Why Remi "Doesn't Really" Smoke Weed Before Shows Anymore

While on tour, Remi Kolawole caught laryngitis and he recalls, "Halfway through the set I was hallucinating and shit. But it was all good; we made it work," he laughs. Acknowledging that laryngitis is usually brought on by "bacteria that grows when you're mad-tired and you're not sleeping and all this shit", Kolawole observes, "And then probably smoking ciggies and drinking doesn't help". We're tipping Kolawole probably didn't 'fess up every vice the doctor, though. "I had to leave weed out, I was too scared," he laughs.

He's gonna have to start looking after that voice now, though, since Kolawole does a lot more actual singing on Divas & Demons and it sounds sweet! "I don't really smoke weed before shows anymore at all," Remi enlightens, pointing out that "singing and shit is really hard". "You always see those movie scenes where someone's mad-high and think they can sing really good, and then they hear it back and it's terrible. Yeah, it's not a lie; that's exactly what it is," he laughs.

There's also a lot more live instrumentation on his latest record, so we're wondering whether Kolawole is ready to bust out some live keys (he played classical piano until he was "around 16" - as revealed in a previous interview with The Music). "Oh, I'm working on it. That's like a ten-year plan," he chuckles. "That's like a baby or a mortgage - that's where I'm at with that."   

"So, for me, it's more important to make sure you support your own."

Kolawole brought in a bunch of guest artists for Divas & Demons, all of which are Australian (except for Tom Scott, who's from New Zealand). "It just kinda seems a little ridiculous to be bringing in all these other people [from] overseas who don't really need the leg-up when, at home, you've got people that I think people need to know about and they aren't aware of," Kolawole opines. "So, for me, it's more important to make sure you support your own." When asked whether the contributions of others inspire him to dig deeper, the rapper agrees, "Oh, 100%". "I mean, Sampa [The Great] did that - she was the first person to kinda do that on the whole record." He's talking about the album's cruisey, conversational lead cut, For Good. "I put down a strong demo and then Sampa came into it and did her thing. And it really made me make sure that I stepped my game up and, you know, made the song hit how it was supposed to."

Sensible J (Justin Smith on his passport) has been Kolawole's musical collaborator pretty much since he started rapping. After realising that he has a tendency to "always throw too many things on a track", Smith says he made a conscious attempt to "just strip it back a little bit" on Divas & Demons. Although he reckons the album "still sounds quite busy", Smith's objective was "to give things more space so each part has its own home and it's not being stood on by anything else". When asked to provide a couple of examples of artists he thinks nails this kind of approach, Smith answers immediately, "The Police and Radiohead are two huge influences". "Stewart Copeland's one of my favourite drummers," he continues. "When I was a kid I'd be sittin' there with my headphones [on] just trying to play Message In A Bottle," the drummer/producer laughs. 

Another Divas & Demons standout track for this pair of ears is Forsaken Man. "Oh, man, I feel like [Sensible] J really had the touch on this one," Kolawole praises. "We were lucky to have Silent Jay playing keys on that one and also Nui [Moon] who's done a lot of stuff for [The] Public Opinion Afro Orchestra - he's responsible for, like, the bongos and percussion breakdown. I don't actually know what he did; I wasn't actually there when that went down, I just came into the studio the next day and J was like, 'Bro, you need to hear this shit,' and it was crazy. It's so awesome how many songs on the album kinda got touched up in a different way whether it was Simon Mavin, Silent Jay or, you know, the vocalists like Baro, Sampa, Jordan [Rakei], Lorry... Like, all these cats really added this newness to a lot of our music, which I'm not used to."

For Kolawole, this "kinda makes the album have more longevity". "I know it's a weird thing to say," he recognises, "but, you know, when you're always hearing your voice all the time it's kinda like all you're doing is checking to see if you've fucked up. Whereas if you're listening to other people you can listen to it objectively and just kinda sit back from it and really appreciate what's been done, you know? And I'm a fan of J's beats, so hearing J's beat with someone else's voice on it makes me really appreciate, like, what is being made and what is being created."