Hak Baker: “Being a lad is dreaming of a decent life”

In the summer of 2018, I was piecing myself back together after a serious mental health crisis, and looking for healthy ways to communicate my vulnerability to those around me. Hak Baker’s debut Misfits EP was a huge part of that healing process. The bittersweetness of his portraits of growing up in East London, the way joy and pain coalesce on his songs like occasional lovers at a booze-soaked afters, and how he captures the contradictions of a masculinity I see in myself – this all profoundly changed the way I write. 

Across three more EPs and World’s End FM – his critically acclaimed debut album – Hak’s music has continuously encouraged me to be honest with myself in my work and my life, the undiluted emotion in his lyrics feeling like an invitation to wear my own heart on my sleeve. His music has been the soundtrack to my entire experience of fatherhood, and through the most challenging years of caring for my dad, too, where the beautifully imperfect chords of ​‘Conundrum’ would spark a flicker of spirit in my old man’s vacant eyes. ​“Mine is an imperfect craft,” Hak once told me. ​“An imperfect syhcronisation between man and guitar. I think that itself represents life.”

The plan, when we meet in Bethnal Green, was to sit down in Pellici’s – the UK’s oldest family run café – but when I arrive there’s an endless stream of Scandinavian-looking lads in Japanese denim queuing outside. Quite apt, I think, as I prepare for a conversation with an artist who describes the social destruction of gentrification so vividly. I breeze into a very empty café a couple of doors down. Hak arrives soon after, buzzing from a gym session that helped him shake off the frustrations of a morning at home. ​“You know when you just need to lift something,” he says, smiling after we embrace. When I ask him how things are going overall, he tells me, ​“I finally feel not a slave to that ​‘not good enough’ thing.” As someone who now has the honour of calling Hak a friend, I can’t help but smile, too.

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What’s your earliest memory of your dad?

Him, with me on his back, racing my big brother in the park. Behind his house there was this big park, Bury Park, in Luton. We always used to go there when we’d see him. I remember him always being so strong. He’s the reason I wanted to be strong. I can’t remember who won the race, but that’s one of my favourite memories. I have such great memories of going to see him every couple of weeks, after him and my mum split up. It was like a break from my mum. She was a lot more strict. She was under more stress with three, then four kids on her own basically. She had a tough upbringing, tough. So she was doing the best she could at all times, to educate herself, study, put food on the table and work two jobs.

What ideas, good or bad, did you pick up from your dad about what it means to be a man?

Don’t let people get you angry, because once you do that, they’ve won. He used to say ​“Sabr”, which means patience in Arabic. My dad’s Muslim. From young, he always used to say it to me. He’d tell me that I’ve got a bad temper, and that I needed to have patience. I do have problems with anger. I carry things a lot. That’s why today I had to go to the gym today, just to shake things off. As I get older, I listen to the words of my dad and my mum so much more.

There are things I wanted to resolve with my dad. Because of his dementia, I never will be able to. I really struggle with that. I feel like your music points towards a want for resolution with your old man. Is that something you’re seeking?

[Takes some time to answer, sheds a tear] I just don’t really know how to go back with my dad. As noble and wise as he is, at the same time he’s also very old school. He doesn’t know how to do certain things. I broke it down with him before and he was very defensive. He didn’t really understand it, and I’d hoped for better. He just expects me to get over it. And he’s not a horrible person. He’s the most loving, funny guy. But the way he grew up, he’s probably thinking what I’m feeling is miniscule. Our dads are different creatures to you and I. They had different existences. Neither of my parents were born here. They really had to cut through, you know?

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We did too, in our own way. But we had the benefit of being part of a group of lads. What does being a ​‘lad’ mean to you?

My lads are family. We really lived with each other from the age of 14. We were going through the same things, some lads more than others. But we grew so close, all the fighting we used to do, and all the sharing: clothes, flats, beds, money, food. We turned into family. It was a trauma bonding thing. And we’re from East London – we really took on the personification of what it meant to be cockney, and started to see that identity before our different races. We were products of our environment, but then we shared a lot of our culture with each other. My white mates would take me to Pie and Mash shops. But they’d eat the food out of my mum’s pot, too. All of us listened to bashment, to Mavado and Vybz, you know what I mean? It was a good old culture clash. Black boys, white boys, Asian boys. The lads respected that I had Muslim tendencies, even though I was a raging alcoholic [laughs]. 

