My name is Baba Crunch, I’m from East London – Tower Hamlets to be specific. I’ve been making music from the age of fourteen, which stretches as far back to my B.O.M.B Squad days. I’ve always loved making music to be completely honest.
My sound often varies and each track that I make is different; I tend to cross genres but if I had to describe it, I’d say R&B, Soul meets Hip-Hop. My music is definitely soulful, but those are the three main genres that I’m drawn to when creating my sound.
My Eminence EP stemmed from conversations I had in the studio with my producer and engineer Dutchie that I regularly work with.
I was saying to him that I’m trying to steer away from making tracks about women, but his response was that I’ve just got to embrace it as it’s what I do and I’m good at what I do. But for me, I thought “yeah, I hear that, but I want to rap as well” although I totally understood where he was coming from.
When making the tape, it was semi in the studio and semi from home. While we were in lockdown and as his studio is quite far away, I don’t always get to go there, so I’d just record from my house. We’ve also figured out a way to record music via Zoom – we’ve made full songs that way!
I was going to keep the songs on the project as singles, but I thought these worked well together and would make a good EP. I only picked three songs mainly because I didn’t want to overdo it and box myself as an R&B artist.
The inspiration behind the name of the EP was definitely to highlight the importance of women behind my music. They’ve been a muse for a lot of my songs so they hold a big position in my craft and have accepted this too.
“What Else” embodies being lustful for a girl but thinking ‘What else?’ a little bit like “what’s next to come from this?” It’s like I’ve realised besides me being physically attracted to her, there’s not much substance in our conversations.
But at the same time, it’s me being okay with it knowing this probably won’t be a long term situation hence why I say, “Being 10/10 in the face keeps my attention so go ahead and talk the tings”.
Throughout the song, you’re constantly reminded of how I believe our conversations start to become predictable and how I entertain out of being lustful. I feel like it’s a situation many find themselves in but are not always as honest and open about it.
“Reload” is about an ex that’s in your life that you keep going back to. We all have one of those exes where we agree to stop seeing each other, but then you link up with one another again and again. “This time will be the last time” but you keep meeting up.
Aside from that, there’s a lot of musical references, so you really have to read between the lines. It’s so abstract, there’s a lot more to it but I love that it gives you a different perspective.
That’s exactly why we made the track like that, because we wanted people to think a little more – you can either listen to it and think about music or you could either think about a girl, you choose!
Then I called on Nashrene to be the feature on the song, she came through and delivered. She totally understood the concept of the song – she actually set the tone for the song, because when I heard her verse, I thereafter knew what to do. I wrote the hook but when she added her verse, it gave more structure which made the story easier to summarise into a song.
I enjoyed making “Reload”, I definitely would want to make more music with Nashrene. We met when I dropped my last single “Testimony” and we followed each other on Instagram. I hit her up and then we met up – she actually wrote her verse in the car!
So eventually we went to the studio and recorded the song. I think she’s got a sick voice so it would be cool to get in the studio with her again; I love that she’s got that old school vibe as well, definitely the vibe that I love.
“Comfortable” embodies a tale of me realising that I’m taking a good girl for granted. She’s merciful considering the amount of times I’ve let her down and doesn’t make a big deal out of things because we ain’t that serious yet.
Although this is the case, she lets me know I shouldn’t think about getting comfortable – this is referenced in the track and is the very moment I’m filled with regret knowing I should be doing better by her.
This was an interesting one because I feel like Dutchie’s production took me out of my comfort zone, mainly because the beat crosses genres. It has an old skool garage feeling which aided to the unique pockets I contributed to – out of three tracks I’ve got to say this is my favourite.
Listen to the Eminence EP below and stream it everywhere here.
