Award-Winning Freestyler Gramski Visits BIMM
Award-winning freestyle MC, Gramski’s list of boasts is almost as long as his collaborations, which include support slots with A-list stars like Goldie, Scratch Perverts, DJ Marky and many more.
Born in the UK, he began performing at the age of 14 but later moved to Vietnam to hook up with fellow freestylers NOIZEE crew. It was in the bustling city of Hanoi that Gramski made his big debut freestyling on stage. Recalling that fateful night, he explained what happened:
“At that time in Vietnam, freedom of speech wasn’t encouraged at all. We had about 700 people in the club; I was just about to go on stage, when the promoter came up to me and said ‘The police are here, we need to bribe them to not shut us down, you need to keep the crowd in here, entertain them!’. No pressure at all, right?”
Our BIMM Brighton students were treated to the tale during a recent masterclass, where he sat down with BIMM Songwriting graduate and fellow talented freestyler Kat Head, who has played extensively with the group.
“We just spotted this young and enthusiastic talent and put her on stage. Kat was nuts you know, completely crazy. And she killed it,” he quipped.
The pair spoke at length about the art of freestyling and offered plenty of useful advice to our aspiring talents.
“A good freestyle or a good beat needs an audience. Put it out there man,” revealed Gramski. “When you get really good, the biggest compliment is when somebody says ‘come on man, that was written’.”
Kat and Gramski later turned their attention to the “cool, quirky and chilled seaside town” of Brighton, with its optimistic attitude, but rightfully urged our students to venture out of the bubble and to challenge themselves by travelling around and exploring different scenes. In a lighter moment, Gramski joked about certain explicit freestyles and admitted he could no longer rap about Donald Trump anymore.
On writing lyrics, he spoke about his track ‘MC’ and the thought process behind it:
“An MC should be able to freestyle and be able to write a whole track with only M & C, so that’s what I did.”
The masterclass closed with a Q&A from our students, but not before a mind-blowing duet from Gramski and Kat, who performed a rap game called Life Story, based on the audience’s input. The result? One of the most bizarre raps we’ve heard about a strange man named James, who started smoking comic books at the age of 12; his even stranger girlfriend Stacey; and a monkey apocalypse. Inspiring and immensely talented, it was a pleasure to host Gramski and also to welcome back Kat to BIMM Brighton.
