20 Years On, Glyn & Riki Are Still Changing The Face Of British Music

Before Since ‘93, you worked in A&R at Virgin EMI and signed Professor Green and Krept & Konan. With Krept & Konan, they got a record deal after Young Kingz charted in the Top 20. Then their debut album, The Long Way Home, was a top five album. How do you go from a ‘good’ achievement to a ‘great’ achievement?

Glyn: I think that’s just down to ambition and the artist’s ambition. They wanted to be great and they wanted to be the best. I remember talking to them, they came at the time when the rap music of the day, in terms of sales, seemed to be in decline. With Young Kingz, “Don’t Waste My Time” was a super-hard, underground sound. People asked me why I was signing them but it’s funny, because I remembered the rebellious spirit from So Solid, but also, what I think I learned from So Solid is that when people start to get bored of one thing, they always go to the other end of the spectrum, which is normally the underground. The things that are popular there, that’s what everyone is paying attention to now. “Don’t Waste My Time” was arguably the biggest anthem at the time. After having met Krept & Konan, they told me what they wanted to achieve and what their ambitions were. I said, “I can help you do that.” But it’s always based on that and what an artist wants to achieve.

In June 2018, you both launched Since 93. As two veterans in music…

Glyn: You’re making me feel old, man!

Riki: Say young vets! [Laughs]

[Laughs] As young veterans, what did you want to achieve?

Glyn: I think the overall ambition is to be the best, and you can’t say that if you’re living on past glory. I don’t think anything should purely exist on former glory. You want to be creating an environment where success, small or large, can be enjoyed, and that’s part of the thing that drives us.

Riki: As well as ambition, it also becomes almost like a natural progression. We’ve both been students of different schools of thought from successful people in the music business, who taught us and helped to nurture us. What we’ve done is took the best of those learnings and created our way of doing things, and now we’re here at a point where we can actually do that for ourselves and from our own perspective. It’s not like we’re doing something that’s fundamentally different now—we’re actually doing what we’ve always done—we’re just doing it together and for ourselves. The game doesn’t really change. We were talking earlier about how to read songs before the internet, and Glyn, he had a way of reading songs and that’s that’s prepared him now for a time where he’s got the best of both worlds. And that’s why I think he’s the best A&R in the country, because he’s got the old-school instincts of a killer A&R plus all these fucking stats! Great. Just great.

Glyn: Riki is also fundamentally amazing with people and, ultimately, this is a people’s business.

Riki: We also touched upon how we’re in an ever-changing world. Similar to how we move from CD sales to streams, you’ve also moved from an attitude of feeling like you needed a record label to do everything, to feeling like you’ve got to do a lot of it yourself in terms of development, before you get to a major. You’ve ended up having to do far more than historically you needed to do in terms of growing and building your acts. The synergy between what Glyn has always done as an A&R and what I’ve always done as a manager/publisher A&R, collectively, I think these skill-sets have put us at the front of the queue.

You signed Fredo, Loski and Aitch quite early on; seems like you guys had a clear vision and executed that quite quickly.

Glyn: The mission here is to be working with the most exciting artists around and helping to nurture and guide their music career. That’s the vision. Collectively, individually, we recognise that in Fredo, Loski, Aitch, Amun, Serine Karthage, we think that they’re the most exciting people around. We don’t want to be lazy record people company and just follow the trend. The mission is to always be aware of where the crowd is going and to just go the other way.

Riki: To add to what Glyn said—without sounding like an asshole, there actually was a strategy of hitting the ground running and that was a discussed thing. Again, this is where experience helps you. We’ve been around long enough and seen enough iterations—especially Glyn, from a record label perspective—to know that momentum is key. With everything you do, momentum is key. Sometimes you can be a bit too reserved and you want to get everything a million percent right, all in one go. Our thing is, let’s just be excited about things. So with the likes of Loski and Fredo, exciting acts in their own lane. Then also, Serine Karthage, Amun, starting from zero—there is nothing on the YouTube to look at—that’s where you go back to your gut and think, ‘I just think this is good.’ It’s not led by stats—this is just good! Now, it’s our job to get everybody else to see that this is good, but we fundamentally believe that this is good. There were no markers for that. Aitch just started, and he’s really bubbling and growing nicely.

