We talk to Margate’s Elijah Femi about the trials of starting a career in the modern music industry

Rapping to the beats of a boombox in a field in Broadstairs is where we first met Elijah Femi (@elihajfemi).

It was the public area of the 2018 Wheels & Fins Festival and Elijah – alongside long-time friend and musical collaborator Sik Smoke – caught our attention straight away.

Having moved to the area from Leicester as a teenager in 2014, the artist has set about carving out a career in a hugely unforgiving industry.

More recently, the artist – who has Nigerian heritage and a background in drumming – has started picking up plays with latest track Convert. The accompanying video, which was shot on Margate seafront, has bagged some 23,000 plays – and that’s not easy to do. With his latest project, the Pioneers Kent record label, basing itself in Ramsgate, we felt it was time to find out how Elijah Femi was tackling the problems posed by the modern music industry.

ON ‘THE MOMENT’ HE KNEW...

I only started taking music seriously in Year 10. We had an opportunity to perform at the O2 Academy in Leicester. And doing that live gig, if I was to watch it back now, it’s probably terrible, but everyone was hyping me up and I thought ‘Why not take it seriously and pursue this career?’.

I was a drummer and, towards the end of the gig, one of the staff members took the drumstick out of my hands and told me to get on the stage and the rest is history… it has been really lit since then.

ON PIE FACTORY MUSIC...

When I moved to Margate, I was looking for a studio and Pie was who I found. Studios are really expensive – I must have been only 17 at the time and couldn’t afford studio sessions. So when I saw Pie, being free and a youth centre, I hooked on to that and stuck with them and learned a lot.

Pie helps with young people’s development, so not necessarily music, but for me I wanted to be in the studio and I got a mentorship from a member of the staff, Matt Smith, watching how he operates in the studio and learning from him. Pie taught me how to approach people properly and how to network, how to promote my own gigs and all those things. It’s like artist development, but it’s free to young people who want to be part of it.

ON GOING THE INDEPENDENT ROUTE… FOR NOW

Right now, I’m recording at Magpie Studios in Ashford and I release through a distributor – DistroKid.

I think there’s like a stigma with record labels that’s been going on for years, that a lot of artists get ripped off – I think that’s one thing that people are afraid of. For me, I would never say I don’t want to get signed, but at the moment I’m pursuing my career independently and building my own record label called Pioneers Kent and working with younger artists

ON PIONEERS KENT RECORDS…

On the Covert record you will have heard four or five features and we all just went in the studio to see what we could do. With Pioneers Kent, we want to talk to young artists about how they feel their career is going. During the lockdown, I was doing things about mental health in music because there were no gigs or open mics, and no support, so we had a bit of a talk on Instagram… talking about the correlation between music and mental health and how they were dealing with everything at that moment. I want to pursue that more as well as my own music.

ON REACHING 23k VIEWS…

I’ve been studying a lot more about how to promote yourself before this release. I didn’t do the same things as with Pull Up Outside [the previous release]. Before, I was focused on going out and dropping posters and stuff. This one, I thought ‘What can I do to make it easier for myself?’.

I started searching for a way to increase traffic to the music. One of the channels I found really helpful was Burstimo. It’s an agency to help artists, advising us how to promote ourselves using online ads and things to reach as many people as possible – a bit of a fast track to get more views.

ON SUBMITTING TO GRM DAILY…

I’m a little bit up and down about that, to be honest. I could definitely do that, but I want to make sure I stand out and also I want to build my channel and my artistry.

I guess if you want a faster reach, then you could do that route. But when it comes to sharing something that I feel really strongly about, I want to put it through my channel. It might not get the amount of views, but I know I have that ownership of it.

ON HIS MUSIC…

It’s a difficult question. My music is based on how I feel. I’m most likely not going to release something similar each time. How I felt and what I was listening to last year is different to this year. I want to explore, and my music is based on my own personal journey. I just want to be consistent on the sound, the lyrics, the quality and the vibe. But with other things I’m just gonna let creativity take control.

ON STILL HAVING HIS DAY JOB…

I’m not gonna lie to you and say that my music is funding me – it’s not. But if I was advising someone, I would say it’s not necessarily your music that should be funding you at this stage. There’s a lot more you can do in the music industry. I’m part of a music education hub called Sound Connections, so I’m freelancing with them and I also have my day-to-day job as a healthcare assistant. But I invest a lot of it into my music.