Brief
Novelist was the MC grime’s new generation had been waiting for. BBC Sound of 2015, MOBO-nominated at 17, co-writer of “Lyrics” on Skepta’s Konnichiwa at 18. The UK already knew. The job was to get the rest of the world to find out in person, in markets where grime had no radio, no promoter network and no one who’d done it before.
What We Built
I booked his first world tour and ran touring as a business: routing, promoter deals, contracts, logistics, travel, budgets and artist liaison, across Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Europe.
The Asian dates were the real test. Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul each had a grime scene, but a small, club-sized, mostly instrumental one, built by local DJs and producers rather than MCs. Shanghai put him on a bill alongside those producers. That meant working promoter by promoter, city by city, with none of the infrastructure a UK run takes for granted, and building the relationships as we went.
Outcome
A first Asia, Australia and New Zealand run at 18, and a second by 20, to rooms that chanted his lyrics back word for word. By 2018 his independent debut, Novelist Guy, was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize.
What I took from it: the relationship between an artist and a fan is made in the room, and nobody was keeping it once the lights came up. It’s the model I reused for the BOOGLE Asia Tour, and the problem I’ve built a company around.
