PART 2:
Stereo MCs - Cabbages to Kings.
By David Ham
Loops, Hustle and a Relentless Rhythm Quest.
Rob Birch is a music missionary.
“I love lyrics, poetry, you know. And that's why I got into early hip hop, because of the stories. And I mean, that's what's what it's all about”.
This is Part 2 of a chat I had around Rob’s house on a beautiful sunny day. If you missed Part 1, check it out - loadedworld.com
Stereo MCs were and are far more than their iconic 90s album title track ‘Connected’. They are a band respected across the board, with two previous albums that are in my humble opinion, capable of standing toe to toe with Connected. Followed by a portfolio of work and remixes for music legends such as Madonna, U2 and Queen Latifah.
Rob, before your iconic album Connected changed your life and UK music, there were 33-45-78 and Supernatural. I was listening to these recently and thinking to myself, ‘this has got a definite Straight out the Jungle flavour to it’. Were the Jungle Brothers a big influence of yours?
“I loved the Jungle Brothers and funnily enough they were on Gee Street”.
The Jungle Brothers
What?! Wow!
“Right, yeah, because they were on Idlers first in New York, John (Baker) licensed them to Gee Street and we licensed their first album, a classic hip hop album. We used to go see them playing and yeah, they were a big influence. We loved what they were doing. Loved Done by the Forces of Nature, absolutely loved that record. They somehow managed to marry old funk and hip hop in such an earthy way. What they were doing was more to do with consciousness. When I read the Malcolm X autobiography, it really made me feel like it's all down to where your head is at. Because when he went to Mecca and realised that after he'd become a Muslim, all his brothers were all different shades and colours, he adopted a slightly different attitude to the way that he looked at things and that made me as a person feel more included in what he was saying. I could read his book and understand it and relate to it. By the end of the book, I felt included as a person, didn't feel outside of it, outside looking in. I felt like I could listen and enjoy it, actually felt included, and that's what consciousness does. It allows anybody to be included. Doesn't matter where you're from or where you're at, you're included. It's just getting on the wavelength you see. That's how the Jungle Brothers thing happened and we went to New York to finish Supernatural. Afrika Baby Bam produced a couple of tunes on there and also guested on a B side, ‘Smoking With the Mother Man’. Doing that in New York was an amazing experience”.
So how would you compare the two, those two albums - 33-45-78 and Supernatural - and what does the third album - Connected - mean to you now, looking back?
“They were a journey. Progressions in sound. Connected was a realisation of somebody finding their voice. You have to chip away at the rock like a sculptor. Gradually you find out where your natural resonance is because we weren't really a hip hop group, we weren't a purist rap group, we weren't an indie band, we certainly weren't a rock group. We didn't really fit into any category, but our influences were very diverse. Dub was a big part of what we did. And so I think the third album - Connected - was a bit like something coming to flower, where you have the roots, and then you have the branches forming, and then the flower comes out. You know, it's like they're all very important parts. Each one is a beautiful part of your journey, but they all have very relevant purposes there”.
How did it feel then, for that to be realised commercially? To blow up? Would you go back and experience it again?
“I wouldn't like to do anything again because they belong to a certain person, those moments in time. I'm not that person anymore. Maybe your inner character is an imprint right? And that is your seed that will always be you. But you change, you grow and you develop. And I'm not that same person. Now I've got all this experience, how can I be the same? It's like, you know, I'm no longer that innocent guy who could blabber his mouth off quite ignorantly. Sometimes I look back and I think ‘yeah, I wouldn't have said that now’”.
So, when you hit, with the third album, everyone in the country knew who you were. Was it a surprise?
“It was a big surprise in some ways but in other ways it wasn't. Something inside you knows that something is happening. You just know it. That's what it felt like all along. There were ups and downs and struggles, but stars were aligning and you just felt like you were riding a wave of energy and something was happening. You didn't really know what was going to happen, but you knew you were going somewhere, and you didn't know the destination, but you knew you were going there. It's been incredible. To get up in the morning and be part of that. It was fantastic. Like a whole lifetime pretty much compressed into five years for those three albums and when we made Connected, I did think at the time that every experience and influence I'd had in my life had sort of been absorbed like a paper towel. It had just sucked all that information up”.
