you ever, did you fill 'em?
LL: Yeah!
BB: Right.
LL: Yeah.
JW: You were very, very young, but what were your expectations, do you think, of going to Africa?
BB: Well the thing is though like, if that's your earliest memory. But she was taking us from like really young. Basically as soon as you can take a baby on a plane, she was taking us. - So I feel like, before we really had chance to sort of, have, you know, preconceptions about it, we'd already been going there so, so frequently.
LL: Yeah, it was kind of like a thing, just, this is what you're gonna do like. In the year at some point you're gonna go to Africa. It kind of became like that, like it's just like an every..., like not everyday, but it's just a thing you're gonna do.
BB: I think my earliest mem... earliest memory actually was before he was born and my mum when she was pregnant. And we stayed there for longer than we usually did and -, I dunno, she felt like she was gonna, it was coming to the time to like have him and she didn't, she was like real nervous about staying there and stuff. She was worried, she didn't really want to have him there. And we ended up getting an early flight home, but she, she - that's not really her style, like 'cos she's quite -
LL: Likes to get the most out of ....
BB: Yeah, doesn't like to waste money and stuff. But like, she was like panicking and we like rushed back. So that's like one of my earliest memories. But we've...you know, we just did so many ...it was just so strange, you know like, 'cos we were like these English boys, but we like, we were black, so you know, we felt like we could just join in. But we didn't know how to speak the language, but, and they didn't really know how to speak great English - the kids anyway - and - I remember just like, we were playing football and I wanted them to play - What's it called? - kick-ball instead...
LL: Kick-rounders.
BB: ...kick-rounders. I was trying to explain to them all how to play kick-rounders and obviously I couldn't speak the language. And so for some reason, as a kid, I thought like if I, I like talk to them in the accent they'll understand what I'm saying! So I'm like going to all of these kids like, "No, you come ovva here, you come ovva here!" They just, they're looking at me, looking at each other like, "What is this kid on about?" And I could see it in their eyes, but I just didn't, I couldn't communicate with them. We just, we basically just would communicate through a few small words, the grownups and just like body language and stuff. ...Build sandcastles, we used to, we used to go and just pick sweet potatoes out of the ground and just eat them raw...mangoes off the trees...they used to give us palm wine!
LL: ...spiky things that'd be on...
BB: All over the floor! Because they all had their shoes off everywhere they went. So naturally we had to act...you know, emulate them. Shoes off! They're all walking around, not caring. We're like, "Oww!" Trying to act like, "No, no, it's cool, we're all good, we're all good!" - Yeah, it was cool, it was really cool, - to be there to be honest. But obviously, like, you know, it was like, we weren't fully African - do you know what I mean? - we were still like these like English boys. My mum used to always bring them like clothes and stuff and presents, and everything like that. So like we knew like we was different, still there, but we still blended in really nicely and we really enjoyed it. But we haven't been back for quite a long time now.
JW: I was going to ask. How often do you go back now?
BB: Probably not, not been in like eight or nine years, maybe?
LL: I haven't been, yeah, since I was in primary school.
BB: Yeah, basically my mum, my mum, got into like a huge, a huge row with the people we used to stay with and they fell out and then like the people that lived next door to them, in their own compound. She just went and made friends with them instead and we started coming back and just staying with them! So it was like totally awkward! Like the other compound would see 'em and stuff. It was like, "Oh, you've lost out now!", you know, "We've given all the presents to them!", or whatever. And then, I dunno, things just got weird. I think she decided to just knock it on the head and stuff. Plus she'd never really gone on holiday like anywhere else other than Africa. All we'd just gone to Africa, that's the only place. And then she'd just suddenly realised, "Oh, I can go to Spain, I can go to Benidorm!", or "I can go here, I can go there." So then, that became the new thing. I mean we've got so many scrap books, full of the funniest pictures you've ever seen in your life! – but yeah
JW: So how much, how much of an influence has all of these African trips been on you, not just that you are of Black African heritage yourself, but actually you’ve had a lot of experience of Africa. How much of an impact has that had?
BB: It’s hard to say ‘cause, I mean obviously, it was tri… I don’t want to say it was difficult growing up but it was tricky, you know, knowing where to put yourself, where to place yourself, especially being mixed race and especially being mixed race with a white mum and no, no black…you know there was other Africans that came round but in our family like…
LL: and in Hull, like, like it’s not like, well at the time it weren’t like as cultured as it is now
BB: …yeah
LL: …as like compared to like, places like London and stuff that have had…
BB: or even like Leeds or anywhere, Manchester, wherever. But -
JW: So which part of Hull is home? Where were you growing up in?
BB: Preston Road,
JW: Preston Road
BB: Yeah. So. I always think that we were well known on Preston Road. We still are now. But just everything we, everything we saw and I think it made us, it made us to sort of be like, originals if I can use that word just because like I was saying earlier, when we went to Africa, we were just like English boys. Oh well yeah, our skin is dark but we were just like, they didn’t see us as Africans and obviously when we were in Hull, we were seen as like Black boys. So we were like, we weren’t really accepted. It’s not like we were pushed away but we weren’t really like we fit in anywhere we went. And obviously like growing up we just sort of like became more and more content with that to the point that we embraced it. I mean when I was a kid I didn’t wanna do like, stereotypical Black things because I didn’t want people like push me into a corner and say, “Oh yeah, he’s doing what we expect him to do”. But as I’ve got older, I’ve realised, like, you know, really that was just a problem in my own head, you know what I mean, making too much of a big deal out of it.
JW: So do you think it’s more difficult to be mixed race than it is to be Black or white?
