FEATURE: Spotlight: Eliza Rose — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Cowley

Eliza Rose

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IT is hard to ignore…

PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Cowley

the forced of nature that is Eliza Rose. Maybe that is a bit of a condescending description. What I mean is that her work and passion for music and reaching the people blows you away! Born in the East End, Rose grew up in Dalston. A huge admirer of genres like Soul and Jazz, she began singing from her youth. DJing took a hold during her late-teens. Rose has released a couple of wonderful E.P.s Her most recent, Shades of Red, came out last year. She is a sensational D.J. and producer that should be on top of everyone’s must-hear lists. The success of the amazing track, B.O.T.A. (Baddest of Them All), has taken to new heights. Tipped as someone to watch closely this year, I think it is best to source some interviews. Get to know the amazing Eliza Rose a bit more. In September, Vogue interviewed Rose. After writing one of the defining tracks of the summer with B.O.T.A. (Baddest of Them All), there was a lot of fascination around this incredible talent:

“In the last six months alone, she’s gone from underground gem to global superstar thanks to her infectious track “B.O.T.A. (Baddest Of Them All)”. Earlier this month, it hit number one in the charts – making Eliza the first female DJ to hold the top spot since Sonique with 2002’s “It Feels Good”.

Made in collaboration with Manchester-based producer and DJ Interplanetary Criminal, “B.O.T.A.” is just what everyone needed after two years of pandemic-induced hibernation. Eliza imagined arcades, the seaside and places she’d been as a child – “a bit trashy but kind of cute” – when she was writing the melody. The title and chorus, meanwhile, were inspired by a Coffy poster on her boyfriend’s wall that featured the tagline: “The baddest one-chick hit-squad that ever hit town.” “Pam Grier [the lead character] just gave me that energy. She really just put a little flavour on there and did something to it to make it fly. I feel her essence in the song.”

It’s become a favourite summer track of both the underground community and mainstream listeners alike. “It’s a strange kind of crossover, which I don’t think has really happened for quite a while,” says Eliza. DJs have spun “B.O.T.A.” at parties across Europe all summer long, while it was heard far and wide at Glastonbury, from the stages to the campsites. “It was a real pinch-me moment.”

TikTok-ers have even attempted to recreate the clubby music video, directed by Eliza’s friend Jeanie Crystal of Faboo TV. The brief? “Eliza in Hackney” (her own take on Alice in Wonderland), which pays homage to her beloved London borough, featuring friends, friends of friends and people she met in smoking areas. In the video, she strolls down Kingsland Road, Dalston, wearing a fuzzy candy floss-pink hat from Hat & Spicy, a cropped printed jacket from Versace and a blonde wig from Man Wigs. Then, she ends up in a club in a red dress made by her best friend Liberty Rose.

Despite Eliza’s seemingly overnight success, “B.O.T.A.” is actually the culmination of years of hard graft. She spent hours poring over ’90s and ’00s R&B, soul, jazz and garage records while working in a vinyl shop from the age of 15 onwards. “When you see Black people on the covers of the sleeves, you suddenly start seeing that ‘oh, these are my people’, and you feel a real affinity and a connection,” she says. “It was then that I really, really got into music”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Cowley

It is amazing to think that Eliza Rose became the first female D.J. to hit number one since Sonique in 2002 (with It Feels So Good) when B.O.T.A. topped the charts earlier this year! It goes to show not enough exposure is being given to female D.J.s and their work. Maybe there is too much focus near the mainstream or in Pop. It is a shame that there are women like Eliza Rose who will not be getting the focus and support they need. It does mean that she is a trailblazer who will definitely help to break barriers. Music Week featured Eliza Rose in November. They asked her about her singing to Warner Records following the success she had last year:

“Rose signed a deal with Warner Records following the breakout success of B.O.T.A at Glastonbury, where the major’s head of A&R Keir Fullerton began pursuing the deal after hearing the track repeatedly across the weekend.

I was blown away when I heard B.O.T.A at Glastonbury and we are delighted to have had the chance to work with Eliza and One House on turning the song into a global anthem,” Fullerton told Music Week. “And in terms of future releases , we’ve already heard some incredible demos so watch this space.”

“Eliza is an absolute star, she has that magic sauce that all true artists need,” Powers told Music Week. “A quality DJ, singer and writer with her roots firmly cemented in the underground, she flows out an infectious vibe and energy that resonates with the dancefloor. She is the full package and this is only the beginning.”

Here, Rose, who wants to learn bass guitar in 2023, talks about her label, her music industry story so far and her plans for the future...

