Riz Ahmed and Heems talk south Asian representation and post-9/11 blues, while producer Redinho mixes up ‘qawwali, 70s lolywood psychedelic, chutney’ and more

If Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language, it’s the ties that bind which brought Riz Ahmed to Himanshu Kumar Suri’s family home in Long Island, New York in 2012. Ahmed, a London-born musician and actor of Pakistani parentage, was looking to learn more about the south Asian immigrant experience in America for a part in HBO drama The Night Of, and Suri – aka Heems, one-time MC with Brooklyn hip hop crew Das Racist – invited him to stay with his folks. The trip sowed the seeds of a cultural exchange that flowers on Cashmere, the pair’s debut album as the Swet Shop Boys. Following on from a self-titled EP released in 2014, the record mixes deft cultural critique with raw confessionals in a supremely focused set built around producer Redinho’s bhangra-and-Bollywood-themed samples. But while the tales of airport harassment, racial profiling, and radicalisation hit undeniably hard, the delivery is defiant, alive with the thrill of shared discovery – a statement of strength in mixed cultural identity at a moment when the west seems about ready to read last rites on multiculturalism. It’s also got a great ear for the absurd: “I’m so fly, bitch,” brags Heems at one point, “but I’m on a no-fly list.” Redinho has put together a special Swet Shop Boys mix featuring “qawali, 70s lolywood psychedelic, chutney, a Swet Shop Boys instrumental exclusive, belly dance, 70s bollywood – and fuck loads of drums,” as he puts it. “Perhaps I’ve gone too deep, but it’s all old, random, and rare shit, and I’m really happy with the vibe and flow.” We also spoke to Riz and Heems about role models, representation, and the trouble with making yourself heard in a hip hop industry rife with cultural tourism.

Riz, you went out to New York a few years back to meet Heems and his family, what did you learn from the experience? Riz Ahmed: The family thing was pretty much identical; Himanshu’s family is from (a former part of India that) is now Pakistan, my family is from what is now India, so we’re pretty much culturally identical. It was like being at one of my aunt’s houses or something. But I think one big difference is class profiles. Himanshu’s background is similar to mine in terms of being pretty working class, but actually a large swathe of the south Asian experience in America is much more middle-class, and that’s because of different stipulations imposed on the immigrant wave that came over. Himanshu’s family worked their way up to live in a nice suburb, and I feel like there aren’t many of those (middle-class Asian) suburbs that exist in the UK. But it was interesting, man. It felt like it broadened my horizons. You feel like you’re not alone, (knowing that) there is diaspora in London, New York, South Africa, and Toronto living through this slightly different universe that’s also your experience. There’s something very healing about linking up with that. Heems, you’ve also spent time in the UK, what was that like? Heems: Yeah, I went to the School of Oriental and Asian Studies in London. I came up looking at the UK and being a bit jealous of scenes that were emerging when I was growing up – things like Goodness Gracious Me and Asian Dub Foundation. So (my interest in coming to the UK) was twofold: I got to go to a college where I could learn about India, which has always been my interest, and I could also hang out with British Asians and see what the nuances of diaspora were like between the US and the UK. How do you account for the relative lack of visibility of British and American Asian culture in pop culture as a whole? Riz Ahmed: I don’t actually think that’s accurate – in the 90s there was an explosion of British Asian culture, whether it was television with Goodness Gracious Me, film with Bend It Like Beckham, Bally Sagoo topping the charts, Prince Naseem Hamed as an iconic sports personality... 9/11 really rocked the boat in the UK because we have a more working class community here, particularly among Muslims. People started feeling insecure – politically, economically, physically – and a whole generation doubled down on ‘safe’ options, whether that meant being more religious or not taking the risk of becoming an artist. We’ve had a dearth of creative expression post-9/11 in the UK because of that trauma. And in many ways that torch has been passed to North America, where you have people like Aziz Ansari, Russell Peters, and Kumail Nanjiani. “We’ve seen change over here (in the UK). A lot of the rudeboys and thugs who’d try to mug you and shit are the same guys who are stood preaching outside the mosques now” – Riz Ahmed, Swet Shop Boys What do you personally remember about the time immediately following 9/11? Riz Ahmed: Things changed – it’s like, you grow up identifying as ‘paki’ and looking up to people like Tupac, and then another generation grows up after 9/11 identifying as Muslim, and looking up to Bin Laden. The narrative about which aspects of our identity mattered was completely rewritten for us. I know so many MCs and DJs who became super-religious, sold all their records because music is haram (forbidden under religious law). And now that you have Muslims retreating from those music and youth cultural places, it’s led to increasing segregation within the communities. So Muslims and Sikhs aren’t hanging out together, and it definitely has repercussions. Heems: 9/11 is different for me because I was four blocks away when it happened. I saw a lot of it transpire from a classroom window, and spent the next month at a different high school because mine was being used as a triage centre. So on the one hand you have this real personal value to it that was very depressing, and on the other hand I felt the effects of Islamophobia within hours of it happening, I was trying to get home with 20 or 30 south Asian kids, and the people we were travelling with who were noticeably Muslim were harassed on the street. That’s why we were rolling 25 deep, we had this sense of, ‘Oh fuck, it’s gonna be a weird day.’ But for America I would say this wave of more recent south Asian actors isn’t like a pendulum swinging back from the UK, (it’s more that) south Asians weren’t really allowed into America until 1965, so our first goals were to make money and establish ourselves, and after that you can make art. It was just a matter of timing, I think.

