Hotel lobby poetry

“I still find this quite awkward” are the first words that come through my computer speaker, a rough start for the conversation I had with the Swedish rapper, Broder John, which would continue on for three hours. Broder John has been on the Swedish rap scene since he was 19 years old. In 2016, he released his first solo album that evolved from his personal experience as someone trying to find his place with “the boys” while growing up. The innovative and genre-crossing sound on his recent album took him to the ColorsxStudios show but forced him to reevaluate his vision.

J: As I understand it, the creation of your second album DRIFT came from the process of somehow finding your way back to the music. As well as you went in with the attitude that it would be the last thing you did as Broder John. How was it realizing you were saying farewell to your alter ego?

BJ: After my first album Cool I was very lost. I fell into a darkness of wanting to please everyone which led me to not finding any joy in the music I was creating. I had gotten the idea for DRIFT because I wanted to write about what I went through after releasing Cool. I felt that I had to get this out of my system and then I was done. This realization felt like a huge weight was lifted off my chest, to not even have to identify with Broder John and all that entailed.

J: Your album DRIFT is a concept album where the songs fit together. The note on the last track fits with the first note on the first track, creating a loop. How was this concept created?

BJ: I was going through a big process in life so it was created along the way. One of the first songs I wrote was IGEN. It came out of the grief of saying goodbye to Broder John. But it hit me that I had

felt this before, connected to other things. Even though they were different experiences, it was the same feeling. I realized that we are all in drift. The elevator pitch for my album is how you go through things and not what you go through. Part of the idea was to leave Broder John in that loop so if someone would ask “What happened to Broder John?” I could answer “He got stuck in DRIFT, he’s still there ”.

J: Paul Adamah (aka Boko Yout) has been a big part of the creation of DRIFT and you guys became close while working together, how did that thing happen?

BJ: I had been in my bubble and my own downfall in DRIFT. But then I started to see a different light and at the same time, Paul came and burst my bubble and brought an injection of creativity that took this project to the heart. It would definitely not have the same sound and probably not even exist without him.

J: I get the feeling that the people you work with are already or have become your close friends, is that a must for your creation?

BJ: Yes, I think it is a premiss because it is so connected to the core of what I'm doing. I sit by myself a lot and think and turn words. So the people I work with must be on the same frequency. That's probably why they're my friends too since we're on the same level.

J: You seem to have a clear compass about what feels right and wrong in your creative work. Where does that feeling come from?

BJ: I don't really know. With Cool was it almost absurd looking back on it. I could sit for months trying to find a specific word that no one has ever thought of. But it felt so damn right when I found it. There is a force within me that wants to have a complete piece in my own sense.

J: Since you have this precise image of your work, how does it feel to let go of your music and let it float out into the universe?

BJ: When the music video to Truppen was released I was in Umeå and a teenager stopped me and said the video was such a vibe. Just being out with the boys and driving. Later a childhood friend told me he thought it was the saddest video he had ever seen. This tense atmosphere that exists in the masculine culture. It struck me that both interpretations are equally relevant even though they are opposites of each other. The universe gets much bigger when the songs are released. The different readings of the songs are what create the pieces. It’s like when I played SIDOR to Paul the first time. He cried because for him it reflected how it was for him growing up as black and gay in Örebro.

Which is as far away from me as it gets, growing up as a straight white male in Umeå.

J: It seems that you have quite a relaxed way of talking about your creations and people's interpretations, while you are quite restrictive about your private life towards media. That you can be personal but not private?

BJ: Yeah, I'm terrified of social media. I don't want my private life to be part of my “brand”. I found that there isn’t a platform in Sweden for us artists to talk about what we do and not who we are. It's depressing from our perspective considering how much time we've put into our creations.

J: I have an image of Sweden and mainly Stockholm that people don’t start things, either because they’re afraid or there is some kind of elite that rules the creative space. At least in our minds. Like why isn’t there a platform like this in Sweden?

BJ: There’s this illusion that starting something requires such large machines and resources and contacts. But it is not true. It’s some kind of myth they’ve accepted. It is possible to start a movement all by yourself.

J: But why have we bought into this myth?

BJ: I think people lose patience too quickly. It feels like a product of everything we are going through now with TikTok. If it doesn’t go viral on the first try, it is seen as a failure and then you give up.

There is a lack of consistency, today people want to start at the top of the list because they think it begins there. When I released Cool I didn't have that many streams at all compared to today. Instead I followed Natta (Aka Cleo) on her tour and got to play before her. It was a year and a half of hassle where I got 1500 Swedish crowns per gig. But after that I noticed that people started finding my music. If Cool had been released and gone viral on TikTok would it have been a lot of fun that week, but I could never build anything long-term with it.

J: With all the celebrity talk, you have an international fan base as well. You performed at the SXSW music festival in Texas and your tour this year has Oslo on the list, you have listeners here in Paris and not least the ColorsxStudio (Aka COLORS) show. Would you like to grow more internationally?

BJ: It depends on what it means, I don't put much value in the quantity. How people receive my music is always gonna be a mystery to me as much as I feel blessed. And if another million were as invested as those who listen to me today, I wouldn't say no of course. But a million more who have only heard WIKIFLOW on COLORS wouldn’t feel so appealing. Fine, you are also welcome as uninvested, but I don't strive to be big just for the sake of being big.

J: COLORS is a music platform based in Berlin that is considered one of the biggest live music channels on youtube. You were the first artist to perform in Swedish. What was it like doing the COLORS show?

BJ: It was so cool, COLORS is kind of the only goal I’ve had. They contacted me back in 2018 when I had no new music except for a reproduction of my first album that didn’t turn me on at all. So when I contacted them again two years later, I was so scared that I had blown that chance.

J: It’s quite a big goal that you achieved, how was that?

BJ: The experience of it was one of the funniest and safest spaces I’ve been in professionally but when it was released I felt nothing. And I'm pretty happy about that. I was so present when it happened that I didn't have my focus on the release. I could’ve stared at the comments and views for hours, but this time I really didn’t care.

J: Why is it that?

BJ: I was in a process after the release of DRIFT where I tried actively to get rid of this hole that is one's need for validation. Because you can always get more likes or views and it's such a poison. You get addicted to those kicks, that's why people do Tiktok and shit. We get deceived by the things we can measure, but it’s a pipe dream.

J: Do you have a goal now that is as ambitious as COLORS was to you?

BJ: Well, I died when they contacted me, but after, I also felt that now that I've achieved this, don’t I have any more goals to strive for? There is something about such dreams that become a bit of an anticlimax. Once you're there, it's like, “Yeah this is cool but also exactly how I imagined it to be”. Or you get disappointed because it doesn't happen. After COLORS, I recalibrated how I looked at my visions.

J: What did you come up with?

BJ: In the project I'm working on now, my goal is to feel creative, that I'm doing something progressive and with people I like. That's a much healthier goal. I mean I'm in this for the long run, I will devote my life to culture. Striving for a wholesome existence feels like a fairly reasonable approach.

Text: Julia Eklund

Photography: Julia Eklund & Nora Persson