BB: No I think it’s easier in a way. Yeah, ‘cos. I think we’re like sort of the acceptable Black, do you know what I mean? Because we were talking about our friend Kofi and obviously- him, he got, he’s the Face of Hull but there was the lead up to it. There was a lot of people, “I thought this was Hull and blah, blah, blah.” But I’ve never really had that in Hull. I mean I’ve had racism, people have said things to me whatever. But I’ve never really felt pushed out like to that degree where people are like going out of their way to like attack you, but they won’t admit to what they’re attacking you for.
So I feel like. ‘Cos I’ve seen loads of documentaries that say like mixed race people in like Jamaica and stuff, they get thret better by the Jamaicans or and even certain parts in Africa, because it goes back to like the times of slavery and like obviously slave masters who had children with their slaves, you know and that child would be sort of in the middle ground of like better than the slaves but not better than the white people and stuff like that. And then obviously you know white people just stereotype you as being cool or being you know edgy or whatever.
LL: I think it depends on the type of environment that you’re brought up in. I’m pretty sure that there’s like – like Bob Marley was mixed race and I’m pretty sure when he was in Jamaica, he’d get a lot of stick for being mixed race from like Black people – because he weren’t seen as fully Black or whatever so I guess it depends like so...
BB: Yeah, but then, but then he’s the, he was like the break through artists into like the rest of the world.
LL: Yeah
BB: And there’d been loads of you know reggae coming out of Caribbean and stuff but I don’t know.
JW: Let’s talk more deeply about the – cultural influences. Any sort of icons of any particular cultural and artistic fields that you’ve followed or that’s had an impact on you over the years?
BB: We were always massive on Michael Jackson when we were kids…
LL: Yeah, that’s the one…
BB: Like, our mum use to make us, well not make us but she use to be like get us to get up and dance…
LL: I use to do it of my own accord…
BB: she use to make him do it at parties and stuff and he use to nervously be doing like say moonwalk and you could tell that he didn’t want to do it but he just did it anyway – and I was massive on Eddie Grant as well. You know, just all the obvious ones and you know she would always talk about Nelson Mandela and we didn’t understand at the time but she’d be like, “Oh, he’s been in prison for like 20 odd years and you know, they won’t let him out but he’s like, he’s a legend now and all this stuff so, we knew, we knew about Black icons, but I think Michael Jackson he was like our main icon really, yeah.
JW: What do you think about Michael Jackson’s tendency to move from being sort of Black to …
BB: Yeah, I’m not gonna lie, it’s weird, it’s weird, it’s conspiracy theory weird, do you know what I mean. Because it’s like how, I mean I get it. They say that he had vitiligo was it?
LL: Some kind of disease like that, yeah.
BB: But it just seems weird to me like you can just correct that and like bleach your skin or whatever. I mean I don’t know. I haven’t really looked into it like.
LL: But it’s like Lil’ Kim, the rapper…
BB: Yeah, true…
LL: …who’s recently done like the same thing…
BB: Yeah, really…do you know Lille Kim?
JW: No, you’re educating us.
BB: She was real, she was really dark and now she basically looks like Paris Hilton.
LL: Yeah…
BB: It’s so weird. Just her whole face shape and everything. I mean maybe there’s, maybe there’s some deeper level, maybe there some sort of …Michael Jackson he, he’s a star on a level that you can’t really compare anybody else to. The amount of attention he was getting, all the stuff about him being bullied by his dad, you know he probably found it difficult like, this Black face on everyone’s TV. Maybe he sort of felt that he needed to conform. I mean he definitely took it too far.
JW: Of all your biggest stars or icons, who’s having the biggest influence on you now?
BB: I don’t know, there’s just so many…
LL: Yeah. There’s so many that I don’t want to like pinpoint it to one, kind of thing. Like what, there’s like Kendrick Lamar. He’s doing like great things for like the Black community and stuff at the minute.
BB: Even like Chance the Rapper
LL: Chance the Rapper, like gospel and stuff. Like spreading a good message like positivity and stuff. – Barack Obama I guess.
BB: Yeah obviously, yeah. The first Black President mate…
LL: There’s like so many.
BB: Yeah I mean like he says. There’s this rapper called Young Thug that we like listening to who’s sort of like, does a lot of cross dressing. Do you know, he’s changing the face of what rap is from being this sort of like, misogynistic, like antagonistic art form into like…
LL: Just an expression
BB: …yeah just an expression. To have a Black man wearing…on his cover it’s basically, it looks like a Japanese sort of suit into a dress thing, it’s kind of strange.
LL: I quite like Jaden Smith as well, he’s sort of …
BB: Yeah Jaden Smith, yeah
LL: Will Smith’s son he’s done the same thing, openly wearing women’s clothes and stuff and just ..
BB: Can I just say Dave Chappelle a legend
LL: Oh yeah, just come back actually…
BB: Yeah
LL: I watched his comeback just last night
BB: Yeah, Yeah…
JW: Yeah, you’re doing really quite well with Bud Sugar. And very well known now locally and much more now widely. – but what was your mum’s expectations or ambitions for you when you were much, much younger?
LL: I think like she just always pushed us to do what we wanna to do. She’s always wanted us to do like follow the academic route, but she’s also just been like do, do what you wanna do. You can be whatever you wanna be type of thing.
BB: I think she wanted, she always used to, like she never told us that we could be great, she always you use to say like you are great. You know like. I was always into art as a kid. I was always drawing and that. I always remember she would say to people when I was around that, “He’s really good at art, the teachers say that he’ll go a long way”. And it was like sinking stuff. She had a difficult background, she didn’t really. She was like the black sheep of the family. And I think that’s what lead her to fall in with like this African crowd.
