The UKG producer on the pivotal songs in his life.
Conducta, the 23-year-old producer Collins Nemi has been dubbed the Prince of UK Garage, but the pivotal songs in his life draw on a far broader range of influences.
Growing up in Bristol, the music he heard at school and on the radio in the car with his Mum created a fascination with sound that inspired him to learn how to sample and construct music. Talking about his choice of songs, Conducta explains that he chose music outside of Garage to tell the wider story of his musical narrative and the inspiration the songs he heard when he was growing up had on him.
“I wanted to show my influences and the music that inspires and means something to me. The first half of my life is here and it’s split into two in a sense, because there’s songs that are more dance-house, trance kind of music and then it gets into the R&B influence. I don’t think people would expect how those kind of tunes have influenced me.”
As well as songs that cross-pollinate genres and sounds, Conducta’s choices are also underpinned by an emotional connection with music, and with the notable exception of his first pick, which he loves for the feeling of unease it creates, highlight the importance of songs that give the listener a feeling of euphoria.
1
“Pure Shores” by All Saints
“I remember listening to some of these songs in the car when I used to go shopping with my Mum and ‘Pure Shores’ was one of them, they were long, six or seven hour trips and we’d put the radio on.
“I was nine or ten when I first heard this, it was one of the first songs that really hooked me on production and one of the first dance songs I’d heard that had electronic production. I remember hearing a sound in it that was almost like an organ-synth and that sound delays throughout the song, it got me hooked on ‘How did someone do that? How was that possible?’ I researched the song and looked at who produced it and it was William Orbit, so I went over his whole discography and the stuff he did with Madonna.
“It’s an emotional song for me, when the hook comes in it makes me feel a certain way, it makes me feel uneasy and uncomfortable but still really, really closed, it’s a really powerful song. Then later in life I heard it in the film The Beach and it all clicked.
‘Pure Shores’ has a really strong meaning for me and the overriding meaning is the production and the way its translated. On one side I listened to it when I was nine or ten thinking, ‘Wow, this is amazing, how was that done?’ and then watching The Beach and seeing how it translated it into the visual element of being used in film and how emotive the music could be added another layer to the song.”
2
“Stay” (Teddy Riley mix) by Eternal
“Maybe apart from the Outkast and Kano songs I’ve chosen, I don’t listen to the other songs on the list on a regular basis, but this is one of the songs I listen to as soon as I wake up in the morning. I was sixteen or seventeen when I first heard it and that was when I was starting to take making music more seriously, I was researching sampling and all those kind of techniques within music.
“I chose the Teddy Riley mix of this song because I love new jack swing, my Mum used to play Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston and that kind of sound when I was young. When I discovered this mix of the song, production-wise it immediately spoke to me about trying to balance the bumpy side of R&B with the groove and the soulful elements of the vocals.
“It’s the production values, because it’s Teddy Riley there’s the bump and the swing. It’s not the perfect tune but it has all the elements of what I want to get into a song, the sultry, high, kind of loungey vocal, bumpy and skippy drums with a really nice groove that you can dance to and listen to and the way the bass sits, it’s rough but it’s still heavy.
“I’d heard the original version of the song by Eternal and I liked it, but Teddy Riley is one of my production legends, someone who I rank right up there and that’s why this song means so much to me and is so important to me.”
3
“Love Story vs. Finally” (Tim Deluxe mix) by Layo & Bushwacka!
“Oh my God, this song has so many memories, where do I start? It was another one I heard on the long car journeys with my Mum, but it took me a while to put my finger on what it was called. When I was younger me and my Sister used to constantly flick through the music channels and this song came on and I found out the name.
“In the same way that ‘Pure Shores’ makes me feel almost uncomfortable and uneasy, ‘Love Story vs. Finally’ makes me almost float, it just makes me feel good, I could just sit in a pool and listen to this song. It’s really upbeat, there’s a Nina Simone sample in it and when I started listening to more electronic music and dance, trance and housey songs this was one of the songs that I used as a reference.
“I still throw it into my sets for the last couple of tunes because it has such an upbeat feeling and a nice 90s’ feel. I hate using the word nostalgia, but it makes me feel good inside and reminds me of being a child, before you had to think about anything important.
