Hak Baker: “Got To Keep Representing Your People, Your Community and Pave The way For Them"

Hak Baker (Image by Nadine Persaud)

Speaking with Hak Baker, he exudes a humble demeanor, yet his powerful messages are expressed passionately through his words and creative talent. Justly bold in his intellectually provocative accounts of life experience, this interview delves into his thoughts around Windrush, Black British identity and how these intertwine with his personal philosophies and music.

Charlene: How did you approach making your track ‘Windrush Baby’? 

Hak: You know what, I wish I always had some magic formula to tell people but it’s always the same, it’s just unconsciousness meeting consciousness that’s all it is it’s just like, what am I thinking about? What do I care about at the moment? Windrush is always a spoken about topic and at the time I wrote it, the scandal was going on when they were denouncing people the citizenship and shit so yeah, I guess that’s what was going on in the back of my head, you know. I made this guitar riff up, went to the studio and just wrote, just started writing and it just came out. Catastrophic year, was a terrible year, and yeah, that was it. 

Charlene: So going into the significance of including your mum’s voice note in there ‘cause I think that’s like a really amazing personal touch, because the track itself is powerful, but adding that in, what significance did that add to into it for you? 

Hak: Well, my mum’s such a great speaker - she’s a great orator and like, she’s so intelligent and she feels so passionate about being Black, not even being Black British just being Black from the Caribbean. She was born in Jamaica; she didn’t wanna come here, she was tricked into coming here thinking she was coming on holiday, you know them ones there? And she didn’t want to come here. She’s very passionate about being Black and what it represents and obviously when she came here there was probably more of a unified spirit amongst Black people and teachings were probably solid and two families would be living in a room you know, so there would have to be respect and morals, and my mum feels like that’s really completely slipped amongst us, and when I look in from an older birds eye view, her being a social worker as well, seeing a lot of the mishaps that are happening in Black communities especially young Black men. So she’s jut got a lot to say, so I thought on Windrush baby, me being a Windrush baby in inverted commas, why would I not get my mum to speak especially on this project where there’s a lot of personal touches here and there and people just speaking their truths, so I had to get Big John in there and handle business, you know.

Hak Baker’s album cover ‘Worlds End FM’

Charlene: Yeah! So I know that you said your nan came here in the sixties and your mum came aged seventeen, what are some of the most powerful learning moments having a Windrush parent upbringing? 

Hak: Just to know who we are and to know who we were beyond the teachings that white people give us in their country because it’s all set up for a reason, too much to delve into now but, the fear that they have of Black people the strength and resilience, a word I’ll keep using, you know… My mum let me know it was the Moors that came into Europe and civilised Europe, taught them how they had to bathe and introduced sewage systems and took the pigs out of their front rooms. So I’ve always been clued up about that. Mum always let me know about the great leaders that we had, the freedom fighters that we had; in my mum’s house they’re plastered all over the walls, you know. So I was always aware of myself and was aware of my capabilities from a very young age. My mum always used to say to me, ‘You think you’re too smart for your own good’, which I did at times. I was just always aware. I don’t have like a slave mentality, in my opinion, I have like ‘I can do what I want’ mentality and that’s directly from my mum and dad. 

Charlene: Very powerful. So your debut album Worlds End FM releases 9th June, what are the most important messages you feel that are on there for listeners? 

Hak: I think silver linings for me, I like that phrase. It’s like digging out good vibes, digging out having fun, digging out hope even in from the worst places. I think that’s what in general the album is about if you look deep enough. There’s fun songs, there’s sad songs, there’s politically charged songs. But really and truthfully, it’s just about trying to stay happy. Trying to stay you, trying to keep your head above water even when you feel like you’re drowning basically. It’s back to the phrase that started Windrush Baby; it’s just been catastrophic the past two, three years globally let alone nationally. And you can’t give up, you know,  you’ve gotta keep going. Got to keep representing your people, your community and pave the way for them… I think that’s the crux of the album, just keep going and keep striving no matter what, do you know what I mean?

Charlene: Yeah! How do you define your Black British identity? So, how would you describe yourself? 

Hak: (laughs) Erm.. 

Charlene: It’s hard isn’t it?! (laughs). Identity is such a loaded word; it can be. But how would you best describe it?  

Hak: It’s difficult man. Say like athletics or football is on the telly, Arsenal being one of the teams that embraced loads of Black players from young. When the athletics is going on sometimes even cheering for bloody America because a lot of their athletes were Black from young, then the Jamaicans started to come through and we were like yes! It was difficult because when I was young, when I was really young, I didn’t feel British at all, I felt like I was Caribbean in my household. I embraced my mum’s Patois, I understood it, I could speak it to my other Black friends. You know it was only like as I got older like I realized where I was in deep East London where I saw other kids like me and I thought ah, right what’s going on here do you know that I mean? I think it was when I was like ten, eleven, twelve I started kind of maybe embracing this Black British thing a bit more. A bit East End, a bit Cockney, the terminologies as well. But with that like, Cockneys always got along with Black people, in my eyes that’s what I used to see. Because at the end of the day they was the bottom of the bunch in their world where they were from. So I started to embrace that as well there’s other black Cockneys, it blew my mind really, I thought rah, so that kind of gave me a new essence of identity as well which was great. So I use a phrase called the tri-island man, my mum’s Jamaican, my dad’s Grenadian and I’m from the Isle of Dogs in East London; it’s like a salsa between those three places, with me in the epicentre trying my hardest to represent Black Britain because it’s difficult at times. I’m just like a Black Cockney, d’you know what I mean, that’s me (laughs). 

