Graft: 'I feel like I’ve gone through a lot of change as a person'

Golden Child, Graft’s debut EP for Come Play With Me Records and EMI North, marks a musical evolution from earlier singles such as You Know What, which he released in 2021 after winning the BBC Three series The Rap Game UK. “The more my career goes on, I feel like I’m just going back to the music I truly love,” he says. “I grew up listening to a lot of jazz, neo-soul and hip-hop and that’s like the foundations of why I actually got into music. As I’ve continued my career, I’ve just been experimenting which I’ve loved, but at this point in my life I’m just returning to the roots.”

Growing up in Chapeltown and Oakwood, the American rapper Nas was Graft’s “idol”. He recalls: “I used to listen to his album Illmatic in high school and I remember it was just myself and one other guy called Blessing, he was a really good guy and me and him would talk about that whole album. I think it was Year and 9 when I first heard that album, not many people around us knew about it beside some of our teachers.”

The track Same Yout as You reflects upon Graft’s youth when he was an aspiring to be a professional footballer with first Leeds then Rotherham United. He says that at that age he wished he had “more support in the sense of that outlet where I could express the way I felt away from music and away from sport”. He adds: “I never understood certain things that I was feeling so I wish that I had felt more comfortable, one to express them, and two, maybe had other people around me that created that space for me to just say what was on my mind.”

He started writing poems and songs aged 13. “Ever since then I’ve not stopped,” he says. Music, he says, was his “creative outlet” while trying to cope with the “pressure and stress” of football. “The first song that I wrote was about things that were going on in the world. I just used it as a way to get things off my chest, and it did help me,” he says.

He has dedicated Same Yout as You to the lives of young black men in society today. He is keen to spread positive messages in his songs. “Music is a powerful tool,” he says. “I feel like music affects the masses, it’s a frequency that we all resonate with – that’s why I feel that I have such an important role in making sure that the vibe that I put into my music is positive, that it’s affecting people in what I believe is the right way.”

Alongside his own EP, Graft also features on the compilation Come Play With Breed Vol 2 alongside D5, Hannah Rowe and Mica Sefia. Launched last month with a show at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds, it is the second collaborative project from Leeds-based music charity Come Play With Me and Sheffield-based music and media manufacturing specialists Breed Music showcasing northern musicians and local talent.

“I think that Come Play With Me is so supportive, they’ve got the best interests of artists at heart,” he says. “They want to be a driving force for northern talent, so me being a part of that and signing a distribution deal with them feels like such a blessing. It’s not often that you work with a label that just wants you to do well and really cares about you. I think that’s the blessing of working with a smaller label​​​​​​​ up north because they understand certain struggles that you have gone through​​​​​​​ as an act from up here.”

Although he has plenty more material in the bag, Graft says his intention now is to “momentarily” take a break from music. He explains: “I believe that I’m in music for the long haul and I don’t want to burn myself out so early in my career. So I want to take a break, delve into some other passions, get them off the ground and then, when I feel like the time is right, come back to music and smash it out of the water.”

Golden Child is out on August 30 via Come Play With Me Records/EMI North.