Ahead of his hotly-tipped third album, we join Kid Bookie in Paris with I Prevail to discover the drive and the desires of the double MOBO Award nominee, and how he’s planning to change the world – one bit at a time…
In a rare quiet moment backstage, Tyronne Hill is inspecting the damage that various Kid Bookie shows have left him with. Often prone to hammering in speakers and bleeding all over the stage, he looks down at his hands with pride, grinning, “Scars all over my shit.” The physicality, which might read as stereotypical metal theatrics, is actually a crucial element of his sound and overall ethos, because a Kid Bookie set is not a performance. It’s a purge.
He explains his mindset as we bounce from room to room backstage at L’Olympia in Paris, where there’s a seemingly endless flow of people. Dressing rooms are delegated with Post-it notes; we start in Bookie’s but settle into the makeshift tattoo studio by the end of the night, where our chat is punctuated by the quiet buzz of the ink gun and Bookie’s energised yells. When he bursts into an Iowa-inspired scream mid-conversation, people barely blink. It seems like everyone’s attuned to his ways by now, and if the scores of I Prevail fans who are queuing outside don't know him yet, they’ll soon be initiated.
“I call it purging the spirit,” he elaborates. “It’s visceral, man, it’s unprecedented madness, and that's what a show should be. This is just my time to purge. I'm not here to impress you. I'm here to deliver and give you an experience.”
Defining what exactly it is that Bookie's purging is about as impossible to pin down as the man himself, gleefully wandering down wild tangents about the mechanics of the universe, ricocheting between deeply existential trains of thought and boyish humour.
On inspiring people to be themselves, for instance, he says he's “trying to unlock a little chain that you walk around on your feet with, that no-one put there other than you”. He urges his fans to be brave enough to unshackle them, before summing up, “Realise we are all just here from an orgasm your parents did. They fucked as hard as they potentially could.”
It would be easy to mistake his ramblings as emotional openness, but it’s clearly a double-edged sword that creates a lot of distance. He often gets lost in his own world, speaking so quickly and urgently that he’s almost impenetrable.
“I definitely feel very alone,” he reflects, immediately making fun of himself for sounding too emo. “That's because of the tangents I maybe do walk along. Even if I'm calm in this seat now, I’m a fucker. Motherfucker. Not just by nature, but because the world is too big for me to be limited in its expanse. I’m a sarcastic piece of shit. I'm dumb. I’m smart. I love, I hate. I'm stupid, I’m flawless. I’m everything, man.”
It’s a fitting summary of an artist who’s consciously never fit into any box, the “everything” element of his sound reinforcing why he’s something of a lone wolf. His list of influences rebounds indiscriminately from genre to genre, with Bookie naming Eminem, Edvard Grieg and Slipknot as musical idols. Yet even when he managed to collaborate with Corey Taylor, that association wasn’t enough for the elitists and gatekeepers – and he hasn’t forgotten that people called 2022’s Game a hip-hop track.
“That song is not a hip-hop song,” he reiterates. “It’s a full-on screaming battalion of noise and disgustingly drop-tuned guitars.
“When you've made music with one of the metal gods, you get exposed to every type of metal fan you can ever imagine,” he shrugs. “I've seen and heard it all from every angle, from everywhere from Middle America to Slovakia, where they don't recognise what I do.”
But as long as people aren’t “killing babies or shoving people in blenders,” Bookie couldn’t care less what they categorise him as. “As long as you give your heart and your soul,” he says, “then you will always win hearts.”
With new album Songs For The Living // Songs For The Dead on the horizon later this year, that attitude has been freeing. He’s happy to wear his eclectic influences on his sleeve and create something that feels distinctly his, but informed by all the artists he loves.
While he’s often said he never came into music to sell anything, the album has brought with it new mental challenges, and Bookie, at whirlwind speed, often contradicts himself when it comes to the pressure surrounding its release.
The weight of expectation is “heavy” and “empty” at the same time, but as he unravels it out loud, it’s clear he’s quietly hoping the album is a success. Opening for I Prevail on this European run has been a great leveller on that front, and has allowed him to test the waters by playing some of this material.
“Pretentious as it may sound,” he begins, “sometimes you have to be around people that understand exactly what you're doing and where you’re doing it, or you just get fallacies and hatred from people that can't fathom the idea of trying. This tour has kind of sparked a new excitement again, I’ve definitely fallen in love with playing new music. Maybe that was something I needed to do. I'm excited, man, but I guess I have a very weird attachment to success.”
Before things threaten to get too earnest, he’s ready for show-time. Minutes before walking on, friends flock to him to chat and wish him good luck, but he can’t hear a thing over his in-ear monitors. Bookie is briefly back in his own world again, but it’s staggering how quickly that sense of isolation melts away onstage. It seems a place he’s far more comfortable forging connections – actually demanding them from new listeners, who he instructs to live in the moment alongside him, as he joins them in the crowd.
In what feels like the blink of an eye, he saunters offstage caked in sweat, almost reluctant to shower it off because that would mean the night is over. As promised, tonight there was no blood, “no Mick Foley shit” and no vomit. His hands are, for once, unscathed.
He rectifies that almost immediately, but opts for a different kind of memento. As the words ‘fuck them’ are being tattooed on his hand, he reflects graciously on the kind of transaction that took place tonight between him and the fans. Another contradiction that’s all part of the allure of Kid Bookie.
“I used to have this dream of, ‘You can change the whole world,’” he says. “And you can. But the older you get, the more far-fetched it is as an idea because the world is so big.”
By his own admittance, most of the fans in the building tonight gathered here to see I Prevail, but he spent every second of his 25-minute set convincing them why it’s him they should be paying attention to – undaunted by the fact this might be their most exposure to his sound. In fact, he seems to enjoy the challenge even more.
“You can change corners of people's minds, corners of the world,” he surmises. “And then you suddenly start to change little parts.
“Here are my ideas. Let’s see if you gravitate to them.”
Songs For The Living // Songs For The Dead is out September 13 via Marshall Records
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