In Conversation with Happi | Song ingredients, 'Bel Air' & how value can take different shapes

0:03We are here with the main man, Happi. It's the grind times etch the residency studio takeover this whole week. And before we get into it, Happi, you are aware of many hats. Yes. So we wanted to ask you. None today, but. None today, you got fresh hair. Usually, many. So yeah, tell us, who do you define Happi as? Ooh, great question. I think I define Happi as a father and a husband first. That's usually kind of the main stuff. And then out of that, just being like an all-round creative, a lover of music, a lover of people. And yeah, someone that is just here to kind of spread joy. And I say like inspire what I believe is the God gene, which is the gene of creativity.

0:52You know, God is a creator. That's how I see God and I believe everybody has it. And so my job is like to awaken it in everybody. Yeah. that's such a unique unique definition oh yeah yeah i haven't heard that before it's very cool

1:05Happi:i'm etching it that's cold yeah yeah yeah there you go so we're etched when grind studio what are you working on today so we've actually got the sample school uh writing camp today which is really dope sample school is an organization i set up um at some point because i was making lots of money and it didn't make sense and i wanted to help other people make money from music and content and so I decided to teach everybody all I know who signed up to sample school and so since then we've just built out a community where we just get people down and do different things so yeah a bunch of sample schoolers were here this morning and then we've got another afternoon of sample schoolers gonna be creating music and etching it cool so how long have you been doing that for sample school in particular yeah since 2024 so two years now oh wow yeah two years very cool congrats so i mean i guess you've got that ear for melodies and samples of course so what is kind of the process that you go go through when when you're created crazy oh great question um i'm usually melody first it depends what i'm doing so but i'm usually melody first i'm melody first and then i'm percussion i think everybody kind of knows me for being like very drum heavy Like I love to create a swing and, you know, atmosphere through drums.

2:23So usually I'm drums. Once I find a melody I really love, then I'm drums. And, you know, a great producer called P2J told me years ago that the drums are supposed to almost dance with the melody and I've stuck with that forever. And so I often make my drums have the same conversation the melody is having and that's kind of how I produce and create. That's sick. Big up P2J as well. Big up P2J. Legend in the game, man, too. Big legend. Hands in the air, all the way to Brown Skin Girl. What a legend. Unreal career. Yeah. Well listen, obviously we taught sample school, but you also make your own music and you're incredibly good at it as well.

3:00For anyone who may not know, this man has done official remixes for the likes of Flo for a very impressive, accredited, highly acclaimed record called Gyra, which has gone to great heights. But in your own original music, you had a big record called Bel Air. Yes. Would love to know a bit of the story behind how that came to be and your journey with it. Bel Air. Bel Air was an interesting one because it was at a time, you know, Wretch told me years ago that with music, the moments that change your life don't happen because you want them to, they happen because you need them to. And I worked on Bel Air the beginning of 2020, the beginning of 2020, and the version I made in the beginning was like terrible.

3:45but I knew that this song was something and I took it to Coleman's and we worked on it and it still just wasn't making sense and we pulled it apart and because for me for me everything is feeling it has to feel right we pulled it apart still not making sense we slept in a studio on Forest Gate for like two days it was horrible and I remember going to the station in the morning after sleeping at the studio and I had work and on the way to the station I bumped into Barney artist in forest gate and barney goes to me bro nah keep going man you're doing a rap you know super encouraging i don't know if he knows this but super encouraging and it kind of gave me the fuel to keep going we then got a guitarist in called alexi big up alexi who also played guitar on cardboard box big up alexi um and alexi played guitar and the song just was brought to life it was something else um and then yeah we we we you know covid was coming we didn't know covid was happening but COVID was on its way and I put the song out the week we went into lockdown and the song just went through the sky and yeah so it was a it was an amazing process creating and there was times where it felt like it wasn't gonna you know we couldn't put we weren't gonna put it out or we couldn't finish it but like I said we needed it to do something and it did so amazing man congrats and thank goodness it did man yeah honestly so let's speak about creation and

5:07Happi:and value we're here etched that's where the value lives um i wanted to know how does how etch kind of impact your creation but also how you collaborate with others i think because i am what we call a hundred percent are it means that i'm often spending time doing different things and there's different iterations of what i do um and for me it's like often when when you're driven by feeling in production or in writing, you're always changing stuff. So the fact that Etched has, you know, the process to allow me to etch different versions of an idea to involve other people, it just makes so much more sense.

