ON THE RISE
When you say his name, be sure to pronounce the “eye-be-eye” at the end.
Youngworldibi, an artist who splits his time between Camden, N.J. and Lancaster, Pa., is using the doubts of others as fuel for the fire to put his stamp on the hip hop industry with his latest album, “Blackout,” released on all platforms in July.
With 13 tracks on a variety of different beats, Youngworldibi is letting people know he’s an all-around artist, and he’s got something for almost everyone and messages that almost anyone can feel.
“I’ve got a lot of lyricisms in me and I wanted to show people what I could do with different types of beats and not just stick to one type,” he said. “I made it a point to try different styles of beats and show this is something I’m serious about.”
Youngworldibi said he’s always been a music fan and started writing raps and songs in his mid-teens, but the trials and tribulations of life took him on a detour that changed his style and outlook.
“Back when I was a kid my flow was a lot different,” Yongworldibi said. “It was more like lovey dove stuff, like more for girls. My style has changed since then. My style changed when I got locked up. That’s when I really found my style. I believe, me being locked up, all the anger and frustration it actually helped me find my style. My music is more aggressive now and I guess that’s where I get it from.”
After spending more than a decade in lock-up, Youngworldibi had to get his life back on track, but once he was settled, he headed to the studio to try to make his musical dreams come true.
He wanted to use the stage name Youngworld, but figuring that was taken, he attached the letters ibi, initials for “intellectual black ink,” to the end.
Drawing from some of the greats, like Biggy, Jay-Z and Cam’Ron, Youngworldibi took his experiences as a young man and his experiences from prison and used them to create a collection of quality raps.
He put out an album called “Taking the Throne,” with 21 tracks, then in July he released the 13-track album, “Blackout,” and went to work pushing his career and sound.
“I feel like I’ve gotten better, but not only that the sound is better as far as the mastering of the tracks and the mixing,” he said. “I’ve just stepped it up since then. It’s hard to explain my sound, but I’ll try. It is different, I don’t really think my sound fits with any other sound or sounds. I would say it’s music people can relate to it, I’m talking about personally. It’s just quality music, quality hip hop.”
Youngworldibi said the track “Megatron,” number 13 on the Spotify list, is his favorite.
“I like Megatron,” he said. “It’s just got that original hip hop sound. It’s a feel good track at the same time. When you hear the beat, I just like the way the beat and the way the sound, everything came out.”
Another tune, “LANC,” talks about his hometown.
Then there’s “Blue Pill,” which he describes as having his hard, gritty, yet lyrical style.
Youngworldibi said each tune on the album has a little piece of him in it. He listens to the beats and he lets the beats speak to him as he’s creating his music.
“That’s how I come up with my music, I don’t fully plan it out,” he said. “I just find a beat and I listen to it and come up with ideas.”
Now that “Blackout,” is on the streets, Youngworldibi is turning to future projects and releases.
“I’ve got a new single, ‘The Ride’ coming out Aug. 18,” he said. “It’s a feel-good track, it’s a nice beat. I think it’s more of a laid back track. Of course I still talk my shit, but you know.”
He’s also taken down his first big album, “Taking the Throne,” and working to re-release it later this summer in two parts.
“I had to take it down and I’m going to redo it, make it two parts, part one and part two,” he said. “I’m going to add more track on them. It’ll be coming out in three to four months. I’m going to break it down and add more tracks to it.”
Be sure to stay connected to Youngworldibi and follow him on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
Websites:
Amazon Music
Apple Music
Spotify
YouTube
ON THE RISE
M.O.T.H.E.R. – the new collaborative band helmed by Robbie Furze of The Big Pink and currently featuring Jamie T and Jamie Hince of The Kills – have given their first proper interview, talking to NME about the emotional origins of the project, their aim to be “the guitar version of N.E.R.D.”, and their hit-list of future collaborators.
