Finding your voice in music journalism with Niall Smith

Niall Smith is an award-winning music and culture journalist, broadcaster and founder of The Culture Crypt. His work spans journalism, publishing, radio and cultural archiving, with a focus on documenting and celebrating music, media and contemporary culture.

In this episode, Niall reflects on how writing became a creative outlet from a young age and how a passion for music, media and storytelling led him to build The Culture Crypt into an influential independent publication. He discusses the importance of curiosity, developing your own voice, preserving cultural history and creating opportunities through passion, persistence and community.

Website: https://www.niallsmith.com/

Website: The Culture Crypt

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Transcript

Matt: Hello and welcome back to the Teach Inspire Create podcast. I'm Matt Mosley, chief Examiner for Art and Design at UAL Awarding Body. In this podcast, I speak to a fascinating [00:00:15] range of people who work all across the creative arts about how they have made their way into their current roles. They're impactful teaching experiences and the people and things that inspire them.

Matt: Through these conversations, we hope to show you that there are endless ways to belong in the [00:00:30] creative world today. My guest is Niall Smith, an award-winning music and culture journalist and founder of the Culture Crypt. In this episode, I'm gonna be talking to Niall about how writing became his outlet from a very early age, [00:00:45] his deep passion and care for the archiving of the best of pop culture, and how he built a brand and magazine in a time of social media and AI.

Matt: Hi, Niall. [00:01:00] Yeah, well thanks for joining us on the Teach Inspire Create podcast. We usually kick things off by asking our interviewee to wind things back, maybe to the point where creativity came into your psyche.

Niall: You're gonna laugh at me though. You're gonna laugh at me. So, funnily [00:01:15] enough, I actually started writing, I started off with Wikipedia, growing up with type one diabetes.

Niall: Sometimes I'd wanna be out there with all my friends and my peers, you know, boisterous playing sports, whatever. But a lot of the time I spent my time indoors. I had a very outgoing mom and a very indoorsy dad, right? So [00:01:30] I was kind of split between two worlds. And often when I found I was inside, I was naughty or being silly, there'd be no phones, there'd be no video games.

Niall: But I did have my laptop. And one of the great things I got from that was it enabled me to just read and research all things I was interested in. [00:01:45] So when I wasn't studying they'd be like, cool, let me look up this rap album, this shoe, this movie. And I just like started from a very young age, just built this data bank of knowledge just very passively. 

Matt: So can you tell me a little bit more about what it was about Wikipedia that interested you?

Niall: It was two things [00:02:00] actually. One, the fact that it was just an open resource of like knowledge of everything, whether it's a movie, an album, a song. But what was really important is I always knew that

Niall: not everything was real on them, or there was an element of grey and I always wanted to investigate that. Like, cool, what's real? [00:02:15] What's sourced? Where are the sources? How valid is this information? I always ask myself those questions from a very young age, and then that led me to often then editing it.

Niall: So the writing actually started off with editing it where I had maybe noticed erroneous facts about a song or a movie, or. An artist I liked put an [00:02:30] album and then I didn't have a page yet and I very covertly kind of taught myself basic HTML in the backend. And to this very day, some I added to and some I actually built from scratch are still there to this very day.

Matt: That's mad, isn't it? So you were sort of developing those research [00:02:45] skills, the deep dive stuff about. You know, really finding out about things and topics that were particularly interesting to you though. So they were the things that were kind of inspiring you.

Niall: Yeah, it was like a Tribe Called Quest, Dizzee Rascal, Dr.

Niall: [00:03:00] Dre, LL Cool J. American sitcoms - I used to watch Martin and the Waynes Bros. And used to absorb that knowledge. So that kind of became a safe haven and a solace, which kind of led me to write. The writing block was set and then [00:03:15] media preservation archiving came into play a bit more as well.

Matt: Thinking about writing as a skill. How did you develop your writing style or your confidence in that?

Niall: I wasn't very good at the start, I don't think. I think I just tried to write how I spoke,

Matt: right?

Niall: And I [00:03:30] would emulate sentence structures of how I think it should sound. So I always used to use a lot of big words at a very young age that felt really theatrical and dramatic, but it probably wasn't. Emulating other Wikipedia articles, journals, DVD BLBs.[00:03:45]

Niall: But then from there I realized that I could kind of bake in my own kind of pop culture into a way that's accessible and relatable. And that's kind of what's developed my writing style to this very day. Like I was interviewing like this r&b singer called Elmiene, [00:04:00] I pulled out like a random reference to like this obscure anime from 2005 where I drew parallels between his larger than life persona

Niall: 'cause he loves video games, but he's also this grand, tender r&b singer. And I kind of drew parallels to this cartoon where this little [00:04:15] fox anthropomorphic kid transforms into this metal-clad titan. So I would embed these things in my writing. I'd always wanna say I want to write just like myself.