Charlene: Yeah, I think like with definitions of identity sometimes it’s not something solid, it can be fluid; it depends on how you’re feeling and who you’re around; stuff like that as well. 

Hak: Yeah, definitely! 

Hak Baker (Image by Alfie White)

Charlene: In your performance at Cross the Tracks, you handed out flags and it’s all different people holding flags from different countries- what was your inspiration behind the idea of doing that? 

Hak: It’s something that we’ve done for a while now; it’s just togetherness man, I’m not a racist I just know who I am I have no time for racism you know what I mean; I don’t like it, I think it’s ignorant. I completely understand it from  a different point of view like from a Black point of view as well that people get confused about; but when you’ve been ostracised and pinned down and attacked for centuries, you’re going to have a disdain, a distaste for certain things which I understand. However I just feel the world would be a better place if we all just got together and just came together. That’s probably one of the main reasons why Africa has been under siege for so many years because it (racism) doesn’t come natural to us, we’re always like come, come, we’ll look after you, and then we are used again and again and again from this nation, that nation Belgium, France, the English, the Germans, the Chinese you know we could go on forever, no lie. But I don’t feel like it’s a Black thing really, we are just vibes people… that’s why the flags are there like we’re all a nation under this Earth, we are all together really, we don’t need to separate or segregate ourselves for ethnicity or nationality or colour or race or gender or anything. So that’s why I throw the flags out. Yeah man. 

Charlene: It’s lovely to see an artist as well who picked up guitar and liked having live instruments and it gives very much that reggae feel and I know that you’ve had a lot of inspiration from those artists; what collaborations would you like to have in future? 

Hak: Damien Marley man, that’s the one I need. (laughs) 

Charlene: Yeah, I can hear it!

Hak: I’ve done a tune with Chronixx before, but no one’s ever heard it; I’ll put it out some day but it was like a remix of a tune that I’ve done but I’d like to link him again. And there’s like people in London that I like but they’re not like dream collaborations, you know. But I think those two, that’s where it’s at. 

Charlene:  What would you want the legacy of yourself and for this album to be? What would you want to be remembered for? 

Hak: Stick to your guns man. Be you. Yeah, you don’t have to follow-fashion, you can actually get somewhere by highlighting your own character, by highlighting who you are unashamedly. And just wrap it up with a smile, you know what I mean. And some good manners and you can get as far as you can go. It’s been a long journey, I finally feel like things are starting to go in the right way, and that’s just due to me being my turbulent self, ups and downs, wear my heart on my sleeve and just being myself. You don’t have to emulate other people, you don’t have to emulate what’s ‘in’, you don’t have to emulate what’s really and truly enslaving you, you can free yourself by being yourself and get somewhere. So that’s what this album means to me.

Charlene: Absolutely brilliant; this question I would like to ask you personally because feel like you have an amazing point of view, is with all the Windrush stuff that happened, do you feel like the Windrush compensation scheme was sufficient? Do you feel like it has been appropriately acknowledged?- 

Hak: No way- they were being murdered in the press, and just through people and the power of the internet you know and it is typical English British style, ‘We didn’t;’ ‘It was all an accident;’ ‘But listen we’re going to outstretch you this little thing here,’ and ‘If you was born between this time and that time you can just hold a little change you know.’ Ah! Come on man! Like, it’s pathetic. What about the education behind it? They still don’t teach children about what happened as well, they still strip people of their identity in that way. They always do the least amount just to say that they can do this. Just like when they include black people in like telly commercials and fucking all that shit, d’you know what I mean? It’s always the bare minimum just to say they can tick the boxes. It’s pathetic man and it’s typical British style man, was a joke. It’s hard, it’s hard. I did an interview with Sir Trevor Phillips the other day and he’s a good man you know, but I can’t fuck with him to a certain extent because he’s said some fucked up things. When we had the interview there was bits where I was just like ah, you’re alright but you’re a bit of a thingy and yeah I’m just going to keep you a little bit at arms-length here mate because you’re a little bit of the problem. And you bent the knee, you shouldn’t be bending the knee for nobody.

Charlene: It’s like these reports that came out that’s saying ‘oh yeah institutional racism doesn’t exist’ and then you have people of colour producing these reports, so then it’s like.. they get the ones that give the message that support the agenda.

Hak: That’s what they- they’ve been doing that. They been finding them, there’s a word I wanna use, they’ve been finding those boy for a long time, and you know they use them, you know. They want that fellowship and they want that uniform, they love it. And I don’t know what kind of affiliation they are looking for. I mean I understand they may have gone through things in their youth or whatever that made them want to denounce a certain element or aspect of who they are, but nah man. That’s why people remain uneducated. Those small, small, small amount of reparations is nothing, but because people are uneducated they think, yeah. If they really care, introduce a real system you know, don’t give us Black History Month, just teach black history, teach everybody else’s fucking history. 

Charlene: So, with that last Windrush question, you’re okay for me to include that in the interview? 

Hak: Do whatever you want. (laughs)

Charlene: I only wanted to ask your permission, because that was more a conversational question I wanted to ask you.

Hak: Do what you want darling, put it in writing, put it in bold if you want.

Charlene: (laughs) Italics! It has been an honour to speak with you. 

Hak Baker’s debut album ‘Worlds End FM’ is now available on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, YouTube and more.