How connected are you in life yourself? Now? How do you stay connected?
“I find life can be very, well, you can waste a lot of time in pointless emotions and rabbit holes that really don't need to be travelled down. I’m trying to stay in connection with that feeling of freedom. I try to have some quiet time just to settle. I try to meditate as I find it more useful now, probably because I've lived a long time, and the longer you live, means there's more room for bullshit to circulate within your brain. So you need to edit that out. I just don't need this shit in my head. Go back to what's important, and find that bit in yourself where you can look somebody in the eyes and just be calm and not immediately race to express yourself”.
That is so true, people race to fill gaps with words.
“What does it matter what they think? It's what you think that is really important, and how you're going to be a useful individual. Just keep your mouth shut. Actually be the person that you would like to be. It's easier to do it when you spend a bit of quiet time just resonating a little bit and just trying to figure out how to do that, and swimming, I do a lot of swimming. I just chant when I swim and that's how I know how long I'm doing!”.
So what are you working on? What can we expect? Is there anything else you want to talk about?
“I'm working on a lot of music. Where it's going, I'm not really sure. I don't even know if it's going to see the light of day. I really hope it will, but I do have a lot of music in progress. I mean, I've realised now, at this point in life, I don't write with the same sort of energy that I wrote with 20 years ago. It just doesn't come naturally to me now to rhyme like that. I can rhyme like that. I can go out and play the old tunes and do it probably as good as I used to do it, because the gigs we're doing feel like the best gigs we've ever done. So I really love playing. I'm feeling so good on stage. But when it comes to writing, it's a natural inspiration. And I can't really argue with the way that the inspiration is coming. If I argue with that, I'm shooting myself in the foot. So whatever does come is going to be a different energy. The new music may not be music that we play live, because our live shows are high energy and I don't know if people would dig it but I can't pay that too much mind. I've got to make music that I feel has a place in my heart and that when you listen to it there's an emotional content that is a part of me. I don't want to pick it apart too much and then start analysing it. I don't even know if I'd want to put it out digitally. I really hope it’s a Stereo MCs record. But if it was my decision, I'd say just make a limited edition record. Who knows what's around the corner. Let's just make something really nice, a nice thing that you can hold and I can put up there and go, ‘I fucking love that thing’ and let’s not just give it away, yeah?”
Stereo MCs, Cath, Andreya & Verona.
Do you partake in the Lord’s herb these days?
“The balance of the mind is a delicate thing, and at this point in life, I'm quite happy just to see what it does on its own, what the power of my own being can produce without any stimulation. I sort of call it a ‘drug diet’ because I stopped puffing about 15 years ago and that was a choice I made. To be honest, it wasn't difficult to stop. I got pretty moody. I was moody because I didn't have the vibe I wanted, but my initial fears of not being able to be creative with that bit of puff was unrealized. You don't need puff. But I did identify with it, it was part of my identity. So it took a little while for me to realise that. But I have certain theories about weed and where you smoke it, right, and how it can affect you in your environment, and also what is in the weed”.
Can you elaborate on that? Is there an experience that triggers that thought?
“It's changing. We went to Australia to do this DJ tour and it's giving me blinding headaches, the weed. I just thought, ‘this isn't right’, and ‘how can this be?’. I forced myself to smoke it because I thought, ‘I'm a weed smoker’, but when I sniffed the bag, it made my eyes water. That wasn't why I gave up, though. I gave up because I had kids and I couldn't go and take them to school red-eyed. I just thought, ‘this isn't right. You can't do this’”.
I somehow don’t feel comfortable following the zeitgeist of opinion these days. Don’t believe the hype you might say. To what extent do you think that the machine is feeding us, you know, the media feeding us information to divide us?
