James Massiah: “As much as the social contract is lost, there’s a freedom with that”

This Q+A was first fea­tured in Huck’s cul­ture newslet­ter. Sign up to the mail­ing list here for more exclu­sive inter­views, cul­tur­al dis­patch­es and month­ly recommendations.

It’s mid-after­noon, and James Mas­si­ah is out of breath. The rap­per, DJ, pro­duc­er, Lon­don under­ground scene sta­ple, and founder of alt-poet­ry night Adult Enter­tain­ment, has just cycled from Dal­ston, in east Lon­don, all the way to his famil­ial home in south Lon­don. With ever-increas­ing rents and pints of cel­lar tem­per­a­ture pale ale cost­ing north of £8, the UK cap­i­tal is an incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult place to live these days. Mas­si­ah, though, has found a way to make it more feasible.

“I live with my par­ents, and I’ve got a few oth­er pads across the city where I can crash if and when I need to,” he explains. ​“I’m for­tu­nate in that regard – I’m kind of a kept man.”

Hav­ing friends be will­ing to put you up is a huge lux­u­ry in a city where flats are small, and the num­bers with spare bed­rooms are small­er, which requires a lev­el of com­pro­mise and gen­eros­i­ty. Yet Massiah’s close rela­tion­ships have not always been sim­ple, and that push and pull with­in them forms the basis for his new album, Boun­ty Law. Atmos­pher­ic and moody, it’s set as a son­ic West­ern movie in Lon­don, where moral grey lines are held up for scruti­ny and then con­tin­u­al­ly overstepped.

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It’s the first time that he has enlist­ed exter­nal pro­duc­ers for his music, hav­ing cre­at­ed all the tracks and pro­vid­ed the vocals for his 2024 EP True Romance, instead work­ing with the likes of Powerplant’s Cajm, and Jawni­no col­lab­o­ra­tors Cold and 3^o. With his sig­na­ture rap-poet­ry set on top of hazy, reverb heavy, sun­rise-hour pro­duc­tions, Boun­ty Law is a cin­e­mat­ic, thought-pro­vok­ing lis­ten, built for slow­ing down in the instant-com­mu­ni­ca­tion world of today.

I caught up with him to hear more about the record, London’s bloom­ing alter­na­tive poet­ry scene, and whether the social con­tract is broken.

Con­grat­u­la­tions on Boun­ty Law, can you talk about what themes you explore? Life in Lon­don plays a big part right?

Yeah, I men­tion Dal­ston a lot, Strat­ford gets a men­tion, west Lon­don gets a men­tion. It doc­u­ments this one-month peri­od of record­ing it. It was actu­al­ly over the course of maybe two or three weeks, because we had all the beats there and a few lyrics, and we locked in around March. I was hav­ing some issues with friends, fam­i­ly, lovers and stuff, and I was doc­u­ment­ing it all in these songs and using it as fuel to inspire the writing.

It’s about things that are expect­ed of peo­ple and how peo­ple are meant to behave when it comes to get­ting to the sort of age that I’m at – what do peo­ple expect of you, of their lovers and their chil­dren? So Boun­ty Law is an album about the social con­tract through the lens of 2025 con­tem­po­rary under­ground London.

Do you think the social con­tract is broken?

You know what? I think so. I think so much has hap­pened – where do you want to start? The ​’90s, the ​’00s, the inter­net, dat­ing apps, Only­Fans, the dark web, tar­iffs… All the things that the social con­tract might have been based on are shift­ing. How much mon­ey do you need to put down to get a decent flat in Lon­don? It’s not what it was. And then there are these ques­tions like when are you sup­posed to get your own place or set­tle down? Or stop doing drugs? These are the sorts of ques­tions that I’m discussing.

I think most peo­ple have lost trust with peo­ple at the top – what social con­tract is there when you watch politi­cians alleged­ly give mul­ti-mil­lion pound con­tracts away dur­ing COVID to their friends?

For me, I remem­ber that I first had doubt with it all dur­ing the coali­tion gov­ern­ment, when the Lib Dems said that if they got in, they were going to abol­ish uni­ver­si­ty fees. That was a promise, and when they did get in, they didn’t do it. And I remem­ber the riot­ing in Trafal­gar Square and they set fire to the big tree – that was me feel­ing polit­i­cal­ly active and that I deserve to be told the truth to. It was a big rug pull, and it’s just car­ried on from there – it feels like the fre­quen­cy of these rug pulls are increas­ing to the point where you’re like: ​“Where is the ground any­more? It’s like the floor is lava.”

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Of course, Lon­don is a hard place to live, but there’s a lot of beau­ty in the record too. What were you try­ing to convey?

Yeah, I think there is a lot of beau­ty in the record, the pro­duc­ers did a smash­ing job, and I think they took a lot of ref­er­ences from my music too. There’s glitchy, high end bleeps and pads, and the strings on the record are amaz­ing. And yeah, I talk about these spats that I had, but these are also peo­ple that I love and care about, so there are these flash­es of bril­liance in the midst of con­fu­sion, rage and upset. Because I real­ly love this per­son, and I want to see this per­son. Or groups of friends that I didn’t see – some­times you think: ​“I need to focus on my own stuff”, then you realise that you miss those guys. It’s a mat­ter of cross­ing Lon­don and get­ting on a bicy­cle or a phone call.