“In some songs I feel like there’s magic chords and as a producer if you ever find those magic chords then you’re like ‘Oh my God, it’s that lightbulb moment’ and with this the chords are so upbeat and so simple, the way the vocal comes in and the way it’s written. It’s like a perfect dance song and it leads nicely into the next song, Roger Sanchez’s ‘Another Chance.’”
4
“Another Chance” by Roger Sanchez
“With this song, when I first heard it, again it was the way these 90s dance songs all gave me the same feeling of ‘Wow, electronic music, what is this? How can I get into it? Why’s it making me feel this way?
’What struck me most about this song was the video, it had a woman, who was carrying a massive heart around a city, she’s basically carrying her heart around and looking for someone to look after her, take her in and be kind and considerate, but she can’t find anyone. Again, with this song the way visual element mixed in with the song itself was just so emotive.
“It’s the production on it as well, it samples Toto and I found it amazing how Roger Sanchez, a really massive house guy, managed to channel that. This was one of my earliest introductions to sampling and how you can sample something and make it into something completely different. I researched where it came from, I don’t think Discogs existed then, I think it was Wikipedia and I listened to the original song by Toto, which is called ‘I Won't Hold You Back’.
“The whole Primary School era is such a blur, but it would have been The Box and MTV Hits that I’d have seen this on. I remember this song coming out a couple of years after the Millennium, so I couldn’t have been older than twelve or thirteen. ‘Pure Shores’, ‘Love Story vs. Finally’ and this song all represent the same kind of feeling of listening to music at that age.”
5
“Number One” by Pharrell ft. Kanye West
“In My Mind by Pharrell was the first physical album that I owned and bought. Obviously back then we didn’t have Spotify, it was LimeWire and illegally streaming music that way, but with In My Mind, I said to myself ‘I’m going to buy this.’
“I remember going to Sainsbury’s to get it, I was really bad at saving when I was younger but I’d saved up however much it was. I needed to save for it because my Mum always had to drag me out of music shops, they used to have the latest CD’s in a disc-player, you’d have headphones and be able to listen to things and I listened to the In My Mind album all the time.
“This song in particular means a lot, because me and my younger Sister always used to duet on this song and when I say duet, I mean we were singing together in our rooms, messing around. It was one of the first songs that I showed her that she actually appreciated and liked and I showed my Sister a lot of songs! Even now, I often voicemail her the first of the ad-libs of this song for her to voicemail me back. My sister would do the Pharrell bit, I’d do the ad-libs on the Pharrell parts and the Kanye West bit on the final verse at the end and then we’d interchange it.
“I’d put Pharrell in the same class as Teddy Riley, one of my favourite all-time producers. In this song he managed to merge synthy sounds with chords, and the verse and his singing all fits so nicely together as a song.”
6
“Adidas Hoodie” by Lady Sovereign, remix ft. Skepta, JME & Jammer Ears
“This tune is interesting because it was the first Grime tune I heard. I remember listening to it at Primary school, maybe not as early as Year Four, maybe Year Five. I dragged this tune onto an MP3 player and it was on there three times because I kept getting corrupted versions of it when I downloaded it from LimeWire.
“It was my first introduction to Skepta, JME and Grime and this is how obsessed I was with Skepta and JME, on one of my non-uniform days I dressed up in a Boy Better Know t-shirt and a Du-rag, pretending to be JME. I actually went to school as JME, that was how much of a fanboy I was at the time.
“Because people often see me as a Garage guy, all of my other influences, the stuff that I listen to and put into my Garage gets overlooked. When you pigeonhole music it’s annoying, because you immediately get placed into a box, that you only do this or that, that’s your lane and that’s what you’re relevant to. With all these songs, bar the All Saints one, because it’s not as upbeat, to me they’re all about feeling good and that’s what I try and get through in my music. I think that’s the common theme, it’s that energy - upbeat and uplifting music.
“This tune was produced by Mizz Beats, she was a great producer and one of the first Grime productions I tried to make was based on the structure of how this tune was made, the collapse, the high energy synths and the Gameboy-ish sounds. It was a staple and foundation of me getting into to production and Grime, that’s why it means a lot to me, of that nostalgic time when you hear music when you’re a kid.”