“I think we have a choice. If you listen to everything they're saying and believe it, then you're not thinking very hard. But that's your choice, right? You've got to look at what's going on. You know, people are too emotional about it all, what's going on in Palestine and all of that. I find there's two groups of people. I see people in America and ask them, ‘what do you think of what's going on?’ Their response is ‘well, I don't care. I'm a Trump supporter, I'm doing alright’. It's like that viewpoint on life. ‘What do I care?’ Since when was it right to bomb a hospital? Since when was it right for snipers to shoot children? Since when was it right for women to be shot and killed? Since when was it right for medics to be shot?”.
This slides perfectly into our first fan question, from Tina Trannata:
“There seems to be a huge amount of support for the plight of the people of Gaza right now. I mean, amongst many artists in the industry, yet very little support shown to the people who were kidnapped and the revellers from that Supernova Festival that were killed when Hamas went through the streets and murdered and tortured people. Why do you think this is the case? I would have thought the killing of peaceful festival goers would have resonated with many Western artists, especially as many artists would share the peaceful message and spirit of the festival?”
Rob:
“I understand. But I think the point that's being missed is the history of what has been going on in Palestine, since maybe around 1947, thousands of Palestinians were killed and displaced from their homes, and that has systematically been happening since then, right? So I just tried to put myself in their position. How would I feel if somebody came here one day and said, ‘get the fuck out of your house, your whole family. If you don't, we're gonna fucking kill you’, and then you keep being moved gradually by people who are settling on your land illegally. This just happens systematically all the time, to the point where you're living in a state where you have no control over your electricity, your water, you don't vote, it's basically an apartheid system. I'm not a political person. I'm just looking at it going, yeah, what happened in October was an atrocity. But don't you think it's slightly odd that the Israelis - with all of their technical and intelligence capability - didn't know about this in advance? That they had no idea. That the people in control from what I've seen, the government people, are not very nice people? They look like pretty heartless people to me. Do you think they really care about the hostages of Israel that have been taken, from their behaviour so far, do you really think they give a shit? It doesn't look to me like they care, because the ceasefire that was meant to bring back the hostages, they broke it. So why aren't they doing their best to get the hostages back? And from what they've been saying and they actually say this, they want to eliminate every Palestinian man, woman and child, right? Their foreign minister, or whoever, has said it. This is ethnic cleansing. Now I understand that what happened in October was a massacre. Massacres have been happening every year if you were a Palestinian, right? And that's not to excuse it. It's just to put it into a context. And 1000 plus people were killed on that day. But does that make it right to kill 60,000 of which something like 20,000 were children? I don't know the exact numbers, but does that ever make it right to target a child, to target a woman? To bomb hospitals, to kill journalists. I mean, why are they killing journalists? Why are they killing medics? Why isn't anybody doing anything about it? I'm not saying that what Hamas did is right, but I'm saying the point is being missed in terms of human suffering, this should not be happening and as a human being and as artists, we have to stand up and say, ‘this isn't right! Why isn't anybody doing anything?’. You know? It's not right, kicking people out of land they've lived in for hundreds of years, because it's all just about a certain issue of a Bible that certain people believe in”.
Heavy.
“It is heavy. If you look at Palestinian people, they are actually genetically Semitic, right? This is the irony of the whole thing. So when you're saying something about freeing Palestine, you're being called anti-semitic, but you're actually saying something about Semitic people. It's not binary, is it? Whereas the people in Israel, they come from Eastern Europe and places like that, America, England, Eastern Europe. I don't know the whole picture. Everybody sees it through their own focus, but how I see it is, it's not right, this murdering right. It's not right. And any human being should look at that and go, ‘STOP!’. Why don't they stop? It's like Trump and Netanyahu have the idea of what they want eventually, right? Trump wants his resort, so really, it's about equity, land, shaping it. He wants his resort there, and Netanyahu’s got this fanatical belief that Israel needs to spread and take over, and it's just going to go on and on. You're doing deals with a psycho, because the guy is psychotic. Essentially a fascist organisation, that government. I can't see how you can look at that government and say they're not a bunch of fascists and Trump, he's a fascist. Look at what they're trying to do to the Latino population, and they're just going in without even a warrant, right? People, families are being torn apart. It's a fascist government. They're going in with the military. There's never allowed to be a candidate or a party that's somewhere rational in the middle. People need to come together and talk about it. You know, even people that I think ‘you're a c**t’, right? But we still need to talk, because we're still human beings and we still have brains. I'm sure that if I put this information in front of you, you will be able to see what I'm talking about. And I'll look at what you're talking about. We have to talk. As long as you're not going about killing people or harming somebody, you have to have your freedom of speech, which we don't really have anymore”.