Revealing the new project at the end of May alongside the blistering anthemics of debut single ‘My Love’, Furze shared that the seeds of M.O.T.H.E.R. had come from losing his own parent after a prolonged illness. “My mum got sick about five years ago and was ill for about four years before she died,” he told NME.
“In that period I had a daughter, which was this real juxtaposition of death and birth. My mates – Jamie T and Jamie Hince – came together for me, and then sadly Jamie [Hince] lost his dad too,” Furze went on, sitting in a West London pub alongside Hince.
Hince continued: “I lost my dad four days after Robbie [lost his mum], and it felt like, if ever there was a calling, it was that. But it didn’t all come out of that doom and gloom. I hate mentioning COVID but everyone had so much time on their hands and there was this open creativity back then. I was working on music with Jamie T, sending each other stuff, and the idea for the three of us to do something together came out of that. It felt nice, like we were buying into this camaraderie, and this gang.”
The three musicians have previous credits together, with the two Jamies also writing on The Big Pink’s most recent album, 2022’s ‘The Love That’s Ours’. Fully collaborating on M.O.T.H.E.R., Furze joked, was like “the clash of three egos”. “Everyone wants to work with each other because you like what each other does, and so it’s not quite imposter syndrome but you have to live up to [that idea] and jump in and be a character,” Hince continued. “You can’t be too humble about it.”
Recording between Hince’s studio in LA and Furze’s studio in London’s Bethnal Green, the current trio have also dropped their self-titled debut EP featuring three further tracks: ‘Real Human’, ‘Traitor’, and ‘Surrender’. The ethos of the band, meanwhile, is for the line-up to shift with each release, bringing in familiar faces from other groups and working with whoever might be available at the time.
“We did a little bit [of recording] with Jenny [Lee Lindberg, bassist] from Warpaint who I love; I really want to get something solid down with her,” revealed Hince, while Furze suggested that names including Zach Hill of industrial hip-hop trio Death Grips, and electronic producer Skream have all been in the mix for future iterations of the band.
“We ran into Zach and he seemed into it but then he started ghosting me,” he noted. “Whether or not he decides to text me back, it would be wonderful to have that kind of thing. Jamie Hince, Skream, Rhys Webb from The Horrors [who played on their recent radio session], and Zach – if I saw that, I’d wanna hear what that nonsense sounds like!”
Check out the rest of the interview with Furze and Hince below, as they discuss their endearing bromance, their admiration for Jamie T, and why the band are unlikely to ever make an album.
NME: Hello Robbie and Jamie! You must have been kicking about at a lot of ‘00s parties, how far does your friendship go back?
Robbie Furze: “Me and Jamie T started becoming friends on the circuit of festivals when the first Big Pink record came out in 2009. Then me and Jamie Hince met at Corona Capital in Mexico in 2012.”
Jamie Hince: “He had a reputation – I think we all had reputations… I remember his wife giving me these dried insect snacks and I didn’t eat them because I thought he might have laced them with something…”
Furze: “Every band playing Corona Capital was staying in this massive hotel, so it was just chaos.”
Hince: “It was at the height of ego. Everyone had bodyguards. Bands were trying to outdo other bands. Like, The Black Keys – you’re two guys from Ohio, you don’t need armed bodyguards…”
Where does Jamie T fit into all this?
Hince: “Our orbits crossed quite a bit. I remember seeing him at some tiny little pub when he was probably about 19, and I love how it’s come full circle. My heart sinks a little bit when I see Jamie T working because I know I’m nowhere near [as good as] that. I have to chip away at things and stand back and then dive in again to get the feeling, whereas he’s just got the feeling from the start.”
Furze: “He’s pretty incredible. The song ‘Traitor’ on the EP was supposed to be for my vocal, and he was almost getting pissed off that we couldn’t get the verses right. He was just like, ‘I’ll sort it out’, goes up to the mic, does one take and it’s done. See you later. He’s that kind of guy.”
Do you have to leave your ego at the door in those situations?
