Krept & Konan and Slaves on their 'Told You/The Hunter' collaboration - Q&A

Exclusive: Two musical duos team up for a track recorded live to vinyl

(PA)

Rap duo Krept & Konan teamed up with punk rock band Slaves [Isaac Holman and Laurie Vincent] to record "Told You/The Hunter" in a unique, one-off live-to-vinyl session at the iconic Abbey Road Studios.

The track marked the first time the two pairs of artists had worked with one another, which was part of Hennessy's annual 'Masters of Potential'. They were handpicked for the project by some of the most influential names in the music industry, including Island Records' Alex Boateng, This Is Grime author Hattie Collins, and Abbey Road's master engineer Christian Wright.

Check out the track below and read our Q&A with both sets of artists about the process of making the track:

Q&A with Krept & Konan

How did the collaboration come about?

Konan: Hennessy have been supporting us for a while, we’ve always loved the brand, we rap about it, we even used Hennessy in loads of our recipes at Crepes and Cones – Hennessy Ice Cream…Hennessy Wings. It was sick when they came to us with this creative challenge

Krept: It was us who wanted to work with Slaves – they share the same label as us – Blending sounds appeals to us because you create something that is brand new.

Has it changed your attitudes about rock music at all?

Krept: While you make music you come across loads of different moments like where you could always feel like you’ve hit a milestone. I’m not going to forget working with a punk band ever. This is a moment.

Konan: We’ve probably crossed paths at festivals but we’ve never had the opportunity to actually get in the studio and get things going like right now, it’s sick!

What was it like recording at Abbey Road Studios?

Krept: Abbey Road is a legendary studio, The Beatles - so much history. Recording live to vinyl was kind of like going on Radio and them saying perform a track live for us, make sure you get it right first take. Basically like that kind of pressure

Konan: I’ve never recorded live to vinyl before

What else have you guys got coming up this year?

Konan: We’re working on our next album, and have lot’s new music coming. Then Alexandra Palace, our biggest gig yet in October.

Q&A with Slaves

Why do you think we see so few collaborations like this in rock music?

It's about having the time to experiment outside of your record plans. Sometimes you don’t have the luxury to collaborate and experiment in style. We were lucky enough to be able to experiment with our sound on our upcoming album Acts of Fear and Love. Bring on more experimenting and collaborations we say.

Has doing this changed your perspective at all on rap + its potential to cross into other genres?

We’ve always been fans of rap and inspired by other famous mash-ups of songs from Linkin Park and Jay Z to Aerosmith and Run DMC. We wanted this to be a classic mash-up and had to spend some time working on it getting ‘Told You’ to have the Slaves sound but once we did that it flowed and so yeah rap will continue to be able to cross into other genres

What was it like recording at Abbey Road Studios?

We recorded Live to Vinyl and wanted it to sound the best it could be so having that element of pressure and being the first time recording there it was electric. Hoping to be back there very soon!