Another fan Andy, he says, “Rob, you did a mix of Lyrics Born ‘Changed My Mind’. He's an American MC. The first time I heard it it sounded like Stereo MCs. Is there a story there?”
“They just asked us to do it, and we loved the track. It was on Mo’ Wax, a really good label. We really respected the label and we loved the MC and the way he sang as well. We loved the track, so it was a no-brainer to do it. I had a great drum break off a rap record - probably better if I don't say which one - but there was a live drum thing on this rap record, a great drum break, and it was a total vibe to do the record. They were really happy with the mix and I think that was one of our best remixes”.
Someone anonymous has asked, “what would your supergroup lineup be?”
“I'd like to have Moodymann, yeah, yeah. Moodymann, I like what Sault do. I think that would be nice if they were playing, Sly Stone, The Mad Professor, and Four Tet. I like what he does. I think Sade would be nice. Always loved what she did”.
Stereo MCs - Portland May 2025
Credit - Erik Meharry
Have you got a desert island album, if you could only listen to one album and you were stuck on an island?
“Oh, that's a tricky one. Might be Fela Kuti”.
If staying connected is the mission, what's the weirdest thing that's ever made you feel plugged in?
“That's a hard one that one. A good question. I've probably got a few answers for that, but one of them is sometimes when I'm on the mic, and something just clicks. You know, you might not feel it at the beginning. You have to work through the set, and then something clicks, and you find yourself just rolling out and the fluidity of your words just becomes you, you're almost taken aback by the articulate nature of your ability, you just don't know where it's coming from. It's just like an electric force. You just kind of go, ‘wow. That was an incredible feeling’. You try to remind yourself, ‘what did I say?’. That's why I say music is a gift. And somehow, when you work yourself hard enough, you just get away from what it is you think you are, suddenly something happens and you just go, ‘I'm coming through’.
That must be almost out of body?
“It's just, it's incredible. It's a lovely feeling. And I love it sometimes, when that thing kicks in, and the inspiration happens. You're not really in control anymore. You're not preempting anything. It's just coming out right there and then, you haven't got a clue what you're going to say, and you're just trying to ride the crowd’s energy and power. It's amazing, a beautiful feeling, but it's there for everybody, right? It's like it's not down to you. I don't think it's down to talent”.
Is there one song you wish you'd written?
“There's probably loads to be honest, so many songs. I heard an unknown rapper the other day on Instagram, just sitting on his stoop. This kid, yeah, he was just storytelling in his rhyme. I don't remember the guy's name, but I would love to write that because he was telling a story that had a message but it was an experience of his own. And I just thought, ‘brilliant, that's so beautiful’”.
(Rob has since done some further investigation and the artist in question is @lareezymusic).
Any interesting, weird occasions of meeting a hero?
“I met Joe Strummer once Backstage at Brixton Academy and I was tongue-tied. I didn't know what to say, I just thought, ‘I can't believe I'm meeting you’, because I used to sit as a youngster when I lived at home with my mum and dad, listening to the Clash’s first LP, drinking beers and smoking and then to meet the guy…having witnessed their journey and how incredible it was”.
Mate, appreciate your time. On your birthday too, how kind. I'm looking forward to the gig on this tour when I finally see you after all these years.
What’s the competition gonna be?
“We have very few photos of the early days so anyone with some pics from 1987 to 2005 could win free tickets to a show and have a word after”.
Just post your image/s and tag @stereomcsmusic and @loadedworld to enter.
Thanks Rob. Peace.
Stereo MCs are touring Europe so if you love the good stuff, check yo’ head and go and nod it.
By David J Ham
@stereomcsmusic for tour dates.