Some people saw us as this hooliganism cult. Hooliganism was born on the Isle of Dogs. The first documented case of hooliganism was reported in 1902, I think, at Millwall. Their original home was on the Isle of Dogs. That’s where it’s from. We are that. The way we used to get together, and fight, and ambush. We used to sing before we’d fight. We really used to do that.

You and your lads grew up with that history all around you.

We were the last bastion of that culture, round here. The last ones. And there was racism. I didn’t really see it in primary school too much. Secondary school highlighted it. But that’s where we broke it as well. We all came together and it was magnificent. Now, if a stranger comes into the pub, the lads are the first people that say, ​“Do you want a drink, mate?” We’re just trying to look after each other and everybody else, really. We know what it feels like to be alone. 

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I think that ​‘the sesh’ can become an extension of the kind of brotherhood you describe, which is one I really relate to. What do you think compels us to that type of excess?

Oh, blimey! What a question. Because in the summer I could chase that, back in the day especially, I could just do that for three days. And it’s the most beautiful feeling in the world. There’s a lot of escapism with it. There’s an anticipation of dread all the time when you’re a boy and you’ve gone through certain things. You think you’re doing well, and then bang! Something comes and licks you down. Then, when you’re in those sessions and your best mate is over there [points at some imagined space nearby] with his shoes off, smiling, with a drink in his hand and a cigarette burning down, he’s not got a care in the world. Then you’ve got a girl over there, and she’s carefree too, and comfortable, and she’s safe. You look around and that feeling is in the air. Everybody can feel it and smell it. You can sink deeper into a place where no-one is stressed, time passes, the curtains open and close, the genre of music has changed 10 times, people have cried and cuddled and gone asleep and woke up. People have had showers, feeling great. Someone’s cooking. There’s nothing in the world like it. I think that a fear of things going wrong eventually is why we do it. We just want to stay there as long as possible. It’s a lot of people’s idea of heaven. It was my idea of heaven for two decades, nearly.

For me, the sesh was my way of summoning the ghosts of the past, and of controlling time, slowing it down. My first mental health crisis in 2018 came off the back of a three day bender. But in the midst of that bender with my best mates, that’s when I felt like everything made sense, like: ​“This is it, this is happiness.” Then it was snatched away. I feel like every blowout since has been an attempt to recapture that specific feeling.

That’s what the whole Nostalgia Death EP was about. Conversations would always go back to those times. The only kind of happiness we could envision and see for ourselves was in the past, and we’d obsess over it and try and re-create it again and again, not realising that happiness is only in the present. And it can be in the future as well. That’s where you’ve got to look towards. Not back there. It was hard getting past that. It’s only last year that I was able to say I’m past that time. Creating that EP really helped because I was burying that, and trying to look towards the future, which is less intoxicating. But I still love the sesh. I just know I can’t win like that.

I don’t think I ever won’t love it. Being a dad has definitely tempered those urges, though. There’s so much more on the line now. But as my mate Emma, who’s a brilliant writer, posted the other day: ​“Some fires need to burn.” I agree with that.

“I am the fire,” is the first lyric from that tune we did with Pete Doherty, ​‘Prometheus’. Bro, I was crying my heart out in that room when we recorded it. Pete is a real fire tamer. He’s like a man that’s walking a tightrope with perfect balance at all times.

Like he’s on the precipice of a great fall?

Yeah, but his balance is impeccable. A lot of people have died around him. He seems unfazed.

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Did Pete help bring that purge of pain out of you?

Yeah, he just came in, cool as a cucumber. His baby and his wife were next door. His two massive dogs were in the room. There was a bottle of vodka on the side. He picked it up, had a swig, and gave it to me. I started playing this riff. He started playing, too. He didn’t even plug the electric guitar in. We just recorded the room. The man is like a snake charmer. You know when you meet someone who doesn’t give a fuck, who really don’t give a fuck. He’s the master. He’s like the final boss that you can never beat. And I think because he’s had a new baby, he’s gone to the next level. He’s a serious guy, man [laughs].

