Ceebo talks about his poetic music and his journey
From free styling in a playground to Bluquet to ‘LAMBETHNOTLA’ dropping tomorrow, Ceebo tells us about his journey and breaks down some of his songs for us.
Around a year ago I was scrolling on TikTok when I discovered Ceebo’s song ‘Puff Puff’. I instantly thought it was an old school UK rap song that I’ve not heard of, I was surprised when I found out that it only came out a couple of months before, and then went on to listen to the rest of Bluquet. I decided to give Ceebo a follow and have been following his journey since. Back in March while he was back from university, I asked to interview him. We met up in a café in Brick Lane which South West Londoner Ceebo had never been to, and we sat there for a good hour just speaking about who he is, how he became who he is and he also broke down some of his music for me, and here is what I learnt about Ceebo in an hour.
BEA: What’s your name and where are you from?
CEEBO: I’m Ceebo and I’m from Stockwell, Southwest London
BEA: When did you start making music?
CEEBO: I was 16, that’s when I started making music, that’s when I recorded my first song. My stepdad found out that I’ve been writing, because I told him and he was like “do you want to record a song” and I was like “yeah say no more”, so we pulled some strings and he got me a studio session with slay productions, but obviously at the time I wasn’t on blowing I just wanted to record music so I went and recorded it on some dusty 90s hip hop beat and I was just rapping for two minutes, but it took time to record. But yeah, that’s how long I’ve been making music for it’s been what? 5 years.
BEA: Tell me about your journey, how did you get to where you are right now?
CEEBO: I started off writing poetry; I was a real poetry guy at first. I’ve been doing creative writing since I was like 11 but I stopped for a while, from like 12 to 15 I stopped because real life hit so I dropped most of my hobbies, then it came to 15 and I just needed an outlet, so I started writing poetry. It hit year 11 and me and my friends started doing cyphers in the playground.
So man would get together and just spit, and I started writing bars for it and when I’d go I’d take a whole book because I didn’t know how to memorise my bars, I didn’t know any of that so I’d take my book and just rap verses. They liked it and I liked doing it so I kept on doing it, but at the same time as well I kind of started listening to music from before my time, specifically rap music, so all the classics, Illmatic, Boy In Da Corner etc. And I was like ‘rah this is cold’ and as well like the music spoke to me because a lot of it spoke to my experiences and I noticed it was having an effect on how I view the world type thing. People from across the world are able to verbalise experiences that I’ve had, so what if I can do that in my music? So, I started listening to more and more music and writing more and more, and it was just that every single day…I’d bang out 2/3 verses. It was that for 3 years.
I was dancing between taking music seriously or not because at this point, I didn’t have anything to show for it and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I knew that music made me happy, and I was passionate about it, but I didn’t know about taking it seriously as a career because I was looking around and didn’t know the first thing about it, like how to make an actual career. I also didn’t have any connects to the industry, it felt like there was no path, so I was like damn.
When Lockdown hit, all there was to do was be on your phone and on socials. And I was mainly on Twitter, I spoke to a lot of people about music but in doing that I was building bare connects like DJs, bare musicians that would get me to where I needed to be. So, for example there was this one girl I was mutuals with, and we was just cool and she’s a year older than me, so when I was in my last year of 6th form, she was in her first year of uni. I didn’t find out I was going to her uni until the day of Results Day because I was planning on going Manny, but I didn’t get in. So, I went to my second choice which was Warwick, and when she found out she said “say no more I’ll link you up with a rapper that knows a producer” so I said “say no more”.
First week comes I went to hip hop society they had a welcome little motive and I met bare people there that I know now like Tidez, someone called Success and the producer in question was there, his name was Zenith, and he told me he engineers songs and if I ever have something I want to work on come to his accom because he had a studio set-up there at the time so I said “say no more”.
In November, I actually shouted him saying I got something I want to record. I recorded 3 songs. 2 of them were ‘Zonin’ and ‘Multiply’ and after that I held onto the songs for months. It didn’t come out until like June/July the next year and I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do with music at this point. I knew I wanted to do it but didn’t know how. Music was really to the side then halfway through 2022 I was like I might as well put it out and see what happens type thing. From mid 2022 to now music has fully been my focus, music is getting much more priority than it did before.
