ON THE RISE
Sometimes life just slides on by at an unfathomable pace, something that Buffalo based rapper Spendit incorporated that into his single “Hold Up” off his first EP titled Check.
“The meaning of ‘Hold Up’ basically describes my life,” said Spendit, who grew up on the lower west side of Buffalo. “I’m always looking to make some money, you know? So it was like, what’s the next best thing or how can I make some more money? That’s where it comes from: life moving too fast. I feel like life really do move too fast, and if you let the opportunity slip, you might be losing out on some money.”
Spendit was not always a musician, and was far more focused on playing basketball when he was young. His brother Akaey was a musician, but he didn’t think it was for him before he even really gave it a chance. He didn’t pick up music until the end of middle school going into high school
Akaey was always into music, making beats, and since their rooms were so close Spendit would hear it all day. He rejected the love of music early on because of that, but eventually it started to kick in his head. He joked that it was forced on him to the point where he could easily just start rapping on his beats.
“I could just flow on it,” Spendit said. “I can’t even say it’s like a hidden talent. I feel like I just never tried, and when I did try, boom, it was that.”
Spendit added, “I started to accept that I might be good at music. I started free-styling but I wasn’t really recording anything. From then, that’s when I started getting told I might need to actually write something down and go to the studio, or just record in the studio and see what comes up.”
With “Hold Up”, Spendit received a beat from his brother Akaey. Losart is Spendit’s producer, and he said the three of them are the “posse” creating tunes.
Spendit wrote to the beat three different times. His first time he felt the beat was too good for what he wrote, scratched it out, and went for it again. This second try wasn’t what he wanted either, and the trial and error continued.
“I went back to ‘Hold Up’ again, I finally finished it, and I polished it,” Spendit said. “Those other songs are in the waiting room, man. There’s no way I’m just gonna throw them in the garbage. The songs were good, they just didn’t hit the same. So yeah, I’m going to release them sooner and later but I’ll have to send them to Losart to make beats around it.”
Spendit grew up listening to the likes of 2Pac, Lil Wayne, Kanye West and finally Drake later as he got older. While he has his own original style, he was also heavily influenced by his musical heroes.
“They played a huge role in how I rap now,” Spendit said.
The new EP, Check, didn’t take very long to put together although he sat on it for a year because he was coming to the realization of what he really wanted to do. He knew if he released it, the door was open and this was his life.
“My music is like live in the moment, man,” Spendit explained. “You know, life is moving fast. If you’re always thinking about the future, or the past, life is just going to slip right past by you. That’s how fast life goes on. I feel like I’m in the moment. Tomorrow’s no guarantee. You can’t change the past so really live in the moment and don’t take nothing for granted.”
Spendit is hard at work, writing, performing live in the upstate New York and Pennsylvania area, and by the beginning of next year he plans to have another EP out. He also plans to shoot more music videos.
“I want more videos so they can really match the songs,” said Spendit. “I want my fans to really see who Spendit is. I just got here.”
He added, “I don’t think there’s anyone better who just started. I don’t think there’s anyone hungrier. I will never release anything I wouldn’t listen myself, anything that’s not quality. They’ll always get 100% from me. Nothing less.”
Spendit’s music can be found on all major platforms.
Spotify
“Hold Up”
YouTube
Apple Music
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
TikTok
ON THE RISE
Blossoms caught up with NME to discuss competing with The Beatles and Johnny Marr for this week’s Number One album. With ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ in the running, the band also explained why making things themselves remains such an important part of their work as AI becomes more common.
The Stockport group put out their sixth album last Friday, October 2. By the midweek update, it was sitting at Number Two, between The Beatles’ expanded edition of ‘Rubber Soul’ and Johnny Marr’s latest solo album, ‘The Age Of Everything’.
“It’s mad, to be honest,” singer Tom Ogden said to NME about the chart race. “Liverpool on one side, Manchester on the other and Stockport in the middle. If you’d told us this 10 years ago, when we were releasing our debut, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I mean, we’re in good company aren’t we?”
Discussing the stories behind the album, Ogden described ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ as “about being married and all the everyday stuff that comes with it”. He married Katie Donovan, the sister of Blossoms drummer Joe, in 2021. Married life has since given him a new appreciation for what he describes as “the extraordinary ordinary”.
“Saying the wrong thing in an argument, losing your wife’s no claims bonus, crying at the Kardashians, it’s all in there,” he explained. “The album is named after Stockport Town Hall, which everyone round where we live calls the Wedding Cake, and it’s where I got married, so it couldn’t be much closer to home.
“The last album [‘Gary’, 2024] had a song about a stolen fibreglass gorilla, which everyone loved, and that gave us the confidence to bring the same playfulness to this one, just with more personal subject matter this time.”
Alongside tracks that came out of writing sessions with Declan McKenna in a hot tub, the album reflects the band’s desire to stay involved in every part of the creative process.
“It started with the recording,” Ogden explained. “We made the album with Shawn Lee, playing live straight to tape, and once you’ve done it that way you can’t really go and fake everything else. We sat down as a band and picked the colour palette, and everything visual followed from that. We had body scans taken of ourselves and cake toppers of the five of us 3D printed, put them on a real cake and photographed it. I’ve directed and edited the videos, and the sets are all built by hand, no green screen. For the pop-up shop on launch weekend, a local artist hand-painted the album cover for the sign outside.
“It’s more work, but you end up with a world that’s yours, and I think people can tell when a band’s had its hands on everything.”
With AI tools and digital effects becoming increasingly widespread, that approach feels particularly relevant. For Blossoms, though, the motivation is simple: “the fun is in the making”.
“Tape doesn’t let you cheat and neither does a real cake,” Ogden said. “If a set’s a bit wonky, it’s because one of us or our mates built it. I think the more stuff gets generated, the more people want to know a human being actually did it. We’ve been in this band together for over 10 years, five lads from Stockport, and that isn’t something you can ‘prompt’.”
Maya Jama also appeared in the video for the album’s first single, ‘Meet Me In Love’. Her appearance came shortly before the UK launch of Celebrity Traitors, where she took on the role of a traitor alongside a cast that included Richard E Grant and James Acaster.
“She was brilliant,” Ogden recalled of working with Jama. “We’d met her at the MTV EMAs in Manchester a couple of years ago, so we took a chance and sent her a DM …and she said yes. Next thing she’s in a theatre in Cheadle miming my vocals while a load of people dressed as me serenade her. She got the idea straight away and was a proper laugh about it.”
The conversation then turned to whether he thought Jama could take home the win on Celebrity Traitors.
Ogden joked: “As for Traitors, she spent a whole day pretending to sing my song and I almost believed her, so I’d say she’s got every chance.”
Fans can listen to ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ now. In November, Blossoms head out on a UK arena tour with The Royston Club. Tickets and further details are available here.
Before the tour begins, the group is also scheduled to appear on SNL UK on Saturday, October 24.