What made you choose to sign with Warner Records?

“They just seemed the best fit to be honest. I really appreciated that there was a Black man high up in the company, having that diversity was extremely important to me. Obviously, they’ve got the track record of being amazing and they had the current No.1 [LF System’s Afraid To Feel] as well, so that didn’t put me off. I’m a believer in gut feeling and they just seemed really great. They were more interested in me as an artist rather than just the track, whereas maybe some other people were like, ‘This is a great track’ but they didn’t really seem to care about [the music]… I want to continue to make music and be an artist and they focused on that, so that was extremely important.”

You turned away from making music for a while before B.O.T.A, were you disillusioned with things?

“A couple of years ago, I wasn’t ready for any of this to be happening. Now I’m at an age where I feel ready. I’ve always worked hard but I feel more ready for it and to have my manager Callum [Reece, One House] working with me is great because I trust him completely. I was really disillusioned with singing and trying to be an artist. It’s not that I don’t love performing, I love to sing. Singing on electronic music allows it to be more about the dancefloor experience than me standing on stage, and that’s another reason why I really love that element. With DJing, there’s an element of performance to it, but ultimately it’s about people dancing and that’s the realm I want to stay in for now. Of course, me as an artist is going to feed into that, but it’s more about the track and I’m like a secondary element to the song itself. That’s what I’m working towards at the moment.”

What has your experience been like of rising up in the dance scene?

“There was a big element of, if you didnt come from money and you needed to DJ to pay bills or to have money in the bank, you would then be looked down upon for doing these certain gigs. And for me, for a long time, that was a real big problem. The reason I didn’t break through is because I was having to do these gigs to pay my bills, but then you’d get judged for doing them. Over coronavirus, I was able to wipe the slate clean, nobody was doing any gigs and I started doing these Vinyl Factory mixes and it was from there that things started picking up. I started making music and it grew from there. But it was difficult because, for a long time, it felt like people didn’t want to pay attention to me because I was having to do these gigs to pay rent. Unfortunately there was, and still is, a lot of judgement in the DJ industry of what’s cool and where you should be playing. It’s not necessarily based on skill or selecta, it’s about who you know and what you’re doing, it’s still a major part of it”.

I will round things off soon enough. I was especially interested to find out more when it comes to Eliza Rose and her connection to London. What drives her and where she gets her energy, drive, and inspiration. I came across a DAZED interview from September, where Rose was taking a tour of Dalston. She discussed gentrification, the importance of reclaiming Dance music as a Black genre, and her early experiences as a D.J. It is a fascinating and illuminating interview:

“When it comes to records, Rose is also kind of an anorak; a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool muso. “I’m a bit of a hoarder, I’m a bit obsessive,” she says. “I find it really interesting to find some track that nobody else is going to have.” It all started with a fluke. When she was 15, she did a work experience placement at a record shop, but this only happened because her original plan fell through at the last minute. “All the good placements were taken and my two options were working in a nursery or a record shop. I was like, ‘I'm not changing nappies or looking after screaming children,’ so I went to the record shop.” But she was bitter about this, telling her friends, “oh my god, guys, I’m going to have to work with a bunch of old white men.”

At the time, the idea that vinyl culture might be an accessible interest for someone like her seemed laughable. “As a 15-year-old Black girl, for me, record shops were just old white men’s things. It wasn’t something that I had any connection to – at all,” she says. But the experience ended up being life-changing. “I was really into Amy Winehouse at the time,” she says, “and through her I started getting into soul, jazz and disco. When I realised that all of this was Black culture, and I was able to hold this physical thing in my hand that represented Black culture, that’s when I started getting into records.” She spent the following decade working for Flashback, one of London’s most respected vinyl stores, and eventually started DJing in 2014.

In light of the revelations against Tim Westwood which emerged this year, there has recently been a lot of discussions about the experiences of women – and particularly women of colour – in the dance music industry. For Eliza, trying to make it in a scene which remained dominated by white men was challenging at times. “It often felt like an uphill battle,” she says. “There wasn’t the same community that is there now. For a long time, I felt like I was ticking off a ‘Black woman’ box and was only getting booked for that reason. But I needed to pay my rent. I knew I was being used as a token, essentially, but I decided to take that and build myself to the next step.” Even now that she has proven her talent beyond all doubt, and become a hugely respected figure within the scene, she still feels a sense of imposter syndrome derived from those early experiences. “I always wondered if I only got gigs because of my race, and that still has a knock-on effect. You get stuck in the narrative that you’re not good enough to be here, even though you are. Whereas if you’re a white man you’d just be like ‘I’m sick. I’ve got this gig, big up me and my bad self!’ You wouldn’t even think about it like that.”

