WORDS BETTY CUTTING - PHOTOGRAPHY + ARTWORK ALEX RORISON - STYLING MORGAN ALLAN - STYLING ASSISTANT SAM COLLINS
South London’s modern day milkman has dropped a new delivery on our doorsteps and its much larger than a pint. It’s house beats, it’s jazzy tones, it’s Peckham’s wittiest wordsmith, Pinty, back with a new mixtape ‘Pinty’s House’. The highly anticipated mixtape features Jadasa, Mina Rose, Catching Cairo and Afriqua; and includes collaborations with the likes of King Krule and Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs.
We caught up with Pinty to chat all things Brit School, trainspotting and the creative process. Oh, and we think we accidentally manifested a future duet with Elton John.
Beth Cutting: Hey Pinty, How are you today?
Pinty: Good, just running around getting coffee on, getting my head straight.
BC: Your mixtape just came out...
P: Yeh it’s weird, you spend all this time building on something, then it’s finally out and you need to try and take it in. Yeh it feels good. I played at Fabric on release day to celebrate. What’s your name again?
BC: It’s Betty, it came from me baking loads and my friends calling me Betty Crocker….
P: [Laughs] Nice, that’s my Granny's name.
BC: So, why are you called Pinty?
P: I’m called Pinty because I used to drink loads of milk, not for any drinking, this girl said “I’m gonna call you Pinty because you always drink pints of milk” and I thought I quite like that, it’s quite cool actually. Then I started graffitiing with it and got caught graffitiing with it, and it became my illegal name, so to speak.
Pinty wears jacket AELIZA; trousers BEN DAVIS
BC: What’s your real name?
P: Michael. When someone hits me with Michael it feels weird. I don’t feel like I look like a Michael for some reason. Names have such an impact... as long as people don’t call me Pin-tee that’s fine. Get it right c’mon. What the fuck is a pin-t.
BC: [Laughs] How did you get into music?
P: My older brother was an MC, he used to MC garage and jungle music. I remember he put me on the mic at a party when I was 8 years old and I was all scared, making weird noises, like oink oink. That’s one of my earliest memories, being on the mic. And then my friend Archy (King Krule) was like “Yo, you should give this a go”. And with my brothers influence, I got given a tape, and was like “If he can do it, so can I”.
BC: And you went to Brit School?
P: Yeh I did, I loved it, I thought it was great. I came from an environment where no one wanted to be at school, so to go to a place where people were happy to be there it was quite miraculous for me. I remember coming back from one of my first days, and girls were just hugging me, people were happy. It was incredible, it was nice because it was the first time I mixed with such a mix of people. It was vibes, people from everywhere. Some proper characters would come with me back to Peckham, come back to mine, pick up weed and we would chill, smoke and get to know each other. This one guy used to walk around with a vodka bottle, with no vodka in it, just water but it was jokes. I really liked it there.
RIGHT Pinty wears jacket CP COMPANY; trousers BEN DAVIS; shoes REEBOK
BC: And after Brit School?
P: I went to uni for a year, did a ‘Mickey mouse degree’, one that didn’t mean anything, so I studied Radio for a year, being like "why am I here?". My friends were playing shows in London and I was sitting in Bournemouth like "what the fuck am I doing?".
BC: I went to Bournemouth University too.
P: Did you? What did you study?
BC: Advertising, similar thing, I just did it to go Uni.
P: Yeh? No way. I absolutely hated it but I wrote one of my first really good pieces of music when I was there ‘It’s Just Life’. I spent so long writing that, then came back to London, then Archy sent me a load of music. I wrote these lyrics and he was like "try on this beat" and then it was my first taste of my music going out into the world. We put it on Soundcloud and Vice picked it up, when Vice was an actual thing, then it went from a couple of thousand plays to a hundred thousand plays and we were like "Oh Shit."
BC: How has your music evolved from your first EP to now?
P: I’d like to say it’s a bit more thought-out, although I’m a bit erratic and ADHD so not much I do is thought-out, my brain is like ‘zing-zing-zing’. But I know what I wanna do more. It was when I was making City Limits I remember I had this whole process, we had 5 songs for the EP... went to the studio, made the last song for it. I was like “This is it. Finally done.” And gave it to Bradley Zero, and he was like “Naa bruv. You’re really close, it’s a really good EP, but that last song just isn’t it.” So I had to really take a step back and think “What do I want from this?” and I went and stayed in Oxford with Maxwell Owen and spent 3 days on it. On the train ride home I listened to it and thought “This is finally it.” I was so nervous but then I gave it to him, and he said “Yeh you’ve done it, well done.” So that was a nice process, asking myself “What I’m actually trying to do.”
