ON THE RISE
With “Dummy Thick,” BamsterG has created a driving, insistent hip-hop ode to big, full-bodied, voluptuous women — juicy thick.
And, along with that, a celebration of being a player.
“Man, ‘Dummy Thick’ is the new summer anthem,” said BamsterG. “This is for all the ladies who feel good about their bodies, how their sculpture is built and their big ba-donka-donks.”
Long hair, long nails
Wearing red bottoms too
Tatted up, white toes, and she make her revenue
…
Ow
Dummy thick
Oooo she dummy thick
“Like I always tell everybody,” he said, “if they got a big one, or if they only feel like they got a big one, they feel good about themselves.”
But he points out, the song is also about the musician (himself), celebrating playerhood.
I am not your average Joe
I ain’t basic
This is not your average car
“It’s about being a player,” he said. “Not like playing women, but talking about being a player, being smooth, man, real cool, calm, cordial and having a good time with the ladies.”
BamsterG — Stazion Goodlow—has been making music seriously since he was 15, when he released his first EP, Money On My Mind. Now 21, his music has grown as his ambition has evolved.
His first song, from that first EP, was “Depression Is An Affection.”
“I was going fast, melodic, but kind of sad, you know? And then as I kept dropping more music, I kind of grew out of just making sad music. I started making up tempo, happy music.”
The celebration of “Dummy Thick” is part of the growth into happier music. That first song came at a time when he was going through some not-so-good stuff.
“I’ve experienced good and bad, real, adult-life things, so, that’s why now I know to make better music. What I mean by ‘better’ is, like, happier music, because being sad is not good. It’s not. It can do bad things to you.”
He wants for himself to be as “peaceful and positive as possible.” He makes music with the goal of uplifting people, and he wants to explore about every kind of music — rap, underground rap, Afrobeat, country, R&B, Spanish, Italian, “whatever God puts in front of me.”
“I want to go everywhere with it, man. I love to touch base with any and every avenue. I will take my chances to be featured in another country.”
He attended the Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences, where he played sports — football, basketball and track and won a county wrestling championship in middle school — and was an academic champion, participating in robotics competitions. He is, as the song says, not an average Joe.
He also participated in theater, and another part of his ambition is movies and television.
“‘Dummy Thick’ is a ratchet anthem, more for women who like to twerk at the stop signs, and red lights, also who like going to the clubs and getting kind of crazy.”
Women, as men, he acknowledged, can be players, too.
Next for him is a song called “Walk In,” which he says has a smooth, up-tempo beat, “real playa,” he said, meaning walking into a building with an aura that commands respect.
“What I mean by ‘aura’ is like how you can walk into a building, and everybody is like, ‘Whoa! Who is this guy?!’”
It is, at the same time, what he calls a “workout, grinding” song.
Right now, he wants “Dummy Thick,” the track and the video, to “go everywhere, state to state, country to country.”
“Man, my boy Mercy cooked that beat up so hard! At the first sound, everybody is like, ‘Whoa! What’s going to happen?’ and then boom! we come in on the 808s and the background noises and the claps.”
In the video, he said, the girls twerked to the rhythm of the claps.
“I want everybody to hear this. Like I said, up-tempo, rachet, but a summer anthem, classic. This is going to be played 10 years from now. And the video is awesome! Go watch the video.”
Connect to BamsterG on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
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.
