Right. Let's start at the beginning..
How did the 12 track album Diamonds in The Rough come about?
The album came about from what was initially meant to be an EP collaboration with Antidote, Connect Logic and Pro P.
In Sept 2018 we went down to Pro Ps in Manchester. (we live in Lancaster about 70 miles away) for a couple of nights the plan was just to chill, catch up and go over some beats and see if came up with anything. Also The Blunskins were opening up for The Beatnuts show in Manchester so we were heading yon that on the 2nd night. Which was class by the way.
Anyway on the first night we were flicking through some beats and Pro p put on the beat for what is now Press Play. And I was talking to Pro p as it was playing and Antidote says. "Yes we will have this one" . Then my attention switched to the beat and I was like holy shit yes we will have this one.
So we looped it up and started writing. Hence why " as son As pro p pressed play I'm feeling so inspired to write I can't wait" emerged as the first lines in the chorus from Antidote.
Anyway Antidote wrote the chorus and his verse and put it Down and it was an instant classic in the making.
I had my verse but after hearing Antidote I weren't really happy with it so I didn't record mine that day. It was over the next few days when I was back home that I structured the verse and lyrics to sound the same flow as his and that's the route I took and recorded to put down to finish the track.( I recorded this at Thundersound Studios) That's why in this track I say "I'm in a stage of imitation I don't ever wanna be in if I do I know it's flattery where everything is seen" meaning I don't like copying other people or biting styles. I like to do things my way and be me. But as an homage to Antidote I consciously took the same flow and used different words to complete my verse. Well for the majority of the verse. I changed the flow at the end of the verse.
But yeah that was then the first track done.

The next track was Breaking Point. Pro P sent me a batch of beats to go over a few months later and I picked this beat and wrote the first verse. So we headed back to Manchester to chill, catch up (get some falafel and halloumi wraps from over the road. Delicious) and go through some beats and the plan I had was get this verse down and then Antidote would do a verse and maybe a chorus and we would have 2 tracks. Then maybe do anther track while we were there. So we would have 3 done tracks and then we would be half way to an EP. Well that's what I was hoping to happen. Unfortunately this never happened. I put my verse down and that's all that got done that time so things were on hold a bit.
So I wrote a 2nd verse for Breaking Point and also Pro P sent me the beat for Different and I wrote my verse for that.
A few months later we went to Manchester again. I put down my 2nd verse for Breaking Point to make it a solo track and put down my verse on Different, again hoping Antidote would get on it and then we would have 3 tracks but again this didn't happen so we were kind of at a crossroads to where we were planning on going.
At this point I mentioned to Pro P maybe just do am EP with me and him as I was inspired to get something done and was in the right mind frame of mind to write and record.
So that's where we started heading.
I sent the Different track to Olbers Paradox. He is in the group T. C. S with me and Antidote and we started rapping together when we were around 19......
Anyway
30 mins after sending him my verse and the beat he sends me his recorded verse back. Haha what a guy.
Pro P then showed it Cheech from The Bluntskins and he finished off the track in legendary style so that was another track boxed off.
I'm not going to go into full details of every track
But basically I already had the tracks
Titans with Gnt and Charlie Dark

Diamonds in the rough ft Olbers Paradox and GnT

Make you Stronger ft Olbers Paradox

And sun again ft Olbers Paradox and Antidote.

These were already over Pro beats apart from sun again. That is a remix. I'd sent parky the A capella and he put it over the beat and we had another track.
These were set to be used on a different project but again this never came to fruition. So rather than having the tracks sat around on hard drives never being used I put them in the mix for the EP so we now had 7 tracks.

Fast forward a bit and the next track recorded was spitfire. Pro p sent me the beat and I wrote and recorded the chorus and my verse at Thundersound (which is owned by GnT) and I left it with him as he wanted to get on the track. So he put his verse on and also got Bid D and Nero on board to make it into a cypher type hard hitting track. They all smashed it.
So that was another track.
At this point it was all looking like feature tracks and not enough solo work so the next step was to extend the project from an EP to a short album.
So in December 2020 Pro p sent another batch of fire beats and I was on a mission to get a few solo tracks done.
Track 8 standing up strong was next in the line to be wrote
And also a couple of weeks later after Christmas etc I wrote to the next track Balancing The act.
I headed back to Thundersound and recorded these and sent them onto Pro p to mix and master
He then sent me another batch of beats and I wrote Go with the flow and How we do it in quick succession and headed back to Thundersound to record the last 2 solos.

And that's about it. We had 12 tracks and thought that was enough content to release. We did have a few other tracks that we could have thrown on the mix but decided against. However these will be appearing on another project in the near future.

Special thanks to all that have collaborated on this project its been a pleasure and much appreciated.

Thanks for checking us out. We hope you like the album.
Please look out for older and newer projects from us.
Peace.