And she always said, “Look as long as you don’t drink, you don’t do drugs and you (kind of basically) try your hardest, I’m proud of you”, and that’s basically all she ever said. Linked to the music, it’s weird because she always , she, when we use to go to Africa, she loved African music, Lucky Dube, Kanda Bongo Man. And we, when we got to Africa she would like, within the first two days they would have to take her to the market. So she’s like rushing through these African markets, the only white woman in sight and it was in Gambia so they use to go like “Toubab, toubab”, which is like “white person, whatever” whatever and she use to go like, “Yeah I am Toubab; I’m white Toubab, you’re Black Toubab”. She’d go, she’d go….and she’s like going through the – she’s going through all the you know tapes at the time then obviously. It’s like, “Oh yeah, it’s the new Lucky Dube. Oh let me get three of them and Bongo Man”. So whenever music was on, my mum was on back home in Hull, always kind of African music. And to be honest with you, I hated it
LL: Always loud as well.
BB: Always loud. Always African music.
LL: Trying to annoy the neighbours.
BB: Like oh yeah and…
LL: They don’t like my African music so I’m going to play it louder.
BB: So you can imagine like, and again made us stand out like a sore thumb and we, you know, I hated it. I was just like I hated this music, I’m sick of hearing it. Don’t like it. But then later, we’ve ended up forming this band that takes a lot of those elements on board and even as I’ve got older, I find myself occasionally I go on Youtube Lucky Dube and sit there and listen to it like…
JW: You say that the band has taken those elements on board but you’ve not taken your mum on board. Is there not space for your mum?
BB: You mean in the band? No, God nooo... We did this gig at the Polar Bear and she came and – she likes her drink right and she just, god knows how, she, she ended up drinking a full bottle of wine to herself and we were like doing our gig and we were on stage and I just felt this thing on my back, turn around and my mum’s there on stage. 50 years old. But I mean in this big gaudy dress and she’s like, and I’m like “Oh god, what’s she doing.”
LL: Oh brilliant
BB: …and she just starts to go like “Ahhhhhh”. I got off stage like and I remember Burnsy from BBC was like …Oh god did you just see my mum? He was like “Yeah, embarrassing but never mind that, great show”. So I’ve still got footage but not, I can’t, she would never do that if she wasn’t drunk…
LL: When we told her the next day, she was like, “Oh no”.
BB: No she was like, “Oh, oh didn’t I get on the stage and give like a big speech?”
JW: Of the future, yeah, where are you taking the band? What, what do you hope to be achieving – in your futures?
BB: Obviously, like, it’s real, you know, the thing is like when , I don’t know if you’ll agree yet but when, when you start a band, or, I guess if you start anything, your aspiration is like the top. You know we love Michael Jackson so it’s like, oh well we’ll be in Michael Jackson’s position.
LL: Yes, I legitimately thought I could be Michael Jackson at one point like that I could, like be like a job?
BB: What! You personally or actually just take over…
LL: …no like, I could just be him…
BB: … like James Bond?
LL: - yeah, yeah.
BB: - yeah but I think like having actually gone through all the processes and like legitimately, like, put, you know, it’s not an understatement to say that we put everything that we have into it. I mean, it’s basically engulfed our entire lives without us. It’s crept up on us. We started out for fun. Now, you know, so many people got into it, people buy the CD’s and obviously, like you wanna, you wanna, I don’t know, you want to live up to their expectations but you also want, each year you look back and you think, ‘Look how far we’ve come, look how much everything has advanced etc.’ So it’s just gratifying to see that success, you know, like to see that evolvement in ourselves in a group as individuals, - to see people just encouraged us from day one, to, to you know, to, to do a performance in front of a thousand people and like, nearly all of them are singing the lyrics of all songs and, like, to me that, I just love that, it’d, it’d be awesome to be like one of the top dogs.
I mean, obviously, there, there’s all these like half of them are drug addicts and, you know, they abandoned their families, their kids and whatever but, so there’s a price but really in this day and age with like Facebook and Youtube, there are so many communities that exist, you could easily, and we already have, it’s just a case of building on it, innit and we’ve already created our own community of people who like our music that relate to us as people, so really it’s, it’s just to build that and to just try, you know, be bigger and better and greater and...
LL: …but show everyone else that they can be bigger and better and greater as well. I think that’s the thing that, like, the main reason why I still do music. It’s ‘cause that’s what I wanna do, like, I just wanna show everyone, like, you can do all these things as well.
JW: I am right in saying that it’s not just the fact that you are doing it, it’s actually quite strong messages in your songs?
BB: Yeah, I mean, again and I might go back to like our experiences growing up and stuff but like, just, you know, cause it, obviously the messages are quite cynical sometimes as well..
LL: …it’s just real…
BB: …yeah, yeah it’s real but it’s quite catchy…
LL: … people sugar coat things a lot these days and we try not to. We try and like, we try and like sugar coat it and, yeah, you’ll like the sound of it but the actual message of it…
BB: …yeah, it’s like going in, you know, past, past all that, like…
LL: …we want it to really hit you and like a feeling come out of you cause that’s what makes, that’s when music lasts. I think when it, it like creates a feeling like everyone can like have a hit song and then it’s gone, like, the next year but if you can make music that people feel they’ll always go back to it.
