Krept & Konan: “Being tough is indoctrinated into us”

Hailing from south London, Krept & Konan first broke through in 2013 with their mixtape Young Kingz. They’ve since flourished into UK rap’s most successful, platinum-selling double act, offsetting combustible street anthems (‘Bloodclart’) and lusty club heaters (‘Freak Of The Week’) with raw, deeply personal writing on songs like ‘My Story’, ‘Last Letter To Cadet’ and ‘Broski’.

“It’s an outlet, innit,” Konan tells me over Zoom, explaining the sharp, sudden bursts of introspection that illuminates their work like lightning bolts in the night sky. Krept & Konan’s ascent has been punctuated by loss and trauma. In 2011, gunmen followed Konan into his home, ultimately shooting and killing his stepfather, Carl. The duo lost their close friend, Nyasha ‘Nash’ Chagonda, to suicide in 2018. While Krept’s cousin and gifted rapper, Blaine ‘Cadet’ Johnson, died in February, 2019, when the taxi he was travelling in was crashed into by a drunk driver. Through music, they’ve found a space to start to process those tragedies, and honour the loved ones they’ve lost.

The centrepiece of their new project, Young Kingz II, extends that legacy of profound, emotionally honest UK rap, as the pair pen tributes to the people who have shaped them. On ‘Nala’s Song’, Krept writes a musical love letter to his daughter, Nala, who was born in 2020. Meanwhile on ‘Delroy’s Son’, Konan reflects on the loss of his father – the reggae icon Delroy Wilson – who died when Konan was five. You get the sense that despite the chart success, and their various outside ventures – like the recently opened, community-oriented Saveways supermarket – it’s the freedom to be vulnerable which leads Krept & Konan back to the recording booth. “That’s why we’ll always have that love for music, regardless of what we do outside of it,” Krept says.

What’s your earliest memory of your dad?

Konan: I remember singing in my front room with him, wearing his hat, having the mic. I remember going to see him in a hotel too when he was here on tour. I can remember the room. They’re the only two things, really. He died when I was five, so to tap into any memories before that is hard.

Krept: With my dad going to prison, my earlier memories weren’t positive ones. Since my dad came out, our relationship has really changed. Now we’re really close. We speak a lot more. And he’s always been supportive and proud of everything I do.

But there’s one memory I do have from when I was really young. It was me, my dad, and Cadet. My dad was telling off Cadet. Basically Cadet was being rude, innit. We drove to a petrol station. I remember my dad taking Cadet and hanging him on the sign next to the pump by his pants! He was just there floating, swinging on that sign. I found it so funny that it never left my head. Before Cadet passed, we’d always talk about it and laugh. Like, what made my dad do that, of all the things he could’ve done [laughs]?

In the UNTOLD documentary, Konan, you talk about how we absorb this idea as young boys that we have to be tough, without it necessarily ever being said to us. Where do you both think we get that from, then?

Konan: It’s just indoctrinated into us. Maybe it’s society, innit. You’re not meant to be soft, or vulnerable, or emotional because you’re meant to be the rock for people that are like that. I feel like nobody really checks that you’re ok. The pressure of that can just crumble people sometimes.

Krept: It’s definitely society, and the way we’re brought up around our friends. Imagine back in the day, if you were crying around your friends and being vulnerable, man would look at you like you’re nuts. I think that has a part to play. I don’t really think I’ve seen my friends crying, unless we’ve lost someone. As we get older, we understand life can get the better of us. But when we’re young, it’s like: “Why are you crying?”

Konan: Now we’re mature, and me and Krept have been through so much loss and pain, we understand that crying and being vulnerable is just another expression and outpouring of emotion, it’s an escape. It’s a way of getting something out of you and keeping it moving. But when you’re young, and from a street-ish background, that’s a sign of weakness.

You both have seen a world outside of where you’re from. How important has that been?

