Off The Cuff…

Kanye West is the greatest, or at least he is according to Kanye West. Whether he is, in fact, is at this point a matter primarily of conjecture and secondarily of musical insight, only to be plainly resolved at one of his gigs. Four years ago, Cameron went to one of those gigs and admitted it felt like Kanye wasn’t far off.

But aside from serving as a framework to determine one man’s greatness, an audience with Kanye West provided a friend (increasingly dissatisfied with University and on the brink of being a ‘college drop-out’ himself) with a renewed sense of optimism, a moment to sharpen his focus and change course.

“He’d just performed at the Brits the week before and brought out Skepta and what felt like the whole of the UK grime scene. I was in my room on my laptop going through my twitter, just revisiting that whole performance basically, then something popped up announcing a surprise show at KOKO in Camden that night. 11pm doors. The tickets went live and sold out in minutes but I managed to get one!”

He went alone and queued up for two hours. Inside, another two hours passed until Kanye surfaced on stage, backed by the same entourage as he had at the Brits. “It was insane. The feeling I got from that show, I wanted it all the time. I wanted to be a part of creating something like that…being in that world”.

The portal to that world? The toilets.

“I hid in there until everyone had left. I mean I was pretty drunk but I just thought I needed to try and get backstage to meet some people. I just wanted to get in the industry”. And to get in the music industry he obviously needed to be by the Dyson Air-Blade hand-dryer in the men’s loo because everyone knows that’s how you make it.

After eventually being booted out, concluding an idle exercise and helping massage a bored bouncer’s ego in the process, he waited by the Artist Entrance door where he met Kanye’s team and informed them of his music industry ambitions. “They put me onto this guy called Joel Stanley who was Kanye’s tour manager. We chatted for a bit, I got his email and sent one the next day. It didn’t work out but I can pinpoint that night as the moment I really started pursuing it. That was the crossroads moment I guess. A case of I don’t like Uni, I want to get into Music.”

Wish fulfilment is a tricky business though. There’s no “British Dream”- a borrowed sense of anything being possible if you put your heart and mind to it because more often than not we’re a nation of cynics who don’t possess that same level of amateur clairvoyance. You’ve sometimes just got to hope things fall in to place. Working in music was a dream Cam was chasing but as he admits, so was everyone else growing up.

“I grew up in Cambridge and there my group of mates and I were really into music, I guess how all mates are. But we kind of took it that step further and started putting on nights because we were starting to DJ ourselves and were dabbling in producing. Tiny nights, friends only - that kind of thing. Then everyone went to Uni and it just sort of stopped. Everyone went and I followed because y’ know, it’s the thing to do”.

He saw out the first year at the University of Westminster, but seven months into it his mind had already begun to wander from International Relations and soon his feet would wander to the back of that queue outside KOKO. “I was not in a good place. I lied to everyone and said I’d done my exams and passed but actually I didn’t even show up to them. When I was at Uni I don’t think I was ever really thinking about music as a possible job. I was just sort of at Uni and that was that.”

There’s a tensity that accompanies a decision as irrevocable in nature as Cam’s. How do you admit to deciding to drop out of University while drunk at a Kanye West gig? “After that night, it all dies down, you’ve got a hangover the next morning and then you’re like ‘fuck, I’ve kind of made this decision’.” A couple of weeks later he was forced to come clean to his parents after being quizzed while back home. “I just couldn’t lie to them so I told them that I’d finish the year but I wanted to leave after that. They were really supportive but then there was a year period where I was looking for a job and nothing was happening. I thought I’d made the wrong decision.”

Four years later and he now works for a company called Anglo Management.

“It’s a management company but also a place where record labels are operated out of, a music publishing company and a digital marketing company.”

He got the job at Anglo at the second attempt. He’d found the first interview through ‘Big Creative Education’ — a scheme that helps people without degrees into creative jobs. “From my first interview that I didn’t get, I knew I wanted to work there. The location of the office was amazing, I went in and saw all the plaques on the wall. It just felt proper. I knew I had to smash it.”

Anglo was the umbrella for other labels — ‘Knee-Deep In Sound’, ‘Moda Black’ and Fat Boy Slim’s Label, ‘Southern-Fried Records’ amongst others. “I knew I had to do something to stand out so I made this DJ mix of five tunes from each of the labels, a catalogue, and mixed them all together. In the interview, I handed them the USB with the mix on and I think that swayed them.”

He joined as a record-label assistant, serving the label manager on all the record labels and working primarily in a dance music capacity.

And now?

“My job entails all the aspects of running a record label. A&R, marketing, liaising with the distributors, negotiating deals, raising paperwork etc. I now also help manage artists across the company.”

With a glaring management roster boasting Fatboy Slim, Madness and Pete Tong, it was noticeable that one label had been comparatively quieter since he’d arrived — ‘7 Wallace’. It was a mystery that with his status, Idris Elba’s label didn’t have more music signed to it and so, bruised by the kick of curiosity, Cameron approached his manager. A few days later an introduction was made with Idris. “We had a chat about the type of music he’d like to sign to the label, I proposed some stuff and he was into it.” It’s now an on-going relationship between the two.

Years later and in a position to reflect, I ask what he thinks music offers that another medium can’t. “It gives me memories — there are certain songs that pinpoint a time in your life. You can hear a chord and it can change the way you feel. To be a part of a world that gives me and others that feeling is pretty special.”

This conversation has all played out over a beer and a fag. It seems appropriate that while we’re indulging in two of Nigel Farage’s favourite things, we briefly indulge in a third — Brexit. “There will be an impact on the music industry, for sure. Touring is the biggest source of income and to tour, you have to travel. In terms of record labels, I haven’t seen a reason for it to be affected by Brexit just yet. Visa’s will probably be the killer though. It’s going to be a lot harder to book tours, get artists over for recording sessions. It’s all speculation at this point though. It’s not a concern particularly right now…(he trails off then jerks forward) Well, it is a concern!”

Something that’s not is the music scene in London. “One of the music capitals of the world! Everyone passes through London. The city’s booming right now because of the grime scene but also the dance community. Two years ago Fabric closed for those couple of months but since then it’s come back twice as strong. You’ve also got venues like Printworks and Drumsheds and FOLD which is so exciting. For every genre, I think London is booming.

When people come to play in London, there’s a sense you try and make your show extra special, and as a result, you get those moments like Kanye at the Brits.”

And with that, I want to ask him what he makes of present-day Kanye but before I can he’s scuttled off to use the pub toilet. He’s probably hiding next to a Dyson Air-Blade hand-dryer. It could be hours until he’s out…