BB: Yeah, plus like, obviously we were, we were always more like, I keep saying, Lucky Dube and was like my mum’s favourite – artist and nearly, you know, ninety five percent of his songs are about, you know, like social injustice and just like real things that are happening -, but, like catchy and we, we used to watch like videos, you know, of him filling stadiums of people singing them and I think that just sinks in there and also people like Paul Simon and, and thing like that…
LL: …Johnny Cash when we got into that and…
BB: …yeah, yeah…
LL: We were listening to loads of Johnny Cash and his messages as well, they were just like real, just like…
BB: …yeah and it’s not like, it’s not like you just have to always have a message but there’s no reason to just like write bubblegum pop either. Do you know what I mean? Just, like, I, me personally, when I sit down and write songs I find it difficult to write a song unless it’s about something that matters and also like, I dunno, people might notice that a lot, a lot of our songs are basically like going “Oh!” you know, “You’re an idiot” and that, this is why, but in many ways, like, it’s like the song first and foremost is, like, directed at me. Things that I notice in myself like ’cool’, let me write about that. You know people have come to us and said, you know, “Oh I listened to that song.” – We’ve got a song called Your Life’s Happening and he was like, and just like, just hearing that line and it just made me to think, like, my life is happening and I should, you know, I should be, like, living it and he was like and just ever since that day, like I’ve just had a different perspective on life and that’s crazy cause I’m just like a nobody from Preston Road and he’s like telling me that my songs changed his life.
JW: You’ve become Ambassadors for the City also as well, haven’t you really? So how do you describe the City to the people, – that you are meeting and chatting to?
BB: - we are not always that positive about it to be honest. I mean it’s our home, we like it here, you know, like when, when you go away and come back you feel like a sense of like belonging and stuff. I mean it’s cool, the thing is, right, like my perspective of Hull before I was in the band is very different to what it is now, you know, like I’m still realistic about what the City’s like but like before the band I was like “It’s crap,” you know, “I hate it there, there’s nowt going on. Everyone’s lame,” but, me, you know, we must have met thousands of people over the past few years – that, you know, and like for instance, like our good friend Chappo. He got in touch with us through, like a mutual friend of a friend and he, he’s like, he loves his rap and he, he wants to be a battle rapper and he is a battle rapper now. At the time he was, like, just getting into it, – and you know we became really good friends and realising, like, cause we never, you would never have expected him to be a battle rapper but now that you know him you realise like it’s core to him, like he really loves it and to, to meet him and find this, this guy from, like - Greatfield, you know, battle rapping is a dad, he‘s a dad of three, he was a traffic warden at the time, wasn’t he? But liked battle rapping and really good at it, really passionate about it. We just started to meet all these people you know…
LL: … and that’s what it is though. It’s like, it’s not that the place is bad or any place is bad necessarily. It’s, it’s like you’ve got – in yourself, be like I’m gonna go and look for the positive stuff to do and find opportunities and stuff like that…
BB: Yeah, yeah
LL: …’cause you can say any City’s crap really. If you just sit there and do nothing like just watch it go on like everything’s boring but if you actually go out there and put yourself into these opportunities and stuff, that’s when Cities’ become great.
JW: Yeah, the people themselves have found that new confidence.
BB: Yeah, yeah that’s really nicely put but and, obviously, we weren’t in that world before cause, you know, we were sort of the ones just sitting about…
LL: …. just going along with it.
BB: I mean we, we did stuff but we didn’t have that drive but now we meet so many people and, obviously, the city is getting this new found, sort of like, ambition – you know, that they can be, like, bigger than what they are and there’s so many brilliant musicians, artists, just everything really, you know I don’t want to limit, limit it to creative people but there’s so many cool people that we’ve met. So really, what I would say is “Hull’s great, you should come to Hull.”
Interviewer: Jerome Whittingham
Date: 2016
JW: So if anyone's been to a festival in Hull they will know you guys from The Sesh or Freedom, yeah, from the band Bud Sugar. But of course not everyone that will be listening in to this project will have come across you before. So what I normally like you to do is to ask you to introduce yourselves. But actually, on this occasion, I'm going to - ask you to introduce each other, as you're brothers - so, you know, so you know, tell us your names and - then introduce each other.
LL: Right, well I'm Lans.
BB: I'm Bax - this is my younger brother - great guy, by the way! - Dunno what can I say about Lans? Good looking, obviously! We're brothers so there's a lot of contrast. He's the good looking one -you know, good with money - creative, dresses well, sort of knocked me into shape, fast learner, web designer... have I missed anything?
LL: No...vegan.
BB: Vegan, yeah! Because of me though! I've had influence! It took 10 years, but...
JW: Go on then Lans, give your brother the same treatment.
LL: And this is Bax - creative, vegan... What can I say?
BB: Basically you're gonna list off the same things, aren't you!
LL: Yes like, he's just like the older version of myself I guess. 'Cos, I'm like, followed his footsteps kind of thing into what I wanna do, but being my own creative guy
BB: He won't usually admit that though, I think he's trying to be nice.
LL: No, no, I'm not!
JW: I think perhaps we'll come on to influences just a little bit later. So tell us now what your connection is to Africa?
BB: Well we're both mixed raced. Our mum's from Hull. We have different dads. So my dad's from Senegal, his dad's from Sierra Leone. But we've basically had the same sort of experiences and upbringing, even though our dads are from different places. -we've never been to Sierra Leone, we've been to Gambia, we've been to Senegal a few times. And our, our mum sort of like used to take us to Africa a lot when we were kids. Like maybe two or three times a year.
LL: Yeah, I always tell everyone and they get sort of surprised like. I was, I went to Africa like twenty times before I was ten.
BB: Yeah, and obviously like, I think she, she just felt like, you know....because, our, I say obviously, our dads wasn't around and I think she wanted us to...have a sense of like what our identity was. And she didn't push it on us or anything, but she just wanted us to know like, this is the reason why people are singling you out or the way you feel you stand out or whatever. So she used to take us. We used to just like basically go into the bush in Gambia. Which like at the time it made sense, but looking back, she was, it was quite - sort of outlandish - like it was quite like a big thing to do what she was doing.
LL: Yeah, very.