Today, it’s important to Rose to reclaim dance music as part of a Black cultural legacy. “I want to be part of a movement where we say, ‘this is ours.’ You may enjoy it too. But this is ours,” she says. It took her a while to arrive at this realisation: to begin with, she assumed that house and techno were firmly within the domain of white culture. “I did see UK garage as more of a Black genre, but I didn’t see it as electronic music, I saw it as sped up R&B,” she says. “But when you start doing your history, you quickly learn that whole scenes were whitewashed.” It’s notable that “B.O.T.A” took off in the same year that both Drake and Beyonce released house-inspired albums, two events which have led to a wider cultural conversation about the Black roots of dance music. “Even UK garage, which became something a lot of white boys played, was born from South London and its Black community,” she says. “Yes, it was mixed from the beginning, but UKG became completely whitewashed, as did house and techno. It’s only now we’re clawing back our own spaces. We’re still having to fight for it, but we are slowly getting there. We’re not saying so you can’t have your time too. But you do need to move out of the way!”.

I’ll round it off now. Rolling Stone spoke with Eliza Rose a couple of months ago. Coming to the end of perhaps the most successful and busy years of her career, the D.J. and producer was in fine form! Happier than she has ever been, Rolling Stone looked at her transformation from 2015 – when she put out The Moonshine E.P. – and being the creator of a Rave classic that will stand the test of time:

“She’s every bit as charming to talk to. “You all right, darling?” she beams as she joins the Zoom call. She’s speaking after a heavy night out at ADE music festival, where she played a set two nights earlier. “I love Amsterdam,” she says. “But it’s a bit too much partying, and I love to party so… too much temptation. And I always give in to temptation.”

Rose grew up in Dalston, north-east London, the daughter of an acting father who had a few roles in theatre and TV. “If he was born in a different era, I feel like he would have done so well,” Rose says. “But there weren’t as many roles, there wasn’t Black Lives Matter. There’s a lot more awareness for diversity and equality now and there wasn’t that for my dad.” Her mum also flirted with acting before working as a secondary school drama teacher. She and Rose’s dad split and Rose lived with her mum and two younger sisters from the age of two, with two younger brothers on her dad’s side, making Rose the oldest sibling. “You wouldn’t know it, though, I’m probably the most childish,” she says, sniggering diabolically.

PHOTO CREDIT: Phoebe Cowley

At 15, she was due to start work experience at a modelling agency, but it fell through at the last minute, leaving her the options of working in a nursery or a record shop. She chose records over nappies and her love for music was born. She started going out to Rudolphs and the Opera House, both Tottenham nightclubs playing old-school garage, where she would sometimes see a young Danny Dyer on the dancefloor. She was still underage (“You’d photocopy your passport and change the date on it, so it looked like you were older than you were”).

At about 18 she took her first pill. “I was quite anti it for a long time, having seen the darker side of drugs,” she says. She won’t elaborate much on that, but taking ecstasy had a big impact, even if she freaked out slightly. “The first time I took it, I called my mum and my mum told me to grow up! It was the best advice ’cos I felt all right after that.”

After uni and a Master’s, Rose worked a few jobs at record labels and online distributors while also DJing in clubs. “When I went to number one, I literally had £16 in my account,” she laughs. “I had to get my friend to get me a round!” The story of how she wrote ‘B.O.T.A.’ includes a much-repeated anecdote: struggling for a hook, she glanced at her boyfriend’s wall and saw a poster for the Pam Grier film Coffy, with the line: “The baddest one-chick hit-squad that ever hit town.”

Like Grier, Winehouse, Holiday and Miss Monroe, Rose is now approaching the life of a star. “I certainly don’t feel like a fucking pop star, I’ll tell you that,” she says, quickly. “Do you really see me on the fucking red carpet?” What about headlining Glasto? “I like to be in the crowd, that’s the thing. I’m actually a raver before anything else”.

It is almost impossible to get on top of all the amazing talent this year is promising. Across all genres, there is this wave of incredible artists and D.J.s. I am glad Eliza Rose is getting the credit she deserves, and her recent success and number one will open doors and ensure that more eyes and ears are trained the way of female D.J.s. Undoubtably one of the most promising talents of this year, I cannot wait for an Eliza Rose album or a mixtape. Something that brings together all of her different layers and influences. That will be exciting to hear! If you are unaware of the London titan, then go and follow her now. She made a huge impression last year but, in my view, she will strike even harder…