BEA: What’s your favourite piece of work so far?
CEEBO: ‘Before I was Ceebo’ or ‘Puff Puff’. Before I was Ceebo because it was the first thing I recorded for ‘Bluquet’ and it represents a big change for me as an artist and me taking a step forward. I wasn’t worried about the sound and if people would like it I was making it to make music so for those reasons I have an attachment to it for now it’s my most intimate song. And ‘Puff Puff’ it was my first time recording a song and genuinely having fun and even in the studio we were bussing bare jokes, and it was fun, it was my first time feeling like I was 16 again rapping and just letting loose.
Ceebo describes his music as soulful. Him and his boys would get annoyed because bare music would sound good, but it wouldn’t make you feel anything or make you feel different. He thinks that if someone listens to your music and they feel neutral then it’s just cliché, so he really tries to let himself shine through his music. If he’s in the studio he either gives the producer a beat or tells them how it should sound or what sample to use etc. That’s why he scrapped his first project; it was good but didn’t make him feel anything and he doesn’t want people to listen to his music and say ‘ah he sounds like xyz’, or like he is just copying someone.
“It’s the type of music that will make you feel something. I’ve always got a story to tell even with ‘Puff Puff’.”
BEA: What would you tell 15 year old Ceebo?
*Don’t do crime.
*Don’t rush - I felt like time was running out for me and I felt like I needed to blow, but I learnt that music grows with perspective, the fact I haven’t blown has helped me grow as an artist.
*Don’t forget why you do this
BEA: What’s your goal?
CEEBO:
*Make music for as long as I want too
* I don’t have any idealistic goals like changing people’s lives etc because I’m not naïve. If I’m free to make music without worrying about how it will come together or how I will pay for it, I’m happy.
* I don’t care about legacy and people thinking I’m the greatest rapper alive because it doesn’t pay the bills, so if I’m free to make music I want and influence my fans and it’s all good
Lastly, Ceebo told me just wants to make his money and cut.
BEA: Do you think growing up in south London influenced your music?
CEEBO: Absolutely, I wouldn’t make the music I make now if I didn’t grow up in South London, or maybe not even make music at all. Everything about growing up in South has influenced my music; growing up around that much culture makes you see the world differently. You are influenced by more than what’s in your household.
Even the music man in south make, the first rap song I ever heard was Johnny Gunz ‘fresh home’ and that’s because I went to my bredrins house, and he was playing it on YouTube, and I feel like I would have not had that experience if I grew up somewhere else because that was a local guy. I grew up in Brixton Hill from my date of birth to 13. I lived in Brixton Hill and then moved to Stockwell.
Hearing man speak on my experience that are from where I’m from is nice to hear, on ‘Bluquet’ the last track samples ‘Pain Is The Essence’; that’s my favourite UK rap song ever. That's the mandem’s song and that’s a South thing, I wouldn’t sample it and it wouldn’t have been that deep to me if I was from like North or East or West.
Ceebo then gave me a breakdown on two of his songs, this was very intriguing to me because yes, I listened to those songs but after the breakdown, he showed me that I wasn’t reaaally listening.
Me + U backstory:
CEEBO: At uni I lived in a house with six people, and it was mad fun because we are all cool and we’re all mad tight and it was kind of like living with your cousins. One of these nights me and Funmi, who is also my manager, who ALSO sings came to my room and said she was bored, so we went to the kitchen to listen to music and she said, “let’s record a song”. She has a MacBook so she records songs on GarageBand in her spare time. She said “Come, let’s do a song where you sing, and I rap” so I said, “Say no more” because we were both bored and I was just open to the opportunity of doing something new.
I wrote half of the hook that ended up being for ‘Me + U and then she done the rap and it was cold, so we got our friends over and we performed it and there was like 10 people in the kitchen, and they were rocking with it and she was like “we need to record this, we need to record this, but only you rap.” She didn’t want to be on this song. She chickened out of it because it was a bit risky not gonna lie but from there, I wrote the song, and was just thinking ‘How would I move to a girl at a party?’ But yeah ‘Me + You’ is fabricated I would never move to a girl at a party that’s not my MO, I don’t do those type of things.