BB: Because, she, she was just taking us to like you know, relatives or people she'd met over the years and stuff and we just lived with them in their compound and you know mingled with all the African kids. And basically just become African for like two weeks, four weeks, however long we was there for. And I think that's just had a really good sort of effect on us later down the line. 'Cos it's sort of made us, you know, I think quite well rounded, and sort of like got our heads screwed on. 'Cos we've seen, not like poverty, because it wasn't like poverty, but just you know, just people living with less, but still being happy. Even though that's like, you know...
JW: Tell me a little more about family backgrounds. So you say dads weren't around, mum's being the strong parent to you.
BB: Yeah!
LL: Bax has never really known his dad, whereas my dad, I knew him briefly for like two years, I guess, between like, nine and ten - and then like he left when I was like eleven. So they're the only two like years that I really have memories of him.
JW: And that was meeting him back in Africa was it?
LL: No, he used to - work - on the ferry. So he was like a supervisor on a ferry. So like whenever he'd have like his days off, that's when I'd go and meet him. We'd like meet near like the HMP prison. He'd give me some money, say, " How you doing?", this and that, and then he'd go.
BB: Yeah, obviously, I, obviously I'm the oldest one, so like my mum had already developed this thing of like taking me to Africa. Because my dad is from Senegal and I think she said that it was difficult to get flights to Senegal, so we used to go to Gambia and then he would, sort of like come, drive down from Senegal to Gambia. I mean unfortunately, quite a lot of the times he didn't make it. But then sort of after a while my mum was just like, "Oh well we're just gonna go anyway, because you know like, I want you to know your culture", you know, we really liked the people. They were like a second family in a way. And yeah, she just would take us. And she, she, obviously she's white, but she you know, just, just existed in this African world, even in Hull. All her friends was like Africans from different countries and she knew how to cook all, all the different like food from all the different countries and stuff. And she was keen to like, you know, make sure we was eating it and we understood what it was, where it came from, that we were like grateful for it and stuff like that.
JW: What were your memories of, or your earliest memories of going to Africa? So, how old were you when you first went to Africa? Were you old enough to appreciate the fact that...
LL: My earliest memory was probably when I was like, about seven. 'Cos I just remember being at school and like they'd always make a thing of me going to Africa. So they'd give me like this book to write about it and stuff. I'd draw pictures and stuff like that - that was always a thing like every year they'd give me a book that I had to fill. Which was pretty cool! Wish I still had 'em!
BB: Did you ever, did you fill 'em?
LL: Yeah!
BB: Right.
LL: Yeah.
JW: You were very, very young, but what were your expectations, do you think, of going to Africa?
BB: Well the thing is though like, if that's your earliest memory. But she was taking us from like really young. Basically as soon as you can take a baby on a plane, she was taking us. - So I feel like, before we really had chance to sort of, have, you know, preconceptions about it, we'd already been going there so, so frequently.
LL: Yeah, it was kind of like a thing, just, this is what you're gonna do like. In the year at some point you're gonna go to Africa. It kind of became like that, like it's just like an every..., like not everyday, but it's just a thing you're gonna do.
BB: I think my earliest mem... earliest memory actually was before he was born and my mum when she was pregnant. And we stayed there for longer than we usually did and -, I dunno, she felt like she was gonna, it was coming to the time to like have him and she didn't, she was like real nervous about staying there and stuff. She was worried, she didn't really want to have him there. And we ended up getting an early flight home, but she, she - that's not really her style, like 'cos she's quite -
LL: Likes to get the most out of ....
BB: Yeah, doesn't like to waste money and stuff. But like, she was like panicking and we like rushed back. So that's like one of my earliest memories. But we've...you know, we just did so many ...it was just so strange, you know like, 'cos we were like these English boys, but we like, we were black, so you know, we felt like we could just join in. But we didn't know how to speak the language, but, and they didn't really know how to speak great English - the kids anyway - and - I remember just like, we were playing football and I wanted them to play - What's it called? - kick-ball instead...
LL: Kick-rounders.
BB: ...kick-rounders. I was trying to explain to them all how to play kick-rounders and obviously I couldn't speak the language. And so for some reason, as a kid, I thought like if I, I like talk to them in the accent they'll understand what I'm saying! So I'm like going to all of these kids like, "No, you come ovva here, you come ovva here!" They just, they're looking at me, looking at each other like, "What is this kid on about?" And I could see it in their eyes, but I just didn't, I couldn't communicate with them. We just, we basically just would communicate through a few small words, the grownups and just like body language and stuff. ...Build sandcastles, we used to, we used to go and just pick sweet potatoes out of the ground and just eat them raw...mangoes off the trees...they used to give us palm wine!
LL: ...spiky things that'd be on...
BB: All over the floor! Because they all had their shoes off everywhere they went. So naturally we had to act...you know, emulate them. Shoes off! They're all walking around, not caring. We're like, "Oww!" Trying to act like, "No, no, it's cool, we're all good, we're all good!" - Yeah, it was cool, it was really cool, - to be there to be honest. But obviously, like, you know, it was like, we weren't fully African - do you know what I mean? - we were still like these like English boys. My mum used to always bring them like clothes and stuff and presents, and everything like that. So like we knew like we was different, still there, but we still blended in really nicely and we really enjoyed it. But we haven't been back for quite a long time now.
JW: I was going to ask. How often do you go back now?
BB: Probably not, not been in like eight or nine years, maybe?
LL: I haven't been, yeah, since I was in primary school.
