Music

Just days ahead of the eagerly-awaited release of his album debut, we caught up with Irish/English R&B star Maverick Sabre to discuss his backstory, Plan B and... Ballymaloe sauce?

With a unique singing voice and two incredible 2011 singles behind him, the Irish, London-born entertainer Maverick Sabre is primed to take over the airwaves in 2012, having been tipped for stardom this year by the BRIT Awards and iTunes.

Next week sees the release of the Wexford/Hackney artist's first album, 'Lonely Are The Brave', so we were delighted to speak to the rarest of entertainers - an Irish hip hop success story.

JOE: So can you tell us a little about your backstory, as I think that one of the first things people notice about you is that hybrid Irish/British accent of yours.

MS: I was born in Stoke Newington in Hackney in 1990, lived there until I was four or five. My father was born and bred in New Ross and my mother is born and bred in Hackney, with her father being from Kerry.

So when I was about four or five, we moved back to Ireland and I went to school there, grew up there.

I finished school at 16 and when I was 17 I moved back to London by myself. I’ve been living here [London] ever since so my accent’s all over the place to be honest.

JOE: Do you come back to New Ross quite often?

MS: Yeah, yeah. My mother and father are still there and my friends are all still there so I come back as much as I can.

JOE: Mainly to stock up on Tayto and so on, right?

MS: Yeah and Ballymaloe sauce, is it? I love that.

JOE: So it’s been quite a while since ‘The Lost Words’ EP was released and fans are obviously eager to hear the new material from your debut album, ‘Lonely Are The Brave’. What can fans expect?

MS: If you heard the first two singles ‘Let Me Go’ and ‘I Need’, what you heard from the two singles were two different sounds and we’re going to do another new sound for ‘No One’, the next single.

I just want to give people a wide range of the different styles that I do and have an undertone of soulful hip hop too. If you’re a fan of what I’ve been doing then you’ll see that I’m keeping the same essence of it within the album but it has more of a live-based feeling, so hopefully they’ll still like it.

JOE: As we’ve mentioned, your signature is very much your singing voice and speaking voice, I don’t really think that there’s anything out there that sounds like it at the moment. Do you think that maybe there are a lot of contemporary artists who blend into one another and begin to sound the same?

MS: Yeah, I feel like you get one new act and they sound new and different and then you get about 1,500 artists that then get signed up by labels and sound exactly like that.

It happens quite a lot, especially after the last couple of years. I feel there’s a lot of that going on but I can’t speak for any other artist; everyone’s got to put food on the table and clothes on their back. I do feel though that there’s quite a strong sense of that.

JOE: So for you right now, there’s a huge opportunity to give people something that they haven’t heard before?

MS: Yeah, I think there is, definitely.

JOE: I had read that when you came back to London that Plan B was your flatmate for a while, is that right?

MS: Yeah, he helped me out quite a lot. He gave me a lot of studio time, advice when I needed it; he let me sleep in his spare room for a couple of months while I had nowhere to stay. So yeah, he’s a very warm-hearted person and I’ve got a lot of love for him.

JOE: Do you think that having that association with Plan B helped open doors for you or perhaps it meant that people might pre-judge your sound before they had heard you?

MS: No, what it did was it helped me get a lot of contacts and get wiser on the industry, as he gave me a lot of advice. But I don’t think that it opened any more doors or less doors to be honest.

Maverick's latest single 'No One'

Obviously people are going to compare us anyway though because I’m a white lad doing soul from Europe and I think anybody is going to get compared to Plan B anyway because of the success that he’s had doing so.

Any white female singer would have gotten compared to Amy Winehouse if they were doing soul too, you know? I think that people are always going to compare us anyway.

JOE: Someone like yourself, who can rap and sing, we’re seeing more and more of this, with entertainers such as Plan B and Drake achieving huge amounts of success in the UK and the US. Do you think that audiences now expect entertainers to be more of a complete package than they had before?

MS: I’m not sure if they ‘expect’ it, it’s just kind of become the norm now. I think maybe from rappers, they expect rappers to do more than just hip hop now.

Mainstream audiences feel like rappers or rap artists need to do more than just rap over a hip hop beat. It needs to be an electro beat from [producer] David Guetta or it needs to have something else to it, you know?

JOE: 2012 already looks to be a huge year for you, as you were nominated for the BRITS Critic’s Choice Award and featured in the iTunes Artists to Watch 2012. How does that feel - is that an honour to be mentioned or is it a burden due to the level of expectation from audiences that it can create?

MS: No, it’s an honour for me and I don’t feel any pressure or burden from it. The only burden is from myself in the music and the videos that I put out, how I push myself. So no, it’s an honour. It’s nice to have.

JOE: So what would be your general views on the Irish hip hop scene right now? We’re not really seeing a lot of Irish artists breaking through in the UK…

MS: It’s still quite small. The music quality is getting better and better and the acts that are strong already are getting stronger.

I think that it’s time and that people are getting used to the accent, both inside Ireland and outside. Even for me, I did a verse on a tune with Chipmunk and a rapper from North London called Benny Banks and I rapped in my own accent. So I hope that gradually it will break through even more for regional accents, like Mike Skinner’s did for The Streets.

No one would find it difficult to accept an accent like Mike Skinner’s anymore because he broke the mould. So hopefully it will just take time.

JOE: So when can Irish fans expect to see you next?

MS: I’m playing on the 29^th of Feb (at The Academy), but I think I’m coming over to do The Late Late Show in late January.

JOE: Back to Wexford, for a minute. What's your favourite Wexford watering hole?

MS: Oh, lord. Down in Wexford… that’s a hard one. There’s a nice couple of spots in Ross… there’s a nice pub called Pat Nolan’s down on the quay in New Ross and there’s a pub called the Theatre Tavern and another pub called Whelan’s as well. I wouldn’t be drinking too much outside of New Ross.

JOE: Excellent. Thanks for talking to us.

MS: Thank you very much.

Maverick Sabre's debut album, 'Lonely Are The Brave', is released on January 29 through Universal Music. You can find tickets for Maverick's February 29 gig at The Academy here.