Konan: I love my area, I love the ends. But to get out and see other perspectives has helped me a lot. Without leaving, you get brainwashed into being a certain way. You get tricked. As a kid growing up, if people are behaving in a certain way and that’s all you see, you’re gonna go down that route too. Now, because music has taken us around the world, we’re seeing that things we thought were normal aren't normal for other people. It makes you question things. Like street culture, violence, people getting killed. It numbed us to the point that it wasn’t a big deal. We were just kids. Why was that normal to us? Travelling and talking to other people helps you realise that’s not healthy, that’s not right. I’m still kinda numb to the street stuff now, but I understand it shouldn’t be normal. It’s a battle sometimes to not indulge in it because it’s still there, no matter how far away you get, because your family might still be there, your friends. It’s still going on.

Krept: I can’t even drive to my house if there’s a car behind me. If I turn into where I live, and there’s a car behind me, I have to pull over. Just to make sure. And every single time it’s just someone who lives in the area and they’re going to their own house. You’re just automatically in that mode, though.

Konan: Bro, we check our cars for trackers. We’re parking up in some random petrol station. We’re on the floor with a flashlight, looking, sweeping the car, because of how we grew up and knowing people might not be on the same page that we’re on now. It’s sad.

I feel like both of you have been able to overcome the idea that we have to be tough as men through songwriting, with earlier songs like ‘My Story’, ‘Last Letter To Cadet’ and ‘Broski’, and much of your work on the new album.

Krept: Music is a place where you can express things. Any thoughts you have or things you go through, or feelings, whether they’re positive or negative, being able to put it in a song turns it into something real that you can listen back to. Like Kones [Konan], going to Jamaica and discovering more about his dad, and speaking to people like Rodigan who has stories about his dad, imagine that feeling. Being able to put that down in art, it’s a real life reflection of what we’re feeling and thinking.

Konan: I feel like those kinds of songs make you a more honest person. They make you aware of your emotions and feelings. Because when you’re writing, you have to sit down and actually think about how you feel and tell the story as truthfully as possible. Sometimes, when things happen, you don’t really tell anyone how you feel, you just go through it. Writing makes you dive deep into that moment, and how it affected you. When you’re listening back, it gets all them emotions out. You start to understand where the pain stems from and why you move [behave] a certain way

Writing ‘Broski’ made us actually look at ourselves. Nash was going through things and we didn’t know. Now, we’re aware when we’re talking to our friends, we almost over do it and make sure they know we’re there for them. And with yourself too, it makes you more aware. Like: where am I emotionally? Am I happy? Am I sad? It’s just like therapy, man.

On Young Kingz II, ‘Nala’s Song’ and ‘Delroy’s Son’ really felt like the centrepiece. Krept, how has fatherhood, and being a dad to a little girl, impacted your ideas around being a man?

Krept: As soon as she was born, I just started overthinking about the future. I was thinking about being in a mad record deal and not owning my masters, like what will I pass down to her? It sent man into this mad thought process! It was like a button being pressed, for me. It was like, anything that I do now, I’m going a hundred percent with, and I’m broadening my horizons, and looking at things differently. It puts that fire on my back to make sure none of this goes in vain. All my ideas and thoughts, I have to act on them.

But also, you don’t realise you actually do have the time to do other things, like being with family and friends. When you have a kid, you have to do this stuff. And you realise that time was always there. There’s not, ‘no, I’m busy,’ anymore. You have a child. You have to make it work. I’ve been making it work, meaning I can actually take time out instead of being so work-focused, because this [fatherhood] is my responsibility now. You’ve got to find the time. And being a girl dad is different, innit. You wanna protect and nurture them. But my daughter’s got man doing crazy stuff like doing her nails and hair. She’s got me making fake food and that! Doing all this mad stuff. And I never saw that, for me. I don’t really think about me that much anymore. I’m more interested in her, innit.

Konan, you’ve been on this journey of emotional recovery with the UNTOLD documentary, and ‘Delroy’s Son’ feels like it’s part of that journey too.

Konan: Yeah, definitely. It’s about self-awareness, healing and understanding myself as an adult. Like, getting to the root of it. When you’re an entertainer, a lot of the stuff is surface level, jewellery, chains… It's very shallow. I just wanted to know myself more as a person, thinking about when I might have a child and have the same conversations you guys were just having. When I get there, I just want to be as healed as possible, and be able to give as much love as I can to my child. So I had to understand how my dad’s passing affected me, and my relationship with my mum, and just try to come to a happy medium in myself. I want to be in a state of healing and happiness so my child has a chance to be happy, man.

Young Kingz II is out now.

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