BB: Yeah, basically my mum, my mum, got into like a huge, a huge row with the people we used to stay with and they fell out and then like the people that lived next door to them, in their own compound. She just went and made friends with them instead and we started coming back and just staying with them! So it was like totally awkward! Like the other compound would see 'em and stuff. It was like, "Oh, you've lost out now!", you know, "We've given all the presents to them!", or whatever. And then, I dunno, things just got weird. I think she decided to just knock it on the head and stuff. Plus she'd never really gone on holiday like anywhere else other than Africa. All we'd just gone to Africa, that's the only place. And then she'd just suddenly realised, "Oh, I can go to Spain, I can go to Benidorm!", or "I can go here, I can go there." So then, that became the new thing. I mean we've got so many scrap books, full of the funniest pictures you've ever seen in your life! – but yeah
JW: So how much, how much of an influence has all of these African trips been on you, not just that you are of Black African heritage yourself, but actually you’ve had a lot of experience of Africa. How much of an impact has that had?
BB: It’s hard to say ‘cause, I mean obviously, it was tri… I don’t want to say it was difficult growing up but it was tricky, you know, knowing where to put yourself, where to place yourself, especially being mixed race and especially being mixed race with a white mum and no, no black…you know there was other Africans that came round but in our family like…
LL: and in Hull, like, like it’s not like, well at the time it weren’t like as cultured as it is now
BB: …yeah
LL: …as like compared to like, places like London and stuff that have had…
BB: or even like Leeds or anywhere, Manchester, wherever. But -
JW: So which part of Hull is home? Where were you growing up in?
BB: Preston Road,
JW: Preston Road
BB: Yeah. So. I always think that we were well known on Preston Road. We still are now. But just everything we, everything we saw and I think it made us, it made us to sort of be like, originals if I can use that word just because like I was saying earlier, when we went to Africa, we were just like English boys. Oh well yeah, our skin is dark but we were just like, they didn’t see us as Africans and obviously when we were in Hull, we were seen as like Black boys. So we were like, we weren’t really accepted. It’s not like we were pushed away but we weren’t really like we fit in anywhere we went. And obviously like growing up we just sort of like became more and more content with that to the point that we embraced it. I mean when I was a kid I didn’t wanna do like, stereotypical Black things because I didn’t want people like push me into a corner and say, “Oh yeah, he’s doing what we expect him to do”. But as I’ve got older, I’ve realised, like, you know, really that was just a problem in my own head, you know what I mean, making too much of a big deal out of it.
JW: So do you think it’s more difficult to be mixed race than it is to be Black or white?
BB: No I think it’s easier in a way. Yeah, ‘cos. I think we’re like sort of the acceptable Black, do you know what I mean? Because we were talking about our friend Kofi and obviously- him, he got, he’s the Face of Hull but there was the lead up to it. There was a lot of people, “I thought this was Hull and blah, blah, blah.” But I’ve never really had that in Hull. I mean I’ve had racism, people have said things to me whatever. But I’ve never really felt pushed out like to that degree where people are like going out of their way to like attack you, but they won’t admit to what they’re attacking you for.
So I feel like. ‘Cos I’ve seen loads of documentaries that say like mixed race people in like Jamaica and stuff, they get thret better by the Jamaicans or and even certain parts in Africa, because it goes back to like the times of slavery and like obviously slave masters who had children with their slaves, you know and that child would be sort of in the middle ground of like better than the slaves but not better than the white people and stuff like that. And then obviously you know white people just stereotype you as being cool or being you know edgy or whatever.
LL: I think it depends on the type of environment that you’re brought up in. I’m pretty sure that there’s like – like Bob Marley was mixed race and I’m pretty sure when he was in Jamaica, he’d get a lot of stick for being mixed race from like Black people – because he weren’t seen as fully Black or whatever so I guess it depends like so...
BB: Yeah, but then, but then he’s the, he was like the break through artists into like the rest of the world.
LL: Yeah
BB: And there’d been loads of you know reggae coming out of Caribbean and stuff but I don’t know.
JW: Let’s talk more deeply about the – cultural influences. Any sort of icons of any particular cultural and artistic fields that you’ve followed or that’s had an impact on you over the years?
BB: We were always massive on Michael Jackson when we were kids…
LL: Yeah, that’s the one…
BB: Like, our mum use to make us, well not make us but she use to be like get us to get up and dance…
LL: I use to do it of my own accord…
BB: she use to make him do it at parties and stuff and he use to nervously be doing like say moonwalk and you could tell that he didn’t want to do it but he just did it anyway – and I was massive on Eddie Grant as well. You know, just all the obvious ones and you know she would always talk about Nelson Mandela and we didn’t understand at the time but she’d be like, “Oh, he’s been in prison for like 20 odd years and you know, they won’t let him out but he’s like, he’s a legend now and all this stuff so, we knew, we knew about Black icons, but I think Michael Jackson he was like our main icon really, yeah.
JW: What do you think about Michael Jackson’s tendency to move from being sort of Black to …
BB: Yeah, I’m not gonna lie, it’s weird, it’s weird, it’s conspiracy theory weird, do you know what I mean. Because it’s like how, I mean I get it. They say that he had vitiligo was it?
LL: Some kind of disease like that, yeah.
BB: But it just seems weird to me like you can just correct that and like bleach your skin or whatever. I mean I don’t know. I haven’t really looked into it like.
LL: But it’s like Lil’ Kim, the rapper…
BB: Yeah, true…
LL: …who’s recently done like the same thing…
BB: Yeah, really…do you know Lille Kim?
JW: No, you’re educating us.
BB: She was real, she was really dark and now she basically looks like Paris Hilton.
LL: Yeah…
BB: It’s so weird. Just her whole face shape and everything. I mean maybe there’s, maybe there’s some deeper level, maybe there some sort of …Michael Jackson he, he’s a star on a level that you can’t really compare anybody else to. The amount of attention he was getting, all the stuff about him being bullied by his dad, you know he probably found it difficult like, this Black face on everyone’s TV. Maybe he sort of felt that he needed to conform. I mean he definitely took it too far.
