New Music

Interview

Bawo: “It’s easy to not give yourself credit for how far you have come”

Ahead of a February headline UK tour, get to know the West London rapper and this month's New Music act


With wistful atmospherics, deep 808 bass slaps and introspective lyrics that take stock of his journey, Bawo’s recent tape It Means Hope Where I’m From has confirmed that the West London rapper is one of the most promising names in the scene right now.

The 30-year-old began laying down demos at 18, releasing tracks on SoundCloud steadily until eventually reaching streamers in 2019. “It’s been a journey of sort of gauging what People want, whilst establishing a space for myself in the musical atmosphere and adapting to the state of play with how to release music and live off of it as well.”

As Ticketmaster’s first New Music of 2025, we get to know Bawo a little better ahead of his Anyone Can Be A Hero headline tour in February.

Bawo - Magnifique (ft. Jordy)

Your first single was called ‘Give Me A Sec’, which is quite a modest request to announce your arrival…

It’s true, there’s a double entendre in that, in terms of it being literally about my musical career, and also as a person, like, you’re always growing as a person, you don’t always have to be the finished article, or know what the finished article would be.

You’ve called your current release It Means Hope Where I’m From a ‘tape’ – specifically not an album but also not a mixtape. Can you explain that a little? 

Really and truly, an album is just a pretty big deal to me. I feel like you have your whole life to make at least one, or the one, so to speak. I feel like in every project I’ve made so far, and with people I’ve helped out with theirs, I’m just learning how to make an album. I know what it deserves, in a way. So I just want to be in a place where my resources and skill are at a level where that can start to come about. I’ll be real, though, conceptually, it has started to sort of form a little bit in my mind, but I’m just letting that happen naturally.

That’s a refreshing look on it, have you been backed to take the time it needs, then?

To be honest, yeah. I mean, no one around me asked me to start making music in the first place. I’m doing it because I want to, so I have to do it my way as much as possible, otherwise I don’t think this career would really be for me. I like having control of the narrative in that sense; at the end of the day, you’ve got to make what you’re proud of. I appreciate the pressure in some respect, in terms of what fans want and stuff like that, but like I said, unless I started making music in the first place, I wouldn’t exist to anyone. 

You’ve been asked before about the link between the covers of the last two releases: on Legitimate Cause you’re wearing a suit in an office setting, and then there’s a Peter Parker-esque transition to the ripped shirt and superhero costume on It Means Hope… Is this a narrative trajectory that will continue into the debut album, do you think? 

I don’t know, you know! I think the whole superhero thing is a cheat code in general, across the board there’s a multiverse kind of vibe. It can exist in loads of different ways. I don’t have direct plans for it, but I think it will reappear. Whether it will be attached to the album, I don’t know.

It’s soon obvious to first-time listeners that you’re representing West London in your songs, with plenty of references to place names and postcodes. But at the same time it still feels like your sound is exploring, and eager to change at different turns. You’ve performed in Japan and done writing sessions in Los Angeles, do you think that helps explain it? 

100%. I’m sure most people go through the experience of as soon as you see a place different to where you’ve grown up, and that bubble was popped, you can’t un pop it, and it’s helpful to have different ways of understanding how life can exist, and it can take pressure off of you know, you have main character syndrome to whatever extent, extent, and traveling really helps to share that burden in a way.

The Japan trip was a holiday slash work, one of my favorite things to do. I went with my boys, most of whom had never been there before. I’ve been four times now and every experience is completely different to the time before, and you never quite scratched that itch. I still feel like I’ve only dipped my toes in the place. It was my first time performing out there, I was really nervous for it. I don’t want to say I thought I was over getting nervous, but to that extent, I thought I was past that. But as soon as I walked out on stage in Osaka where I first performed, I’d never heard noise like that. I’ve never walked out to noise like that. Even till now I’m even stuttering talking about it because it’s crazy, and then that obviously gave me confidence going into Tokyo. I spoke a bit of Japanese on stage as well. It went down quite well, thankfully.

They were two crazy nights that still almost don’t feel real, but at the same time felt right, and it ties in with how I’ve always wanted to live life, in terms of doing what you love, and also sharing that with other people as well.

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by Bawo (@_bawo)

I read somewhere that it was your barber that first lent you a microphone so that you could record a few tracks.

I didn’t know I’d said that out loud – but yes, haha!

Who are some of the other figures in your life who have helped prop you up or guide you?

That’s a big question. A close friend of mine, I’ve known him since I was three years old, his name is Rohan. His dad Mark is an engineer and has been for the past 30 years. They were both inadvertently mentors to me in a way. I came to my mate and said I wanted to do music, played him my demos, and he was like, “You sound like 50 Cent,” and just helped me accept myself being in music basically, he drowned me in old school hip hop and that taught me to rap. His dad helped me to understand or at least helped me to open up to another understanding of sound as a frequency, and just absorbing vibration in the body. These two combined were huge for me. 

Tell me a little about your independent label Say Nothing…

It’s a cause, really. I feel like it is building as I build myself, and I have ideas for it that I can’t really say out loud just yet. It is very much like watching a time lapse of a tree growing; it’s still in its very early stages, but could be a beautiful tree one day. But yeah, I wanted it to be a part of the community, starting in music and branching into other fields of helping people in terms of how it will make money? Yeah, that’s another question. 

It feels like a standout track on It Means Hope… is ‘Hope You’re Listening’, and I suppose that’s a stand out track for you as well, because you picked it for the COLOR session recently. The line that sticks out is “Working for a future, same time everything’s happening now though.” Does that almost calibrate the feeling of being excited of what’s heading your way while trying to take it in during the present? 

100% I feel like I’ve been doing it long enough to realise that it is easy to not give yourself credit for how far you have come with your eye on the top of the mountain or wherever it is, another thing that is so common. But even though it’s common, it doesn’t mean it’s not as palpable and as real and as significant, that living your dream could literally also be like a fleeting thing at the same time that you’re not even experiencing. And the people closest to you are maybe experiencing it more than you are. So I just like to remind myself as often as possible to just embrace the now of it all, I feel like in all our favorite films and favorite characters, it is the journey that makes them who they are, it’s the journey that’s the exciting part, and usually once it gets to the end, it’s the boring bit, really.

Bawo - Hope You're Listening | A COLORS SHOW

That said, what are you looking forward to for the rest of 2025?

Immediately, the tour, the Anyone Can Be A Hero tour in February. I’m not really thinking past that right now. 


Bawo is touring Ireland & the UK from 18 February, ending with a homecoming show at London’s Scala on 27 Februrary – tickets are available here