Saturday, January 28, 2012
MICHAEL STAFFORD has been through the grinder.
Born in the sketchy London borough of Hackney, he moved to Wexford with his family at age five. At school he would be regularly taunted for his English accent. But when he went back to Britain, people laughed and called him Paddy. Growing up the awkward offspring of two cultures, he wasn’t sure who he was or what he wanted to be. Then he discovered music. It helped save his life.
"As a kid I always saw myself as 50-50, a mix of two different backgrounds," he says. "I’m half and half, London Irish aren’t I? Over in England, they said I sounded Irish. In Wexford they said I sounded English. You always got that, the banter. I suppose it’s made me who I am today. Everything you go through shapes who you are."
He channels this powerful sense of alienation into his songs, a beyond catchy mix of r’n’b and hip-hop that he performs under the stage moniker Maverick Sabre. From decidedly unglamorous beginnings — as a 14-year-old he would catch the bus to Waterford to participate in rap competitions — the 21-year-old’s verbal dexterity has brought him to the brink of the big time. He’s been snapped up by a major label; his debut album, Lonely Are The Brave, is tipped to be one of the year’s major breakthroughs in both Ireland and Britain. If you haven’t heard of him already, give it a few months. By then he’ll be all over the airwaves.
In Britain, especially, the hype has been little short of deafening. Stafford is on all the ‘big for 2012’ lists in the music press. He was shortlisted for a Brit Award for best newcomer and is receiving round the clock airplay on influential pop station BBC 1 Radio One. His record company is supremely confident big things lie ahead and is pouring huge sums into promoting the young rhymer. Obviously it’s nice to be liked. But does the pressure ever feel too much? Powerful people have staked a great deal on him doing well. He shakes his head.
"Not really. The only pressure I put on myself is to write the best songs possible. The rest… I don’t let it get me. I don’t feel anything huge pushing down on me."
Stafford witnessed last summer’s riots in London first hand and, without wishing to excuse what happened, understands the disaffection felt by British youth as it shoulders the worst of the recession. Meanwhile, many of his school friends from Wexford have had to move to England for work. If young people in the two countries have anything in common, says Stafford, it is an overwhelming hopelessness, a sense of abandonment by the rest of society. It’s a subject he addresses at length on angst-slathered songs such as Let Me Go and I Need.
"Economically we’re all in the same situation in both Ireland and England to be honest, " he says. "I get a real sense of that every time I go home, with all the unemployment. I try to speak for people, because there is a large group of youngsters whose concerns are not being articulated today. They feel lost, that their government has left them down. You go to university, then there are no jobs. The only option is to move away or settle for something you haven’t got the heart for."
When he began rapping, his parents worried he was making a huge mistake prioritising music over his academic life. He understands why they were concerned (even though his father had fronted a trad band in the ’90s). However, success has put a lid on their misgivings and now mum and dad are his biggest cheerleaders.
"Every mother is going to worry about their son, down in his room playing music. Fair enough — I would probably have the same concern in her position. She isn’t a musician so she couldn’t understand what I was doing. You could easily see it all as a waste of time. After I signed my record deal, everything changed. Now she’s more into what I’m doing than my dad is."
Stafford got serious about his career in his mid-teens. He would travel by coach to Dublin and perform as the support act for big names such as The Game and 50 Cent. Some of the shows went well, others didn’t. Occasionally Stafford struggled to make himself heard over a barrage of boos and heckles. One car-crash gig in particular stands out.
"I was doing support at the Ambassador and had come up straight from school in Wexford," he remembers. "At the time I only had one tracksuit, an England one from an uncle in London. So I went on stage with England track bottoms on. People started noticing. I didn’t get the warmest reception, you could say. It’s all a learning experience, isn’t it? Those are the things that stand to you."
Even in a good mood, an Irish rap crowd can be an intimidating prospect. It must have been terrifying for a skinny teenager to stand in front of a rowdy audience and hold his own? "I gigged hard from the start," says Stafford. "To be honest, you get used to it. Thinking back now, it’s like something from another life. It seems so long ago."
His big break came the night he shared the bill with Plan B, the English rapper turned soul star. The artist otherwise known as Ben Drew took a liking to Stafford and offered to help him out if he ever decided to move to the UK. A few years later, after he had finished school, he took him up on his offer. From there, it’s been a breathless whoosh towards pop’s fast lane.
"I was 17 and needed to figure out what do with my life," says Stafford. "I didn’t really know if I wanted to move to London. I was in two minds about it. I had nothing going on over there. The decision was a last minute thing. I booked my ticket and just went for it. I went kind of blindly. I’m very lucky it’s all worked out the way it has."
The album Lonely are the Brave is released this weekend. Maverick Sabre plays The Academy, Dublin, on February 29.
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