Glyn: And after meeting Aitch, you’re like: “Yeah, this guy… This guy’s got something.” And that was it. It’s about belief. We’ve seen people do things like this before, where they have a label connected to a major label and whatnot—what they do is sit around and wait for the perfect artist or perfect beat to walk through the door and, invariably, that doesn’t happen. And when that doesn’t happen and you’ve been sitting around for a few years doing nothing, then the pressure comes, you panic and start signing any shit and end up running up the down-escalator and shit. It just doesn’t work. We need activity, and to get things going on. That feeds back to the thing of they won’t care if you haven’t got a number one hit. Our concern is to create excitement and create a culture for what this place [Since ‘93] stands for, and what it means. Particularly for the artist community to know that is a place where you can come and collaborate.

Riki: I made a point earlier about the shift in culture. There was a point a little while back where being independent was a badge of honour. With both of our skill-sets and experience, we’re able to create an environment that has a degree of independence within it, so people walk in and feel like we can be disruptive, we can be different. We work too hard to retain the elements of independence that we have being in a joint venture. We can be as corporate as we need to be, but we can also be the man on the pavement as much as we need to be, so you’ll find us somewhere in the middle.

Glyn: You want to meet an artist’s needs in the best way you possibly can. So if there’s a feeling that an artist wants to be disruptive, you also know that, when the time comes, should you need it, you’re also connected to a global powerhouse that can take you and your music all around the world.

Do you envision the recent commercial success of UK rap and drill lasting? Reason I ask is because grime has encountered many peaks and troughs, high and lows. But will rap enjoy more consistent success?

Glyn: It’s difficult to say. On a cultural level, going back to the point of how people consume music nowadays and what music is the most popular—in terms of consumption, I would generalise it and basically say if you’re young, you listen to rap music, no matter who you are or where you are. Perhaps it’s always been that way and before, we couldn’t measure it, but now we can.

Back in the day, a lot of people would reject rap music unless it came from an American artist.

Glyn: Things have definitely evolved. When I was younger listening to rap music, the debate was—as you said—could you be taken seriously if you didn’t rap in an American accent? Now, the majority of rap music you hear is in a British accent. It’s frowned upon almost to do the opposite. People just inherently gravitate towards their own, so American rap music may not necessarily be as dominant anymore.

Riki: If you go to a nightclub in London, you will hear Drake—don’t get me wrong. You’ll hear the big song of the day, 100%, but you go into clubs and all you hear is UK music, all night. And you don’t even notice, until you notice. Whereas before it would be like so, are you not gonna play the new Snoop Dogg? You would notice they’re not playing it. It was like you had to ask the DJ for the big tunes, but there are plenty of big tunes now that exist within the culture that these young guys are putting together. There’s new music being released every single day.

What can people expect next from Since ‘93?

Glyn: Rock and fucking roll! [Laughs]

Riki: The good times are back, mate! Our whole thing is, when you meet us or interact with our brand or artists, we want you to be able to feel the difference. We want you to feel that this is by us and for us. The artists feel that way; when you’re dealing with artists who are uncompromising kids from the streets like Fredo or Loski, they’re not going to be comfortable walking into massively stiff, corporate environments. I don’t have to tell you that for you to know that’s going to be true. We pride ourselves on the fact that we’re able to make the experience for them as comfortable as possible, while aiding their growth as young men, because we still give them the corporate parts of the experience they need and deserve because their talent deserves that. You do have a marketing person, you do have a product manager, you do have a radio person, and here is that wider team. They’re not bad people either. That aids people’s growth. We’ve seen how much these two [Fredo and Loski] have grown in the last 12 months as human beings from their music careers. It’s real for them. This is providing for them and their families like nothing before has. You can’t take that for granted.