7
“Prototype” by Outkast
“To me, this is one of the most perfect songs, if not one of my top three songs ever. I was going to pick ‘Roses’ because in Year Six at school, when I was ten or eleven and I was listening to that I was ‘Wow, Outkast, André 3000 and Big Boi are amazing’. But this song speaks to me because essentially it defines my approach on relationships, when you first meet someone and you really like them, the lyrics in this song literally speak to me.
“With my experiences of my love-life, it epitomises that whole thing of when you first meet someone, obviously it doesn’t happen to me that regularly, but I’ve had that feeling maybe two or three and with this song it’s ‘Wow, this is that feeling again.’ It’s very rare that a song touches you and you can relate to it so much, but that’s how I feel about ‘Prototype’
“In the same way that people from this generation are quoting Drake lyrics, if I was ever going to write a cringy Instagram post about feelings, I would quote this song. The lyrics go ‘I hope that you're the one / If not, you are the prototype / We'll tiptoe into the sun / And do things I know you like / I think I'm in love again.’
“I stumbled on this when I was around fifteen or sixteen and at the time I just appreciated the production element, the guitar and the bass playing, the production is amazing, but it’s grown in meaning for me. I remember listening to it when I was eighteen or nineteen and understood what the song meant, it was a penny drop moment.”
8
“Alone With the TV” by The Mitchell Brothers
“I was thinking of putting Mike Skinner and The Streets in, but I thought that The Mitchell Brothers were quite overlooked in their contribution to that whole movement around Mike Skinner. They were really talented songwriters and for me what they managed to do was to get a balance between Rap and Grime and still have hard-hitting beats, they weren’t aggressive and they still told a story.
“I remember downloading this when I was thirteen or fourteen on my phone. The phone was on Three and the Three music store had this and the Lady Sovereign song as well. This song spurred me to learn about sampling, there’s a high-pitch vocal going on and the drums are quite hard-hitting. There’s not many layers to it but I think that’s what makes it, because it’s so empty it gives space for the song and the lyrics to come through.
“I rate The Mitchell Brothers really highly as lyricists, with songs like this, ‘Routine Check’ and ‘Solemate’, I thought they were definitely some of the best lyricists that UK Rap has ever seen. They had a way with words, ‘Alone With the TV’, is just so clean and blunt. It’s about a break-up, and because they’re East End London guys, they managed to make it seem like a conversation, the flow was so encapsulating it seemed like they were speaking but they were rapping.
“When I was thirteen or fourteen and trying to relate every song to everything that I was going through, this song spoke to me. When I messed up with whichever girl I was seeing at that time - at that age your kind of think you’re a big man and stuff and you take things for granted - this song epitomised not appreciating what you have on front of you.”
9
“Nobody Don’t Dance No More” by Kano
“This song means a lot to me, I first heard it when I was eleven or twelve and I grew up listening to a lot of Kano, like the Home Sweet Home album. I grew up in Bristol and whenever I used to travel into London when I was younger, whether it was by coach or my Mum was driving, I’d wake up, check if we were on The Westway as we were coming up the motorway and I’d always play this song coming into London.
“When I was younger this song was what London meant to me and even now, I listen to it and it gives me a warm feeling as I’m driving into London. It’s one of those songs that’s on my bathroom playlist, I listen to this in the morning and it’ll make me feel upbeat and get me ready for the day. What wakes me up about it is how the chords come in, there’s a little riff in this that almost reminds me of MJ Cole.
“It’s the production by Fraser T Smith, the lyrics, the chord progressions, it’s got Katie Pearl on the hook and, again it’s one of my top three songs ever, because of what it means and how it makes me feel.
“What makes me feel so good about this song is that in the same way that The Mitchell Brothers combined Rap and Grime with ‘Alone With the TV’, on this song Kano combines Grime and Garage, it’s a perfect fusion of both genres. I love dancing, and the lyrics speak about how people have lost that sense of being in touch with other people’s energies.”
“Come and Go” ft. Alyss is out via 2TE Records
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