JW: Of all your biggest stars or icons, who’s having the biggest influence on you now?
BB: I don’t know, there’s just so many…
LL: Yeah. There’s so many that I don’t want to like pinpoint it to one, kind of thing. Like what, there’s like Kendrick Lamar. He’s doing like great things for like the Black community and stuff at the minute.
BB: Even like Chance the Rapper
LL: Chance the Rapper, like gospel and stuff. Like spreading a good message like positivity and stuff. – Barack Obama I guess.
BB: Yeah obviously, yeah. The first Black President mate…
LL: There’s like so many.
BB: Yeah I mean like he says. There’s this rapper called Young Thug that we like listening to who’s sort of like, does a lot of cross dressing. Do you know, he’s changing the face of what rap is from being this sort of like, misogynistic, like antagonistic art form into like…
LL: Just an expression
BB: …yeah just an expression. To have a Black man wearing…on his cover it’s basically, it looks like a Japanese sort of suit into a dress thing, it’s kind of strange.
LL: I quite like Jaden Smith as well, he’s sort of …
BB: Yeah Jaden Smith, yeah
LL: Will Smith’s son he’s done the same thing, openly wearing women’s clothes and stuff and just ..
BB: Can I just say Dave Chappelle a legend
LL: Oh yeah, just come back actually…
BB: Yeah
LL: I watched his comeback just last night
BB: Yeah, Yeah…
JW: Yeah, you’re doing really quite well with Bud Sugar. And very well known now locally and much more now widely. – but what was your mum’s expectations or ambitions for you when you were much, much younger?
LL: I think like she just always pushed us to do what we wanna to do. She’s always wanted us to do like follow the academic route, but she’s also just been like do, do what you wanna do. You can be whatever you wanna be type of thing.
BB: I think she wanted, she always used to, like she never told us that we could be great, she always you use to say like you are great. You know like. I was always into art as a kid. I was always drawing and that. I always remember she would say to people when I was around that, “He’s really good at art, the teachers say that he’ll go a long way”. And it was like sinking stuff. She had a difficult background, she didn’t really. She was like the black sheep of the family. And I think that’s what lead her to fall in with like this African crowd.
And she always said, “Look as long as you don’t drink, you don’t do drugs and you (kind of basically) try your hardest, I’m proud of you”, and that’s basically all she ever said. Linked to the music, it’s weird because she always , she, when we use to go to Africa, she loved African music, Lucky Dube, Kanda Bongo Man. And we, when we got to Africa she would like, within the first two days they would have to take her to the market. So she’s like rushing through these African markets, the only white woman in sight and it was in Gambia so they use to go like “Toubab, toubab”, which is like “white person, whatever” whatever and she use to go like, “Yeah I am Toubab; I’m white Toubab, you’re Black Toubab”. She’d go, she’d go….and she’s like going through the – she’s going through all the you know tapes at the time then obviously. It’s like, “Oh yeah, it’s the new Lucky Dube. Oh let me get three of them and Bongo Man”. So whenever music was on, my mum was on back home in Hull, always kind of African music. And to be honest with you, I hated it
LL: Always loud as well.
BB: Always loud. Always African music.
LL: Trying to annoy the neighbours.
BB: Like oh yeah and…
LL: They don’t like my African music so I’m going to play it louder.
BB: So you can imagine like, and again made us stand out like a sore thumb and we, you know, I hated it. I was just like I hated this music, I’m sick of hearing it. Don’t like it. But then later, we’ve ended up forming this band that takes a lot of those elements on board and even as I’ve got older, I find myself occasionally I go on Youtube Lucky Dube and sit there and listen to it like…
JW: You say that the band has taken those elements on board but you’ve not taken your mum on board. Is there not space for your mum?
BB: You mean in the band? No, God nooo... We did this gig at the Polar Bear and she came and – she likes her drink right and she just, god knows how, she, she ended up drinking a full bottle of wine to herself and we were like doing our gig and we were on stage and I just felt this thing on my back, turn around and my mum’s there on stage. 50 years old. But I mean in this big gaudy dress and she’s like, and I’m like “Oh god, what’s she doing.”
LL: Oh brilliant
BB: …and she just starts to go like “Ahhhhhh”. I got off stage like and I remember Burnsy from BBC was like …Oh god did you just see my mum? He was like “Yeah, embarrassing but never mind that, great show”. So I’ve still got footage but not, I can’t, she would never do that if she wasn’t drunk…
LL: When we told her the next day, she was like, “Oh no”.
BB: No she was like, “Oh, oh didn’t I get on the stage and give like a big speech?”
JW: Of the future, yeah, where are you taking the band? What, what do you hope to be achieving – in your futures?
BB: Obviously, like, it’s real, you know, the thing is like when , I don’t know if you’ll agree yet but when, when you start a band, or, I guess if you start anything, your aspiration is like the top. You know we love Michael Jackson so it’s like, oh well we’ll be in Michael Jackson’s position.
LL: Yes, I legitimately thought I could be Michael Jackson at one point like that I could, like be like a job?
BB: What! You personally or actually just take over…
LL: …no like, I could just be him…
BB: … like James Bond?
LL: - yeah, yeah.
