Ones To Watch #Croydon is a series created to showcase all the up and coming talents throughout the borough!
We interviewed Croydon's own Reckless Demeanour last month to talk about his latest EP 'Keep Me In Your Prayers'. This rapper is one you shouldn't be sleeping on!
SDS: How are you and how has lockdown been treating you?
Reckless Demeanour: I'm pretty good actually. I'm working on my EP at the moment called, 'Keep Me In Your Prayers' and it's gonna be out on August 17th [OUT NOW!]. I've just been working on that and just trying to self-improve a lot through quarantine. I spent a lot of time alone, so I've been meditating, praying and improving myself as an artist and as a person.
SDS: Who is Reckless Demeanor and where are you from?
Reckless Demeanour: I'm Reckless Demeanor, Reckless Demeanor is me haha. I'm an artist, a creative from South London. I moved around a bit as a kid, so I lived in Peckham, and then I moved to South Norwood and now I'm in Croydon. For me it's just music is my way of expressing myself, my way of telling a story - my story and yeah that's pretty much me.
SDS: Where does the name Reckless Demeanour come from?
Reckless Demeanour: I've had it for a couple of years now because I was doing YouTube before I was rapping - that was my YouTube name, but it came in two different parts actually. I always wanted it to be something 'demeanour', because a lot of people when I speak to them they'll comment on my demeanour and it all started to become kind of weird. I'd go into like a meeting or something like that and they'd say, 'I really like your demeanor', so I used that. The 'reckless' just kind of came about with my friends, we'd just be chilling and they go, 'Oh you're so reckless sometimes'. Then it was kind of like ‘ah yeah, Reckless Demeanour’ and I just put them together.
SDS: How long have you been rapping for?
Reckless Demeanour: I started rapping in college, which was about three years ago now. I never went to college to do rap or anything like that, I went to do drumming (I was a drummer) and to do music production. I was making all of these beats, I had no one to give them to really and the people that I would give them to I didn't really like what they were doing with them. So one day I was like let me just jump on one of my own beats, I went to college one day and everyone was like 'Ah yh you can rap' and yeah I just kept on doing it after that.
SDS: Talk us through your EP.
Reckless Demeanour: So the EP, I've been working on this for quite a while now! Since I started rapping to be honest I wanted to make some sort of project, but I just kept on putting it off and changing it and morphing it. It's officially called, 'Keep Me In Your Prayers' and it's very introspective. I'm at a time in my life where I'm trying to learn about who I am as a person, and how the experiences in my life created and morphed into the person I am. The EP is kind of a reflection of that, it's a reflection of the people around me, I've got a lot of samples from friends and family and I'm just talking, talking a lot about me, the things around me, and how it's affected me basically.
SDS: LinkUp TV put you up on their Instagram page because you won the HP talent by the Hardest Bars. Talk us through the winning freestyle that you did for them.
Reckless Demeanour: So with the Hardest Bars talent show, I've been seeing them do their talent show every week and I wasn't really putting myself up for it. I see them come up on my live but the other day I saw them come up and I was like, alright I'm gonna actually try and get in this time. So I requested and I waited for a while but eventually I got in. I did the first song, which I haven't even finished the name for it yet, but it was a freestyle I wrote for this EP that just didn't make it and I did that. Joey liked it so he put me through to the finals.
For the finals it was the song that they posted which was my Black Lives Matter freestyle, after the incident in Memphis with George Floyd. It was a great experience and it was great exposure for me at the time.
SDS: How important do you think platforms like those are for artists?
Reckless Demeanour: Yeah, I think they're really important because we're living in a digital era now. The people I grew up on was like Kano, Giggs and those kind of people, they had the platforms of their day you know with the Lord Of The Mics and even like SBTV when it was first coming out. Obviously it's evolved into more of a digital realm but I think that things like Instagram lives, the different talent shows that they're putting on and stuff like these platforms are really what's going to form the next generation of UK music. It's really interesting to see and be a part of sometimes, so yeah I think they are very important.
SDS: If you were able to time travel where would you go and why?
Reckless Demeanour: I'm actually mad shook of time travel yeah! After I saw Timeless the TV show and it was talking about how it messes up time, space and all that stuff... haha. But if I was to go somewhere, I would go to Ancient Greece. I'd sit down with some of the philosophers back then - I'm a big fan of Aristotle! So I think that'd be a really interesting time to go back to and see how life worked back then.
SDS: Can you sum up Croydon in three words?
Reckless Demeanour: Home of greatness. Croydon for me, how I would describe it is, home of the greats. I think it's such a unique place like once I enter Croydon I just feel like I'm at home and I feel like everyone feels that for some way. It's where a lot of greatness has come from.
Check out Reckless Demeanour's latest EP'Keep Me In Your Prayers' HERE!