5:50Like we often create with the kind of like charge it to the game mindset. That's how like when you're coming up, yeah, he's going to steal your stuff, man. It's what it is. Do you know what I'm saying? He's going to release it without you knowing. it is you know but it allows that level of like security to make you feel like okay even though yeah someone can still steal your stuff you know realistically but at least there's something that uh gives you that sense of like okay well at least if they do this is something i can present that as a deterrent from people doing that so i think it then allows me to create a lot more freely and create openly like here we did the open session and the only reason i I wanted to bring that to Etched was because I know I can play the songs in the room of these people and they can't really do anything about it because I've etched the songs so it just gives the freedom to be able to just create and with someone like I said someone like me that is creating in all different facets, I'm writing for this person, I'm producing this person, I'm changing this version this way you need something like this that's going to help you do that So I feel like you've had great success with your own music but you've also had stuff stolen from you as well so when it comes to ownership as someone who's seen both ends of that spectrum what matters more to you do you think it's like the commercial feasibility of something or is it knowing that you have been the author and the owner behind the creation and being able to stand on that proud or is it a balance i think it's a balance i think because at different points of your career different things are important i think where i've kind of established myself in some way knowing you know being credited and knowing that i am the author of this is more important for example cardboard box when cardboard box um was released or even in the um the organization of cardboard box as we got into the contract we realized that they weren't trying to give me any publishing on the remix right now that's ridiculous ridiculous but it is what it is we know that it's a remix a lot of remixes they don't give up publishing so cool all right but we were sure that okay if you can't give us the publishing you have to have happy as an artist credited on this right because my name was way more important than anything else at that time so that was the focus at that time it was about getting my uh having it clear that i'm credited that my name is attached to this thing and when it was released on the day it was released they actually didn't have my name on the release and I text everybody and I chased everybody because I'm you know I really know that A &R at the time really really well so I'm like bro someone needs to get this sorted yeah ASAP um because it's so important um so I think yeah it depends on the time and the stage of your career um sometimes it's like hey just it being out is a win whether they attach my name to it or not but I'm not at that point anymore now it's like no no know you gotta credit me you gotta you know i mean that kind of stuff so someone for someone

8:51Happi:from someone who's not in the music industry uh when you speak of publishing i know you've signed a publishing deal recently with uh peer music so just what does that mean what does what does the publishing rights mean cool you got me going into my music business yeah i'm an nerd of it and please teach us. I'm a business teacher. Teach me, please. So obviously records is usually split into two. You've got the master recording and you've got the publishing. The master recording, the record side is the tangible MP3, the song. So someone has to own that. And then someone owns the writing and the production of the record.

9:28So let's say record side. If record side is the physical pizza, the publishing side is the ingredients, the recipe. Do you get what I'm saying? So that's the split. So when you're selling a record, so everybody gets paid from something right if you're selling a record you're being paid um for the actual physical tangible thing when you're selling your publishing it's that you're selling your ability to make the recipe or the recipe itself or that's what you're now selling if that makes sense so that's the split a lot of people get it wrong but that is the split so i've done record deals where you know i basically like bel-air we signed to polydor they bought they license the song i get it back in a couple years they license the song but they have no business with the publishing yeah once i've signed my publishing deal the publishing of bel-air now is under my uh publisher and everything else that i write and produce in that time in the term of my signing is under my publisher so they sign the ip of the song whereas the publishing is the physical product of the song i mean the records of physical product yes right right right okay yeah okay yeah

10:34Happi:I'd never yeah I guess I'd never really thought about music and songs that are being released at that level so yeah yeah it's really interesting so today obviously you're doing the sample schools and stuff in grind studio um are you working on anything yourself and what what can we expect from you this year can we get some more music or what are we saying yeah yeah so I've you know we had an artist project that we've been working on for a few years and funny enough this week I did an open session where I brought like uh five of like my supporters long-time supporters down um to hear the artist project for the first time but all the demos because I can play them the demos because I etched them so it's fine there's no issue with me playing them the demos so I played them all the demos um and yeah it was an amazing experience because it was great to get feedback from real people um and so yeah I'm excited to kind of be releasing again as an artist I'm a bit nervous because the industry is weird and I took a step back because I realized I could get all I wanted without um I could get all I wanted from the industry without having to be like front-facing artist and do all the weird like stuff that everybody does but I think because I'm in a comfortable space it means that my music doesn't have to be a certain level of successful for me to be able to feed my family yeah because I make money elsewhere so it means I can just kind of release my own way like we were talking me and Colmans because I work with Duriel Colmans on everything we were talking about not even releasing singles just dropping the whole project whenever we like you know because I can let's do it man why not man today I'm dropping it right now let's go but yeah so I'm excited to do it love that man we're excited the world needs more happy music man come on it's been a while it's been a while wicked well we don't want to take up any more of your time we'd love to let you get to it meet the sample school guys and see what you guys can cook up today and how you can help continue to empower the next generation man.

12:34Congrats for everything that you're doing. Thank you man, I appreciate it. I'd like to see it. But yeah, thank you guys for having me.