My dad was an insatiable gambling addict. I don’t gamble, but everything I do, I do to excess, be it training or partying. I find moderation impossible. How do you control that beast, mate?

Gym is a must. Conversations with my friend, Tengna. We talk about everything. And we look after each other. Conversations with my friends in general. But I’d say the thought of not letting my mum down anymore is big. I can’t be selfish. She dreams about me and prays for me every night, you know? She don’t even know the half of it.

Mum’s don’t, do they? They don’t know the extent of the things we’ve done and how dark things have been.

It is hard, especially when you’re just trying to forge your own way. People put a lot of pressure on me, you know? People tell me all the time: ​“You’ve saved my life.” Who’s gonna help me save my own? But only I can do that. That’s why I have to stay strong. I have had moments of weakness, though. I just want to write songs to save my own life. I didn’t ask for all this, but that’s how it goes, innit.

I feel like your songwriting is a way of holding yourself to account. That’s important. 

Of course, it’s gotta be done like that. You can’t do it any other way.

What do you think gentrification has done to the East End lad and how he sees himself in the world?

Gentrification has demonised the East End Lad. We feel like the inferior ones – the less than, in numbers and in our humanity. Everything we do is looked down upon. Our existence on the street, the corner, is non-existent. We’ve been pushed away. Affordability and community on the streets is non-existent. People don’t say hello to each other. Chivalry is now dead, which is a massive part of laddism. Looking after women and making them feel safe, like we did with our crew, is gone. Everything’s been taken from under our feet, you know? We’re trying our best to hold onto it and do little things here and there. It’s a hard job. It takes money, which is something we just don’t have at the moment. We’re just tryna’ live a decent life. Being a lad is dreaming of having a decent life, and not struggling all the time. We’re tired of struggling, man.

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That’s probably where the sesh comes in again, innit. That’s our moment of …

Euphoria. Even though it’s a big, old bubble [laugh]. Gentrification is horrible. It’s completely taken the East End that we knew, that we thought would last forever. It’s gone.

Your song ​‘Almost Lost London’ resonated with me, because London is my home. I’ve spent all my adult life working with vulnerable children and young people in the city of my birth, and I can’t afford to be here anymore. Before you arrived I sent my missus a text to say I need help with the rent this month.

A man doesn’t wanna do that.

Exactly, brother. I want to provide. Something’s got to give.=

We hope that’s the case, innit. But sometimes nothing gives. We do want to provide. It’s the dream. And we want to be loved, as well. We really want that. Because we’ve had to be so strong, our generation. And it’s just tiring, man. Getting bruck [broken] down by the system all the time. We just want real love, and we want to give that back. Real love powers you up, man. If you wake up in the morning with real love, you’re ready to take on the world.

The love I get from my daughter makes me feel like that. I think I do struggle with receiving it from elsewhere though.

Same. I’m used to that crazy, unpredictable love because that’s the same love that I felt at home, really. Not purposefully, by my mum, but she was working and tired. You didn’t know when love was coming, when you’re at home on your own looking after yourself. Nobody greeted me when I came home from school, ever.

It sounds like you were hyper-independent.

Hyper independent, from too young. You don’t really get to be a kid, you know? So taking love when people wanna give it is hard. Like: ​“What the fuck is this?” But now I feel like I’m at a place where that’s all I would prefer. But I’ve still gotta work on that, you know? It’s still not easy.

You’ll get there, mate. My missus said something to me in the summer. It cut me, because it made me wonder if deep down I think I don’t deserve love [pauses, sheds some tears]. She said, ​“What has happened to you to make you think you’re not good enough?” 

Everything. That’s what’s happened, mate. Everything.

Hak Baker plays at The Blue Note in London on Sunday, October 18.

Hard Feelings is Huck’s column on fatherhood and masculinity, hosted by Rob Kazandjian. Read more from the series here.

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