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
As Belle & Sebastian share their buoyant 2026 Scotland World Cup anthem ‘It Only Takes One Lion’, frontman Stuart Murdoch has spoken to NME about capturing the feeling back home and his hopes for the team since childhood.
Released today (Tuesday June 2), the Scottish indie heroes’ bid for their nation’s tournament anthem was written after the team’s surprise 4-2 qualifying win against Denmark.
“I felt like we were watching history in the moment, like the hand of God from the old National Lottery adverts was pointing at us,” Murdoch told NME about that game-changing victory. “It was meant to be. Scotland aren’t a terrific team and Denmark are better, but it just felt that day that Scotland were destined to win. Three out of the four goals were things of beauty.”
Produced by and co-written with Pete Ferguson and premiered at the band’s recent London Royal Albert Hall show as part of the anniversary tour for their classic first two albums ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’, the soaring song is intrinsically Belle & Sebastian as it morphs from a hymn to a an orchestral disco jam as Murdoch sings of a nation’s hopes and his own boyhood dreams.
NME spoke to Murdoch from the band’s North American tour, where we found him in a graveyard in Texas. “I was just looking for a park because Austin is a pretty scary place downtown now, so I’ve ended up in the Texas Cemetery,” he shared via Zoom.
Was there anyone famous buried there?
“I was looking around and I found the founder of Austin City Limits, which is pretty cool as that’s where we’re playing tonight. I’m looking at one now and it just says, ‘Martin: he loved the law’. Then underneath it says, ‘Billie Louise: she loved the lawyer’.”
We joke that there’s the opening to a Belle & Sebastian song if there ever there was one. “It’s great! It’s given me inspiration.”
For now, read the rest of interview with Murdoch below as he tells us about Scotland’s chances, 30 years of hurt, if fans will be singing it at the top of their lungs in Canada, the US and Mexico this summer, and what’s next for the band.
NME: Hello Stuart. Here we are with ‘It Only Takes One Lion’ Who needs three?
Stuart Murdoch: “Who needs three? Good question. I wouldn’t know!”
What’s the mood been like in Scotland since you qualified?
“It’s funny. I’ve noticed this everywhere: with the World Cup there’s a mixture of cynicism and anticipation. When the actual tournament starts, everyone will get excited about it. Because of FIFA, the peace prize, the ticket prices, people seem quite down about it. I found that in Mexico. They were quite fed up with the general hype about it. I’m in the States just now and you shouldn’t believe all the hype: people are people. The States are just as ‘great’ as ever. We love coming here, we love the cities. The general sense of North American optimism will make for a good tournament.”
“With Scotland though, people will definitely be excited about it. You have to understand, it’s been 30 years since Scotland qualified so I think everybody and their dog has written a song for the team.”
How do you meet the challenge of penning a World Cup anthem, when there have been so many legendary bangers and absolutely shite duds?
“I never planned it. I woke up with a tune in my head and a feeling. That’s the way it should always be for songs. I couldn’t control myself and it was quite straight-forward. I wrote this initial bit about how I felt about the current World Cup team and the qualifying game. It was more introspective.
“When it starts off with, ‘The days are dark and long…’, it’s just my general feeling about football. I’ve been going to see my own team quite a lot recently. It’s my little anthem for how I feel about football and following Scotland for the last 50 years, just the ups and downs. It’s quite a heartfelt thing. When I was eight or nine, the Scottish team meant so much to me, it the thing I was most invested in. There’s a line in there about how I used to memorise the whole squad before ‘78 and 82.”
Tell us about lyric: “This is Scotland, where everyone knows you start with nothing… where you can join an army for peace”…
“My wife made the video for it and she said, ‘I’m not sure I like that line about everyone starting with nothing’. Our first game is against Haiti and they really have nothing. Their country is pretty poor and they’re going through hard times. It was almost a throwaway line and I’m not sure what I meant by it, but in a footballing sense every game starts with nothing. Even if it’s against Brazil, you’ve always got a chance!
“The army refers to The Tartan Army, which has really been quite a remarkable institution for the past 30 years. We changed from drunken buffoons that used to wreck things to this excellent supporting brigade.”
It’s not your standard football sing-along. Can you see it being sung in the terraces?
“I’m not sure, I didn’t cynically design it for that. Many people have said to me in the past, ‘None of your songs have a chorus, you need to write one’. ‘This is Scotland’ is a chorus! They things need to happen organically. I’m sure the fans will still be singing ‘Yes sir, I can boogie’ for years to come.”
What do you actually think of Scotland’s chances right now?
“With the last Euros, they maybe got stage fright or didn’t have that tournament experience. I think Andy Robertson [captain] will be telling them, ‘We really need to produce our best stuff’. If they do and we see them actually playing football, then I don’t really care about the results that much. I just want to see Scotland exceeding our expectations of them. That Denmark game was so crazy that everything after just feels like a bonus.”
If miracles do happen and Scotland make it to the final, how will you celebrate? A free gig in Glasgow?
“Of course, yes! Free everything. If we even got close, I think the whole country would shut down for a year and the GDP would drop. We’d go into a massive recession but no one would care.
“We were playing a gig in Mexico City and I told the crowd, ‘It’s you and us, Mexico and Scotland in the final’. Mexico have never really got close either. I told them it would be five goals a piece, even after everyone takes a penalty and we have to share the trophy. I would settle for that.”
You released two albums in quick succession with 2022’s ‘A Bit of Previous’, 2023’s ‘Late Developers’ and then your debut novel Nobody’s Empire in 2024. You’ve been busy! Is there any progress on new material?
“We went through a period where we recorded a lot and we said, ‘Let’s not record for a while and give ourselves a couple of cycles off’. We’re doing these 30th anniversary shows so we’re just going to lean on the back catalogue and cruise for a while. We’re doing a year on and a year off so everyone can focus on different things.
We’re not looking at new Belles stuff for a while. I’m meant to be developing Nobody’s Empire into a film, so that’s my next task. It’s a long way off from being made but I’m going to write the script for that.”
Scotland’s first World Cup tournament match is against Haiti on Sunday June 14, before they go on to play Morocco on Friday June 19 and Brazil on Wednesday June 24.
The band’s ‘Tigermilk’ and ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’ anniversary tour continues throughout the summer, performing the iconic albums in full during across the UK, Europe, North America, Mexico, Australia, Singapore and Japan. Visit here for tickets and more information.
