Overcoming the underground; the opportunities and obstacles of the streaming era.

An interview with UK underground hip-hop pioneer, Chini.

With the UK’s underground hip-hop scene exploding with talent and rising in prominence on playlists, I took the opportunity to talk to Chini, producer and founding member of The Mouse Outfit, to discuss their ongoing endeavour to maintain prevalence in the underground hip-hop realm.

Chini (formally Paul Hooley) is part of the 8-piece collective The Mouse Outfit. Since they were acclaimed as ‘best hip-hop album’ in 2013 by Wordplay magazine the band has been on the radar of hip-hop enthusiasts ever since. Now nine years on, the band is still making music in their distinguished jazzy boom-bap style and are about to do their first national tour since 2019.

A lot has changed since 2013, especially when it comes to streaming.

Revisiting their 2013 album ‘Escape Music’, the 19 tracks were distributed equally between rappers Sparkz, Dr. Syntax, Black Josh, and Fox who fronted 4 to 5 tracks each. The album was predominantly made up of artistically sampled old hip-hop and jazz songs which curated their celebrated nostalgic sound by remixing it with new beats.

“We’re just trying to be as prolific as possible at the moment”,  Chini told me when I asked what the band are currently up to.  They have been releasing a new track every 2 weeks with DJ and Producer Metrodome, from their archives of unused tracks, calling them “Chillout Vibes” (1 to 12 currently). When asking Chini what the reason behind this staggered way of releasing is, he tells me that it is to increase ‘views’ (streams), by landing each track on their followers on Spotify’s ‘release radar’. “If we released a 4 track EP, only one of the songs can be ‘pitched for promotion” (ending up on release radar) so by doing it this way they are guaranteed it will reach more people, all 320,000 of their Spotify followers will get a notification.”

This staggered method is something we're seeing more of on Spotify, due to the struggle artists face with the incredibly low pay rate streaming offers. Chini says “With Spotify, we do really well with numbers but it’s such a minuscule amount per track you literally need millions of plays to earn off it” he then followed with an analogy; “you think about when you go to a pizza shop: you buy the pizza and you're done, you go back the next day you buy another pizza. You see with music you release an album and once a year someone will buy your vinyl; you can’t constantly keep selling the same product to the same fans”.  Artists are constantly having to adapt their process to turn a profit off their music, yet the low pay rate of streaming is yet to change to support artists.

Despite having songs with up to 10 million streams, not every track is a hit which makes day-to-day earning an obstacle. However, Chini manages to see a silver lining to the digital era we are living in saying “however it’s a great time to be making music, to be able to do it from home, not having to go to studios, being able to promote it yourself. Just being able to upload it to Spotify without a record label”. The opportunities that streaming platforms have to offer can be amazing for artists' careers in giving them easy access to the whole world online. We have to look at the time we are living in now, post-lockdown. Without streaming services, artists would not have been able to share their music and earn a living. When I asked Chini about how he coped with lockdown and found the musical inspiration to continue making music he said, “Through lockdown, I found artists online through playlists like ‘northern rap’, it was just simple as”, going on to tell me about their process in creating beats, sending them off to these rappers and getting bars sent back. The entire process was done virtually between artists, so streaming services and social media played a crucial part in keeping the more underground artists afloat. Collaborations with the artists from the lockdown creative surge will be featured on the Mouse Outfit's next album with the likes of Koj (Liverpool-based rapper) and Oxomo (Brighton-based producer).

Continuing in our discussion on social media, I asked Chini for his opinion, given its ‘importance’ in today’s digital age. He says “I really wish I had a full-time person to do social media for me. As an unsigned band without any record labels behind you, you have to do all your own promo”. The band’s online profile is strong in its image and presence amongst playlists, but haven’t got a carefully mapped out marketing strategy, unlike many newer artists who rely on social media to boost sales through their promo. “I hate it. It’s advertising, that’s how I see social media. For artists, it isn’t about them, it's just a way of getting stuff out there and you have to be cold about it; “why didn’t they like this or that?”. Chini and the others from The Mouse Outfit are essentially being forced to overcome their aversion to social media to keep up with other artists in the same field.

I wanted to talk to Chini about how they first got started, and how this led to them releasing their debut album ‘Escape Music’, which is still the band's most commercially successful album to date.

Escape Music was humbly recorded in his dad's cellar (come studio), now in his own flat with a recording studio in Manchester, he said that the early period of his music career “feels like a lifetime ago”. Speaking more on the topic of the early days, I asked Chini about what he misses from this time, he says “When you start off and no one’s making any money, and there’s no money to go anywhere, everyone will work with you for free! As soon as you get a profile then these people who would have done a track for free now think they can get a load of money, but there isn’t a lot going around!” He concludes by saying “It's somewhat easier at the beginning”.

Looking through the Mouse Outfits’ three albums, their most recent (along with the current single release), The Jagged Tooth Crook took to an alternative sound compared to the previous two with stronger jazz overtones as well as female rapper IAMDDB fronting the ‘bigger’ tracks. The main distinguishing factor which sets this album and the chillout vibes succession apart from the first two is that they decided to drop sampling for that project. I asked Chini why they made this choice and he said “We morally don’t want to rob other people's music and put our name on it”. He also recounted how ‘Escape Music’ was almost pulled after they essentially sampled illegally but Chini laughs saying, “We didn't think anyone would hear it, so we weren't careful!” he continues “Nowadays you gotta be so careful with weaving around legalities, when we did it back then (2013-15) it wasn't a worry”. Sampling is used heavily throughout hip-hop, most beats coming from old soul, jazz and hip-hop tracks, so the legalities heightened by streaming poses another obstacle for artists. However, with the absence of samples, these past projects have shown off Chini’s (and Metrodome) diligence in creating original and cool beats.

When asked about what it meant to be an “underground” artist Chini shared :

“It's all about the process in how you make your music, your influences, and the D.I.Y initiative”.

He follows up by saying “These days it’s very easy to get a good sound at home because the equipment is so cheap, you can get a really good recording if you know what you're doing”. This “D.I.Y initiative” he mentions is fundamental to the band, Chini not only produces and markets them but also creates their own music videos utilising technology to their independent advantage.

With the Mouse Outfit’s tour beginning on the 20th of May, Chini is looking forward to the much-anticipated return of live gigs. After discovering Twitch live streaming service, he has been DJ-ing to a comment section for the past few months, telling me “I love it, wish we discovered it back in lockdown but yeah, it's great, it's like ‘this is our channel we decide what we’re putting out there, no catering for anyone but own mood. But have to say, nothing beats a proper crowd”.

Despite the obstacles they’re overcoming in the underground scene with recent technology opportunities and liabilities, The Mouse Outfit remains to be a big name in the hip-hop scene and is lucky enough to earn from what they love doing most, making good tunes.