Hince: “I did this amazing beat for ‘Traitor’ that I loved, and I sent it to Jamie T and got back a text saying: ‘One pound fish’. Fuck! I mean talk about leaving your ego at the door… I know what he was saying, he thought it was a bit ‘cor blimey’ waltz. But some of the shit he ends up doing, it’s totally ‘cor blimey one pound fish’!”
Furze: “But whatever works for the track works, and everyone has to be happy with it. You push each other without really knowing it.”
How did you envision the project?
Hince: “These things just come together. It sounds cheesy, but I wanted it to be the guitar version of N.E.R.D. – a production team of people that love each other.”
Furze: “We’ve got songs in the pipeline with other artists already, and it makes it like an N.E.R.D. or Unkle or Massive Attack thing. Being collaborative makes me more excited.”
Hince: “It feels like that time has gone where albums really last. Records seem to come and go quite quickly now. So I’ve shifted my enthusiasm because I think the attention span has gone. You spend so much time making records and so little time getting any reward.”
Furze: “I’d like to do standalone singles, or another EP of four or five tracks as a batch. I wouldn’t wanna go further than that.”
None of your individual bands and projects sound that alike – where do you think your tastes align?
Hince: “There’s something unspoken that we all seem to agree on which is this epic-ness. There’s a line in one of the songs that talks about ‘the last of the hooligans‘ and that seemed to be the feeling behind it all. If there’s a similarity with what everyone wanted, it was maybe just being a bit romantic and epic.”
Why do you think you were drawn to that?
Hince: “I don’t know, maybe we’re just lonely men?”
Furze: “Beaten down but being pulled up by hope…”
Hince: “We’ve all been bashing around, making all this noise and spending so much time doing it; I think it gives you that feeling. There’s something tiny and irrelevant about what you do but something life and death about what you do too, and I think the cocktail of that makes it… well, the last of the hooligans.”
Tell us a bit about ‘My Love’ – the first proper single.
Furze: “It’s one of the most basic songs. It’s a love song about hope, but it just has such an incredible energy to it with its simplicity. I’m not a massive Beatles fan but it has this relatable energy [like their early music]. ‘I wanna hold your hand’ – you don’t get more basic than that, in a great way. I think simplicity is power. Sometimes less is more, and if you mean it you can get away with it.”
Are there going to be live shows?
Furze: “Definitely. We’re playing a bit of catch up because we didn’t think ‘My Love’ would get the reaction it has, but we’re desperate to get out and do gigs.”
Hince: “In the spirit of the collaborative project, I’m really liking the idea of having different people in different countries playing with us; having a different vibe each time.”
Furze: “It would be really exciting to see different characters that you know from different bands. For the radio session [with Steve Lamacq on BBC 6 Music] we had Rhys Webb from The Horrors on bass, and I love that idea.”
You’re obviously very close – what are your favourite memories of this charming bromance?
Furze: “Jamie’s probably my best friend in the world and we’ve been through a lot together. In 2015 we both uprooted and went out to LA together, I went out there for about five years and he stayed, so we were pretty inseparable. It got to a point where it was breakfast, lunch and dinner together.”
Hince: “We just became one person. People would confuse us even though we don’t look the same. He had an ex-girlfriend who he went to say hello to and she said, ‘Hello Jamie’. We just started having the same vibe. The same embarrassing energy. We’ve chilled out a bit recently but when I was in LA and Robbie was in London we’d speak to each other for four hours a day. I was getting complaints from his wife.”
The ‘M.O.T.H.E.R. EP’ is out now.
The Big Pink returned with their third studio album, ‘The Love That’s Ours’, in 2022. It marked their first full-length effort in over 10 years. T and Hince worked on that LP, too, co-writing the single ‘Love Spins On Its Axis’.
The Kills released their sixth and latest record, ‘God Games’, in 2023.
Jamie T, meanwhile, made a comeback with ‘The Theory Of Whatever’ the previous year. He recently joined forces with Fred Again.. on the track ‘Lights Burn Dimmer’, and performed with The Maccabees at their big London reunion gig last summer.
