Britain's first home grown rapping success, Smiley Culture, makes it all look so easy. But the hard work doesn't stop when the rap is written, as Tony Reed finds out...

At eight that morning he'd been with Gary Davis on the satellite TV show Sky Trax. By lunch, he'd packed in a handful of interviews; after the break, a three-hour photo-session at his new record company's offices. In an hour's time, he's on Janice Long's show on Radio One. Then he flies to Manchester for an appearance on kids TV the following morning. And Smiley Culture is still smiling:

"I tell you something though man — when I get to that hotel I'm just gonna crash out."

Success has come swiftly and not a little hard for the only rapper in Britain to break out of the inner-city underground of clubs and sound systems. A small indie label, Clapham-based Fashion Records, started the wagon rolling when they persuaded him to record his characteristically witty and gritty duologue of everyday police harassment, Cockney Translation. Smiley, the 'Cockney Translator', takes the part first of a stroppy Sarf Lunnun' policeman, and then a rather more Jamaican version of his usual self:

'Well this should be good for a laugh, two niggers in our area, collecting protection from every owner, not forgetting that shop on the corner which je suis you two were gonna do over!'

'No, no you got it wrong, we were entertainer, if you doan believe it here's our picture on a poster...'

Strange how life imitates art. The success of Cockney Translation, and the follow-up breakthrough single, Police Officer (No 12 in the charts) led to Smiley being pulled up even more often by the police.

This time round though, it wasn't for 'Producers' (displaying of license and insurance documents, to prove he hadn't nicked the car), but for his autograph that they flashed him down. Despite lines like 'If it's a dark night you might get run over' addressed to the officer in the song, the police had been buying it — in droves. And that wagon Fashion Records started rolling? Another piece of synchronicity perhaps — Smiley now makes additional income from a series of adverts he's done for Wagon Wheels biscuits. Shrewd business head on that boy...

Not what you would necessarily expect from the man who admits in his latest slice-of-life rap, Schooltime Chronicle, that:

'...To miss couple day dem deh time it was a thrill.'

In fact by the age of 14 Smiley's rejection of conventional schooling had already laid down the two strands which were to bring him his current success. With the assistance of his headmaster Mr Evans (incidentally immortalised in the intro to the Chronicle) he began, two years early, to attend evening classes in electronics, three nights a week at the local technical college. And at weekends, he would go to the clubs...

"I used to see all the sound systems playing, the selectors (DJ's) and the MCs (rappers, or 'toasters'). Gradually, I got away from electronics of building the systems, and more into the rapping side of the Sounds. The first sound I played with was called Buchanan."

Fatigue vanishes as he enthusiastically recalls his early days working as both MC and DJ with various 'sounds'. I feel uncomfortably white and unhip as he describes the excitement of a typical dance, or Blues Party. The sound itself, the PA system and the DJ's deck, usually a home-built or heavily customised affair, would sit democratically on the floor of the club, (stages were scorned). The various MCs, sometimes alone, sometimes in teams clustered around it, would be vying with each other and the Selector for the audience's approval, in an intensely competitive atmosphere:

"The Selector is in total control — he plays whatever record he wants, trying to catch you out, and you just have to be quick on the draw, and go with it. All the MCs like to say they can rap over any rhythm, so you have to be ready. Like, if the Selector puts on I'm Getting Married In The Morning, we'd have a style (song) to cover it."

We?

Yeah, me an' my sparring partner Senator Asher. He gave me a lot of inspiration, an' I gave him it too." At the time Smiley was learning his trade British styles of 'Toasting', or rapping, were distinguished only by the fact that they were delivered over a Reggae rather than a Hip-Hop beat. The manner of delivery taken by the MCs — and the generally naff attitudes expressed in the lyrics — owed a whole lot to second-hand American inspiration:

"Most people were just doing three or four lines and then a hook line into another story — you'd need five or six of 'em to fill up one music. A lot of the time, too, the MCs were either ripping off ideas, or slagging each other. I mean, that's funny for one or two songs, but what you gonna do then? The audience won't be satisfied 'less you kill each other! Me an' Senator, we sussed something a long time ago — that when you're on your way back down, those people you buried'll be the ones on the way up — 'sright, innit?"