BC: Do you think that critical feedback is helpful?
P: No doubt. All the people around me let me know. They’d be like “Bruv what the fuck is this.” And that was the first time I had an outside influence, from someone who could put in money to help put something out.
BC: Why is it called Pinty’s House?
P: I wanted to make a house mixtape with mainly house producers on it. That’s the lane I’ve been working in for quite a while, then it evolved to that. It’s like stepping into my world at this point in time, come step into Pinty’s House, come see what it’s like, you know what I mean?
LEFT Pinty wears top TRILOGY TAPES; trousers BEN DAVIS; jewellery ARTIST'S OWN
BC: Yeh. How long did it take you to make it?
P: Fucking ages. This was not quick. It’s taken a while, let's just say that. Some songs I’d been sitting on for a while. I needed Archy on the mixtape and he sent me a beat, and I managed to write that one in a day, but some took forever. Working with 10 different producers is definitely not something I’d recommend on one project. It’s a lot of back and fourth. But it’s nice getting to work with all the different people like Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs and George FitzGerald. Their level is so high, artistically and musically and it's been incredible to get to know what they're like.
BC: Do you ever get writers block?
P: Yeh, I deal with it by not working on just one thing. And over the last few years I’ve learnt to trust my instincts a lot more. At the beginning when I wrote ‘It’s Just Life’ I looked into every single word but these days I’m a lot more free, a lot more open. Now when I worked with TEED (Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs) he was playing beats and I was writing on the spot, and from that developed the idea. And I had trust in what was about to come out. Not overthinking things helped me, being like “Fuck it, we’ll come back to it later”. And free-styling, knowing what my ears wanna hear.
BC: I love the artwork for your mixtape.
P: I’m actually gonna be doing a 'Pint with Pinty' so people should come down, get a poster... It's Thurs 6th Oct at The Gowlett in Peckham - it’s at my local pub where I had my first job, I’ll be there for the day, selling merch. The artwork was by a guy called Mitchell Bradshaw, incredible young man, he’s so gifted, he sent me a DM years ago with this magazine he made and I saw it and was like “This is dope.” I replied and said “Where are you right now?” He was like “I’m in Peckham”, and I said “I’ll meet you right now.” He was a bit taken aback but I was like “This is sick!”.
The artwork for Pintys House is actually based on the block of flats I was born in, in Brixton. It’s kind of a hybrid of all of my homes. I moved to Peckham when I was 1.
TOP LEFT top AELIZA; trousers GUESS; glasses GUCCI; shoes REEBOK; jewellery ARTIST'S OWN
BC: When you make music videos, do you have a lot of input in that too?
P: I used to have a lot of input, quite often I have an idea in my head and need someone to translate it. Like the P-I-N-T-Y video, I said to this guy Owain (Owain E. Morgan) “I wanna look like Snoop Dogg in Sensual Seduction.” And got it in my head, I just wanted it to be in a studio, but Owain is so good to work with because he understands me, he said “I hear that, but I’m just going to show you this little idea, if you don’t like it, you don’t like it” and he showed me a demo, and it was absolutely brilliant, so we decided to just go with what he was sayin’. So this was our third video, we built a relationship, I have so much trust in him, he’s amazing at what he does. So I can give him free rein.
BC: And the music video with Francis Bourgeois…
P: He’s just such a lovely guy, he DM’d me a while back, and we hit it off, for our mutual love of transport. I really like trains from my graffiti routes, so I’ve had a soft spot for it. We really got on, then asking him to be in that was great. That was my idea, that he should be telling me off for doing graffiti. That was one of my favourite videos probably.
BC: It’s so great. And did Elton John really call your music sexy?
P: [Laughs] Yeh he did. Good old Elton, one day you’re going to see me behind a grand piano, an Elton duet, one day soon.
BC: You heard it here first.
P: Until that moment we’ll just enjoy him calling my music sexy.
BC: What’s your favourite F Word?
P: Maybe Fabrizio, an Italian football journalist, I really like his name. Actually Fabric, let’s say Fabric, big it up.
Pinty wears top 70s DEADSTOCK; trousers BEN DAVIS; glasses ARTIST'S OWN; shoes VINTAGE
