RAHEEM
BAKARÉ
The Portrait Of Love
A
s a songwriter first and foremost, are there any special quirks you have in the process of putting pen to paper? To be honest there hasn’t been a set formula thus far. It’s all about the right vibes in studio with the right individuals. Its mainly words in an iPhone notepad, because it’s mainly just feel of the melodies. The complicated part is working in a multifaceted concept to make sense of the vocal emotions that are floating around my head. Tell us a bit about the concept behind ‘Portrait Of Love’ and what the lyrics mean to you, it’s a very expressive subject matter. My first job was a party photographer, so the idea of incorporating words relevant to it was fun to explore. The concept explores the idea that there is the potential to be dark emotions hidden behind the smiles in a picture of a couple. And the lyric video is fantastic! What direction did you want the videographer to take the video in? Thank you! I felt the video should show relationships on both sides of their spectrums as well as touching on the representation of love to specific individuals. I am directing the music video myself. The decision for lyric video clips came from me, I simply picked attractive women from previous videos that I liked.
What can we expect sonically from your upcoming project AWOL out in May? The upcoming project AWOL is an EP project that I’ve worked on for a while. Stands for “Absent With-Out Leave” Its had its ups and downs, lost files and recovered files. As this is the introduction, I wouldn’t say it fully defines all of me an artist just yet as I’m still growing. What I will say is that the concept of the EP was to organically explore the emotions that impacted me during my brief period of 9 to 5 work after graduating. I had been Absent (from releasing music) With-Out Leaving (studio practice alone). Since the songs were first conceived, my style has changed and I’m itching to get back into the studio for the next compilation. As far as influences go, there are similarities between yourself, Musiq Soulchild and Raphael Saadiq to your sound – are they artists you have been particularly moulded by? I grew up listening to mainly Musiq Soulchild. So yes, he is definitely a major influence. Haven’t really listened to much Raphael Saadiq, maybe I should look into that! Following this EP what are your plans to release a greater volume of work and have some key performances to bring your sounds to the masses? There are a number of shows I have lined up. The live aspect is all new to me, so I’m definitely still experimenting and finding the best
musical application for live sound! Apart from me and my guitar! With the likes of artists like Kwabs, Jermaine Jackman and more in the limelight, how important is social media and a huge online profile in the development of an artist? In addition to their talents of course! Well… as much as I also think they are both talented artists, I don’t make it a part of my day to compare my online profile specs with theirs LOL. As a developing artist its definitely very important to socially engage owith fans and supporters through social media. If I had all the time in the world, I’d chill with everyone that supported me individually so they connect with me as a person. A lot of humour and statements expressed on social media sometimes gets lost in translation. Raheem Bakaré’s debut EP ‘AWOL’ is out May 11th on iTunes so make sure you buy your copy!Keep up to date with him on facebook.com/ RaheemBakareOnline and twitter.com/RaheemBakare