Offie Mag

For the latest instalment of Brickcellphone’s Underground Release Radar, I caught up with Southwest London’s droppedmilk.

We’ve known about droppedmilk for a long ol’ time. Our first sample of the London producer was BoneChilledMilk, a collaboration with Nine8’s Bone Slim. Eager to taste more, we wanted to learn more about his latest project, ‘The Milk Crates, Vol.1’, which features the aforementioned Bone Slim as well as Lord Apex, and Goya Gumbani — quite the line-up. 

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Hi droppedmilk, can you introduce yourself in your own words for those who may not know you…

I’m a producer from Southwest London. Specialising in hip-hop at the moment, but we'll see where the wind takes me.

How long have you been making music for?

I’ve been making music since I was probably six or seven years old, producing since 2016. 

I was in a band when I was younger, so I've played guitar and drums since I was a little kid. I was the lead guitarist, and we would play mostly pop-punk covers, me and the drummer were big metal fans, but the singer wasn’t. So we played like Fall Out Boy, and Weezer with some random Bullet for My Valentine songs thrown in.

I picked up a guitar because my whole family used to play. Then for my 9th birthday, I got given a drum kit, my mum found it in a skip. She was driving past some house, and a whole drum kit was sitting there. So she went and asked if she could take it. I was gassed. I got a whole fucking drum kit. So yeah, that started the journey. 

Can you tell us more about ‘The Milk Crates, vol.1’? 

I've been saying I'm gonna release a tape for the past, probably like four or five years. But you know how as a producer, you make songs for your own projects, and then you'll get features on, and they'll slowly get given to other people for their albums. I needed to keep some for myself and release my solo thing.

 

 

Most of these are really old songs. It’s a culmination of the best tracks selected over the years just put together as a little offering to the world. This one's very heavy with guitar samples. That wasn't intentional, but when I was picking they all just blended like that.

We love your radio show on Balamii. How important is radio to an artist such as yourself?

Thank you! It's nice to be able to just to play whatever. I don't even know how many people actually listen to it, I just do it for me. I usually shuffle my whole playlist, and then a song will come on that I haven’t heard in time, or a song that I don't think a lot of people have been listening to recently, and they’re the tunes I try to drop. 

It’s nice to brush up on DJ skills once a month as well. Since Covid I had a hiatus from actually DJing so most people have forgotten that I even do it. It’s a great little practice session every month while also being able to show my taste in music. 

The theme of our new issue is Cost of Living. We've been speaking to all sorts of people about how it's affected them, artists included. How has it affected you and the musicians you work with?

I mean, everything's got so much more expensive.  Food and shit has got way more expensive. It's crazy. You can probably get takeaway for the same price as it is to buy ingredients and make food. I'm definitely eating a lot worse; it's hard to keep up a good diet. I've been eating a lot of wings and chips. The other day I saw something about Digestives being £5.20 in Co-op, I thought it was a joke. I was also in a park in central the other day and they were trying to charge me a fiver for a 99p Flake. What a joke.

I can't afford a studio or anything right now, but I got got pretty decent set up in the house. I'm definitely lucky to have it, it means I stay home a lot. Which I guess has actually affected my music in a positive way.

This series is all about new music, so what’s a new song you’ve been listening to recently? 

Brian Nasty he’s just dropped a project. It’s hard. Nega Brandon is about to drop some of the best songs I’ve heard come out of London in a while. Jim Legxacy’s latest one is sick. Goya obviously.

Other than that I’ve just trying to branch out. I've been listening to lots of Florence Adooni and Charles Bradley.

What was the last gig you went to? 

Roc Marciano. I saw Smino then Roc Marci the day after. This was like three weeks ago. It was sick, man. First rapper I've seen a while where you can just hear everything he's saying. Doesn't need an instrumental. Doesn't need his vocals on the track.

What is one of your more left-field inspirations? It doesn’t have to be a musician. The more niche, the better. 

Red Hot Chili Peppers, they’re my favourite band. Or Foo Fighters. Flea said, when he was writing Californication all he was listening to is 36 Chambers by Wu-Tang. But yeah. 

Fuck it, Hall and Oates, the goats.

 

And finally, what are your three off-licence items of choice… 

A Modelo, some sweet and salty popcorn, and longs.

droppedmilk's Milk Crates Vol. 1 can be found on our Music of the Month playlist for June 2023, and will be in The Archive forever.