Frustrated by the limits of the form, and wary of the self destructive slanging matches of other MCs, Smiley and Senator began to evolve their own unique style of 'styles':

"We started to try an' make one style last a whole music, to do combinations (both speaking together) on the choruses, get it to build — then on the verses, take a line each, or one of us pretend to grab the mike off the other, and grab back to say something, make it look serious but all part of the show..."

Uniquely, too, and with the added latitude the full-length style gave them, Smiley and Senator began to develop complete stories rooted in real South London life.

"We got styles on everything — marriage, burglars, abbreviations. We'd go through three or four on the same record and then ask the Selector if that was the best he could do."

Smiley's gift for mimicry was a strong asset too, as he vocally swapped in the space of a few lines from the voice of a young American woman, to a well-dread Rasta, a chirpy cockney, an Oxbridge type, and back again to his own unaffected London accent. The crowds loved it, and the freelance team of Smiley and Senator were on the way up. Did he ever get his characters confused halfway through a style though?

"Not performing... obviously, when you're practising. What me an' Senator used to do was we'd see something, read something. Like we were watching that thing about nuclear war, The Day After, and as the bombs started on up, I said to him, this is serious — I'm gonna have to write a style about this. (Nuclear Weapon, on the album). You know, you write it out — you know where the story's got to go, but it has to rhyme as well — I try to keep it as honest as I can, but sometimes you cheat on the style a bit. Like in Police Officer, I had 'Me no producer' right at the start, and I knew I wanted to get to the end where the officer asks for my autograph, but that was a few minutes away, which is a lot of words! So I had a few things in there that I wouldn't really do, like that bit about running the Policeman over — it could've been offensive, but it was taken the right way."

With the style written, Smiley reads it off over a record, "any record, as long as it swings the other way to the rhythm of the style, like syncopated" — the resultant demo recorded on an ordinary cassette deck. Then he listens back to it — "as if it was a song on the radio" until he can sing along with it — often a long process.

"Once you do that, it's yours. It's hard work. You just can't write down a style and then say 'I'm off to the dance.'"

Solo success has wrought a number of changes in Smiley's working method. In place of a recording Walkman, he now has a home studio comprising a Studer 16-track tape machine, Soundcraft desk, REV 7 reverb, 'a couple of other effects', his own DX7, and a DX9 borrowed from his brother. Rhythm comes courtesy of a TR707. He can play keyboards "though I'm no Paul Hardcastle" — and admits to having dabbled with guitars when younger. Though, as he puts it, "I didn't know shit what to do on the board when I got it" his technical background and the advice of friendly engineers has enabled him to put down demos for all the songs on his forthcoming album Tongue In Cheek (Polydor, due for release as you read this.) For the first time, with the music as well as the words under his control, he's been able to inject a new vein of humour into the pieces: Schooltime Chronicles "Na-na nananal' chorus, the snatch of The Wedding March on Here Comes The Style. The studio helps, of course. So does having Aswad, quite possibly the best Reggae outfit in Britain, for session players. They just happen to be mates of his...

But there is a flipside... Smiley knows that there is a danger in having it all your own way:

"Yeah, I could get lazy, it's serious. I mean. I'm actually working harder. These days, I just don't seem to have the time to say 'Yeah! I'll write a style tonight — I'm usually too knackered... But it's not as intense you know, working with a sound, quick on the draw, 10 different styles on one record..."

Although he makes a point of maintaining regular social contact with his old sparring partner Senator, the demands of his new success leave little time for working together: "...and anyway, a lot of those Sound Systems, you know, they don't actually pay you anything..."

Plans are afoot for Smiley to take a show on tour here, in Europe, and the USA featuring himself with a live mike, a real Sound System, and graffiti artists. It'll be on a stage: "Yeah, I've had to change my mind about them." It's an attempt by him to bring the talents of the other artists to greater public notice: "I mean, those kids with the spray cans — they brighten up the place. They should be paid!

"It could be fantastic. It could be a freakshow for the Wasps 'Ooh look, dear, that's what they get up to in the ghettos!'"

Smiley knows it. He smiles a tired smile.

"I'm doing music for the people who enjoy it. If it ever turns sour on me. I'll quit."

We shake hands, and he leaves to fly another 200 miles from Tulse Hill.