Dur­ing this time, I did start to think a bit more about leav­ing Lon­don and get­ting my own place in a dif­fer­ent city, and get away from it all. Here, I am loved and looked after, but it can come at a price – peo­ple expect things in return, but I’m not always will­ing to give them. And it’s not just about liv­ing sit­u­a­tions, it’s all the oth­er things with­in the social con­tract. What do I get? What’s in it for me? You feel betrayed some­times or let down, or peo­ple expect more from you than you can afford to give. So yeah, beau­ty and dark­ness cap­tured in this record.

What made you want to work with pro­duc­ers this time, rather than doing it all yourself?

After True Romance, I was like: ​“I’m nev­er pro­duc­ing anoth­er record ever again.” It took me such a long time to real­ly lock in. The process took so much out of me – I love music, what beats I like, what tem­pos, but I’m maybe not such a nat­ur­al pro­duc­er. But I get emo­tion­al when some­one sends me a video of some­one play­ing [2024 song] ​‘Char­lie’ in Barcelona, or like yes­ter­day when I did a show and some guy in the crowd was rap­ping the lyrics to ​‘Heart­break Freestyle’ back at me, which has hap­pened twice now.

It means that the songs I’ve made are get­ting played enough – even if it’s just these two peo­ple – that they know the words off by heart. That’s real­ly touch­ing. I think hav­ing seen that it’s giv­ing me a bit more con­fi­dence as a pro­duc­er, and also made me feel like I’ve got more to say as a pro­duc­er, too. But these peo­ple that I’m work­ing with make music all day, every day – they’ll be at the com­put­er and be like: ​“Boom, how’s that?” And part of the mag­ic for me is get­ting in the stu­dio with my friends and talk­ing about things, hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions about the lyrics and the arrange­ments. So even if I don’t have any direct pro­duc­er cred­its, I’m still work­ing on it.

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Adult Enter­tain­ment, and the wider alt-lit­er­ary poet­ry scene seems to be hav­ing a bit of a moment right now. What made you want to start the event?

It is, but I’ve always done events. The first event that I did was called The A & The E, which start­ed in 2012 and was a phi­los­o­phy and arts project, which was born out of my desire to have a church again and a place to talk about stuff like ethics and pol­i­tics, while shar­ing art and music. There would usu­al­ly be poems and then a Q&A, but that was all these years ago and so much has changed cul­tur­al­ly and politically.

I want­ed it to come back but realised that it couldn’t come back how it did – it need­ed to be grown up. So Adult Enter­tain­ment is a revised ver­sion of what The A & The E was. I realised it needs to be a place for adults to have fun and mess about and enjoy them­selves, and have these con­ver­sa­tions where it’s not so serious.

Why do you think it can’t be serious?

I say seri­ous, and I’m very seri­ous about Adult Enter­tain­ment. I’m very seri­ous about the fun that I have. So, in a very seri­ous way, it’s like: ​“No, we’re going to have fun here.” And even though the poems are part of it, it’s real­ly about after­wards, when you chat about who’s said what and done what, which starts its own dis­cus­sion. I don’t want to imply that there aren’t seri­ous con­ver­sa­tions to be had, but I don’t want it to take itself too seri­ous­ly, and I don’t want peo­ple to take them­selves too seri­ous­ly either. So, back your point, back your idea and your view, but have fun. You’re not bet­ter than any­one else – you may be on a micro­phone or been here since the start, but at the same time we’re all equal in this are­na. My guid­ing A&E, Adult Enter­tain­ment prin­ci­ples: acknowl­edge every­one, arrive ear­ly, accept every­thing, all equal. I’m very seri­ous about those principles.

I guess what strikes me about the poet­ry nights, is that they seem like the antithe­sis to the mod­ern-day del­uge of short form, rapid fire, onscreen con­tent that we’re fed all the time with social media. Like it feels ana­logue in a way.

Yeah, I was chat­ting to a friend about music videos, and he was say­ing how he wasn’t see­ing them any­more. And I was like: ​“What a shame.” Like everything’s going to Reels and Tik­Tok, but it’s just 10 sec­ond clips. I’m all about evo­lu­tion – things change, they move, they grow, and don’t fight it. But at the same time, if you believe in some­thing, then you shouldn’t allow time to erode your beliefs. I real­ly believe in poet­ry, hang­ing out, com­mu­ni­ty, and shar­ing stuff. So, I intend to keep run­ning nights for as long as I can.

What does Boun­ty Law mean to you personally?

I’m going to say free­dom. It’s free­dom from the EP for­mat and the belief that I have to define what I’m doing. It is also the idea of the social con­tract, and as much as that is lost, there’s a free­dom that comes with that. It The law of the boun­ty hunter means that you make your own rules – maybe we can rebuild them for our­selves. It’s the free­dom to make your own choic­es and live your life how you want to live it.

Boun­ty Law by James Mas­si­ah is out now.

Isaac Muk is Huck’s dig­i­tal edi­tor. Fol­low him on Bluesky.

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