Photography Erez Avissar

Policing post-9/11 is a theme that recurs on Cashmere, particularly the way that policing methods can help to radicalise members of the Asian community. Are those songs written from first-hand experience? Heems: ‘Shottin’, I think, is a good example of a song that talks about policing and the impact that has on communities, because it speaks to the dual experience of how, if you’re a teenager selling drugs just trying to get by on the street, you could fall victim to the prison-industrial complex at any time. But then, let’s say you go to jail and become a Muslim and find faith, and you’re not trying to do anything but exercise your faith, then you become susceptible to being labelled as a terrorist and the military-industrial complex. Riz Ahmed: That’s a big part of what we’ve seen change over here (in the UK). A lot of the rudeboys and thugs who’d try to mug you and shit are the same guys who are stood preaching outside the mosques now. That’s what part of the jihadist wave is about – it’s a generation of people that really didn’t have prospects within the rat race, and some of them are living this semi-thuggish life, but not everyone can become the Adams Brothers. So (it’s like), do you cash your cheques into the spiritual economy? You go, ‘What are my transferrable skills? Well, I can do violence, I can do loyalty, I can do brotherhood – if I’m not gonna make money then maybe I can get spiritual riches.’ And so you get that pipeline for sure, from hustling in the hood to Syria. Both of you naturally gravitated towards hip hop growing up. Did you find you were accepted within the culture as Asian artists? Riz Ahmed: You know, I actually feel like we had our own subculture. In the 90s we had that British-Asian scene, which was about bhangra and garage and Bollywood remixing... We had our own raves from the late 80s in the UK underground, and within hip hop circles, I know loads of old school people that came from that. I think it’s more to do with mainstream visibility, in the same way there’s a lot of Asian footballers out there but you don’t see them in the Premiership so much. And if this project can help shine line a light on that, then that’s beautiful. “A lot of the white people consuming rap (look at Asian hip hop and say) ‘I don’t want that, I wanna look at the hood – I don’t wanna go near the hood, but I want to live that experience through the music” – Heems, Swet Shop Boys Is part of the problem that labels don’t know how to market Asian hip hop artists? Heems: This is the thing. In the 90s, when Talvin Singh and the Asian underground was happening, you had Asian rappers like Fun-Da-Mental and other guys getting signed, but (labels) didn’t know what to do with them, so you saw them disappear. You had an artist like Jay Sean doing huge numbers in the UK but not America, and when he was asked why he thought he wasn’t doing international numbers, he said ‘because I’m Asian’. In the UK you have Asian rudeboy culture, but in America you don’t really see that. We’re more proud to show the doctors and the engineers, so the stereotype of south Asians here becomes this docile, upper-class, studious kind of person. A lot of the people consuming rap are white people who want a voyeuristic quality to the art they pursue, (so they look at that and say) ‘I don’t want that, I wanna look at the hood – I don’t wanna go near the hood, but I want to live that experience through the music. Why would I do that with the Asian kids, I go to school?’ Riz Ahmed: The flip of that is that you can have middle-class rap in America – for example, Childish Gambino isn’t trying to represent a hood take on rap, he’s grown up around certain things but he’s been educated out of the hood the same way we have. But MCing culture has been at the centre of UK pop music for a much shorter time than it has in America, and it’s kind of old school (in its mentality). You can’t start singing melodically or weirdly like Desiigner or Young Thug – people will laugh at you, you’ve gotta come with bars. I mean, can you name me five groups that come from MCing culture but are, like, leftfield in the UK? I can think of Ghostpoet, Roots Manuva who was like 15, 20 years ago, maybe Young Fathers... We don’t have leftfield rap in the UK, and I think we’re the poorer for it.