Boxing clever - Rahzel at Bling - Nov 20

Rahzel is the undisputed king of beatboxing. He tells Ross Goulding that the art form pre-dates human beings

Rahzel, also known as the ‘Godfather of Noyze’ is without doubt the world’s best beatboxer, and the first person ever to simultaneously perform beats and singing. A former member of pioneering hip hop group The Roots, his most famous piece of beatboxing forms the background beat for Ben Harper’s 2000 hit, ‘Steal My Kisses’. But his own tracks, such as ‘Iron Man’ and ‘If Your Mother Only Knew’, are classic pieces of voice-beat esophageal acrobatics. Whatever you think of the music, watching Rahzel is a spectacle.

How did you first get in to beatboxing? Beatboxing for me was always out of necessity. When I was younger, I didn’t have the resources to have expensive equipment or instruments, so my replacement was beatbox.

Did somebody teach you a few tricks? I pretty much picked it up myself. Ididn’t have all these fancy electronic things kids have now. A lot of the kids these days have loop stations; I didn’t have one, so I had to listen to the radio. I didn’t have any mp3s, no DJ set, no drum kit, so beatboxing was how I made it happen; it filled that void, starting from when I was about eight or nine.

Can anyone beatbox? Everybody has certain particular shifts in their vocal anatomy, so it’s possible for anyone to do it in a variety of different ways, like it’s possible for everyone to write a rhyme, but to get into depth with it… that takes practice. A lot of younger kids who live in my neighbourhood are always asking me to do something, y’know, drop a beat for them or just create some noises they can try andcopy. It’s possible for anyone to copy most of what I do, but it’s not easy.

Would you say beatboxing is an art form? To me it’s an art form, it’s an instrument, it’s the foundation of language. Imagine there were no human beings on the planet and all you heard was sound; that’s a part of the beatbox. What’s commonly called music is just multi-layered sounds put together in a certain way. I’m quite interested in the origins of language, of music and sound. If you go back before technology, you realise that there’s nothing new about beatboxing at all.

Were you the first person to sing beat and vocals at the same time? I was the first one doing real singing. The person who did something similar was Shybox in the 1980s, when he used to rhyme and do the beat at the same time. As music progressed, hip hop and R&B started to fuse, so back in the ’80s it was more about the rhyme and the beat. As music changed, that created the format for me to imitate what was going on at the time, which was the soulful singing alongside the hip hop beat.

How much of your act is spontaneous? For the most part the show has a particular format, like a DJ’s would, but within that it’s mostly freestyle. You have certain routines you work with, but within that a lot of the stuff I’m making up as I go. Just like a DJ, you have a whole lotta records, y’ know, you can reach for the deep stuff, bring in some new shit, try something experimental, but then you also have about ten records everybody loves and you can play them to any audience.

Tell us about your time with The Roots In the early ’90s, a friend called Shakeup introduced me to Questlove – we had a battle, man vs drummer – and after the battle I met Black Thought. We all did a show together, which a lot of people were talking about, and things just progressed.

What are you working on now? I’m working on a Greatest Knockouts volume 2, finishing an experimental album I’ve been working on, and doing different projects with Mike Patton, KRS and a couple other guys.

Rahzel is at Bling on Saturday 20 Nov.