BB: - yeah but I think like having actually gone through all the processes and like legitimately, like, put, you know, it’s not an understatement to say that we put everything that we have into it. I mean, it’s basically engulfed our entire lives without us. It’s crept up on us. We started out for fun. Now, you know, so many people got into it, people buy the CD’s and obviously, like you wanna, you wanna, I don’t know, you want to live up to their expectations but you also want, each year you look back and you think, ‘Look how far we’ve come, look how much everything has advanced etc.’ So it’s just gratifying to see that success, you know, like to see that evolvement in ourselves in a group as individuals, - to see people just encouraged us from day one, to, to you know, to, to do a performance in front of a thousand people and like, nearly all of them are singing the lyrics of all songs and, like, to me that, I just love that, it’d, it’d be awesome to be like one of the top dogs.
I mean, obviously, there, there’s all these like half of them are drug addicts and, you know, they abandoned their families, their kids and whatever but, so there’s a price but really in this day and age with like Facebook and Youtube, there are so many communities that exist, you could easily, and we already have, it’s just a case of building on it, innit and we’ve already created our own community of people who like our music that relate to us as people, so really it’s, it’s just to build that and to just try, you know, be bigger and better and greater and...
LL: …but show everyone else that they can be bigger and better and greater as well. I think that’s the thing that, like, the main reason why I still do music. It’s ‘cause that’s what I wanna do, like, I just wanna show everyone, like, you can do all these things as well.
JW: I am right in saying that it’s not just the fact that you are doing it, it’s actually quite strong messages in your songs?
BB: Yeah, I mean, again and I might go back to like our experiences growing up and stuff but like, just, you know, cause it, obviously the messages are quite cynical sometimes as well..
LL: …it’s just real…
BB: …yeah, yeah it’s real but it’s quite catchy…
LL: … people sugar coat things a lot these days and we try not to. We try and like, we try and like sugar coat it and, yeah, you’ll like the sound of it but the actual message of it…
BB: …yeah, it’s like going in, you know, past, past all that, like…
LL: …we want it to really hit you and like a feeling come out of you cause that’s what makes, that’s when music lasts. I think when it, it like creates a feeling like everyone can like have a hit song and then it’s gone, like, the next year but if you can make music that people feel they’ll always go back to it.
BB: Yeah, plus like, obviously we were, we were always more like, I keep saying, Lucky Dube and was like my mum’s favourite – artist and nearly, you know, ninety five percent of his songs are about, you know, like social injustice and just like real things that are happening -, but, like catchy and we, we used to watch like videos, you know, of him filling stadiums of people singing them and I think that just sinks in there and also people like Paul Simon and, and thing like that…
LL: …Johnny Cash when we got into that and…
BB: …yeah, yeah…
LL: We were listening to loads of Johnny Cash and his messages as well, they were just like real, just like…
BB: …yeah and it’s not like, it’s not like you just have to always have a message but there’s no reason to just like write bubblegum pop either. Do you know what I mean? Just, like, I, me personally, when I sit down and write songs I find it difficult to write a song unless it’s about something that matters and also like, I dunno, people might notice that a lot, a lot of our songs are basically like going “Oh!” you know, “You’re an idiot” and that, this is why, but in many ways, like, it’s like the song first and foremost is, like, directed at me. Things that I notice in myself like ’cool’, let me write about that. You know people have come to us and said, you know, “Oh I listened to that song.” – We’ve got a song called Your Life’s Happening and he was like, and just like, just hearing that line and it just made me to think, like, my life is happening and I should, you know, I should be, like, living it and he was like and just ever since that day, like I’ve just had a different perspective on life and that’s crazy cause I’m just like a nobody from Preston Road and he’s like telling me that my songs changed his life.
JW: You’ve become Ambassadors for the City also as well, haven’t you really? So how do you describe the City to the people, – that you are meeting and chatting to?
BB: - we are not always that positive about it to be honest. I mean it’s our home, we like it here, you know, like when, when you go away and come back you feel like a sense of like belonging and stuff. I mean it’s cool, the thing is, right, like my perspective of Hull before I was in the band is very different to what it is now, you know, like I’m still realistic about what the City’s like but like before the band I was like “It’s crap,” you know, “I hate it there, there’s nowt going on. Everyone’s lame,” but, me, you know, we must have met thousands of people over the past few years – that, you know, and like for instance, like our good friend Chappo. He got in touch with us through, like a mutual friend of a friend and he, he’s like, he loves his rap and he, he wants to be a battle rapper and he is a battle rapper now. At the time he was, like, just getting into it, – and you know we became really good friends and realising, like, cause we never, you would never have expected him to be a battle rapper but now that you know him you realise like it’s core to him, like he really loves it and to, to meet him and find this, this guy from, like - Greatfield, you know, battle rapping is a dad, he‘s a dad of three, he was a traffic warden at the time, wasn’t he? But liked battle rapping and really good at it, really passionate about it. We just started to meet all these people you know…
LL: … and that’s what it is though. It’s like, it’s not that the place is bad or any place is bad necessarily. It’s, it’s like you’ve got – in yourself, be like I’m gonna go and look for the positive stuff to do and find opportunities and stuff like that…
BB: Yeah, yeah
LL: …’cause you can say any City’s crap really. If you just sit there and do nothing like just watch it go on like everything’s boring but if you actually go out there and put yourself into these opportunities and stuff, that’s when Cities’ become great.
JW: Yeah, the people themselves have found that new confidence.
BB: Yeah, yeah that’s really nicely put but and, obviously, we weren’t in that world before cause, you know, we were sort of the ones just sitting about…
LL: …. just going along with it.
BB: I mean we, we did stuff but we didn’t have that drive but now we meet so many people and, obviously, the city is getting this new found, sort of like, ambition – you know, that they can be, like, bigger than what they are and there’s so many brilliant musicians, artists, just everything really, you know I don’t want to limit, limit it to creative people but there’s so many cool people that we’ve met. So really, what I would say is “Hull’s great, you should come to Hull.”