Niall: I want it to be both accessible but also so distinct to myself that no one else could, could do that.

Matt: That's [00:04:30] cool. 'Cause people who may be at the beginning of these kinds of journeys, one of the fears is that there's this big pressure on themselves to sort of immediately have their own clear identity about how they do things. But actually what you are saying is that it can be really [00:04:45] beneficial to really understand how your influences are doing something and sort of emulate that and then gradually building your own identity on top. 

Niall: Yeah, a hundred percent. Like a lot of my style early on was spent watching YouTube [00:05:00] album reviews and clocking how they talk about albums and okay, what is a high hat and what does an executive producer do? I learned a lot by just asking more questions when questions were answered.

Niall: And then that kind of builds this network of like branching antennas of [00:05:15] other ideas. And I make a data bank of words, and then I would almost treat it like a puzzle, like a wrapper. Like how can I work some of these words into my writing again, in a way that makes sense, but also is like a bit esoteric from like what you would

Matt: And some of that, I mean, that speaks to some of [00:05:30] those archivalist skills that you were talking about.

Matt: You mentioned media archival, you know?

Niall: Yeah.

Matt: What, what is that?

Niall: I think it's the idea, especially in the digital age, that nothing is promised. The reels you see, the movies you watch, the media we consume in an [00:05:45] ever changing digital landscape. You know, it's been digital till ‘22. Now it's digital and ai. So it's a whole ‘nother ball game, right?

Matt: Yeah.

Niall: But it's the idea that nothing is promised, and that's fine. You know, not everything is built to stay. Not everything is gonna last longer than us, but I think it's looking at things that are important, relevant, or even just personal to oneself and thinking, how can I keep this for myself irrespective of a bandwidth,

Matt: Right.

Niall: And algorithm or legislation.

Matt: Okay, so you're, so you are constantly building a vault [00:06:15] of important, valuable, kind of influential media. How does that kind of work?

Niall: I have an extensive, like CV collection, vinyl collection, CVR collection, USBs, hard drives, right? I'm physical, I'm digital, I'm cloud.

Matt: [00:06:30] You were across, you're across it all.

Niall: Across the board. But I think I get it from my dad. My dad was big into vinyl and DVDs and CDs. One thing my dad really instilled into me was you can watch a movie on DVD and then watch it on television. And they've edited it.

Matt: Yeah.

Niall: Or he would even tell me about these, this was this Black British sketch comedy show called The Real McCoy.

Niall: And back in the nineties he used to tape it on VHS and watch it back just for his own personal. He wasn't thinking of anything grand. He used to tape cartoons on Jets and Fox Kids and Disney Channel for me. But what he would say to me is up [00:07:00] until the streaming era, and even since then, some of these shows - they never got a DVD.

Niall: They never got a VHS and then they never went on to an accessible streamer. Some shows

Matt: They would get lost.

Niall: Yeah, exactly. And the real McCoy specifically is the best example of what [00:07:15] media archiving means to me because when I was about 13, I found the videotapes of the loft when we were tidying some stuff out.

Niall: And my dad, he has this VHS to DVD converter and I was like, cool, let's do a digital transfer because you see tapes don't last forever from the real McCoy show. He took the whole season, by the way, [00:07:30] on the two three hour tape, ads included. And we did the digital transfer to DVD.

Niall: I ripped the DVD on my old HP laptop to an MP4 and I was like, lemme just stick it on YouTube. It was December 2013 and within two weeks I had 30,000 views on [00:07:45] the show. People were like, I haven't seen this in years. Where did this come from? I'll PayPal you, yo, where is this?

Niall: Where is this? 

Matt: Right. Okay.

Niall: You know, and I did multiple seasons. It got so well to a point where, at first, the BBC said they never were gonna put the real [00:08:00] McCoy out. The audience wasn't wide enough to facilitate a DVD before streaming. And then in the digital age, the archives were a bit messy.

Niall: “We dunno where it is. Is there an audience?” And I think one of the lead actors from the show died and it was the first time they went in the archives, obviously when they do montages and clicks. Sure, yeah. They presented some of the show in, you know, in footage. That was, was, was really good.

Niall: But then after a while, I think in tandem with that, I uploaded, I think three seasons of that show. And then I kept getting copyright struck, oh, 'cause I think they spoof some other British sitcoms and ads. Okay. And I was like, oh. [00:08:30] So what they've now realized with now 50,000 views behind me is they found their audience.

Niall: So all the videos kind of got covertly taken down. I didn't think anything of it. And about five years later this comedy organization who was working with the BBC reached out to me and they were like, [00:08:45] Hey, you used to do a YouTube channel back in the day, didn't you? You had the real McCoy. And I'm like, how does he even know that?

Niall: 'cause it's not even active anymore. Yeah. And he's like, oh, well we're actually working on a preservation project to get it on the iPlayer and whatever. Is there any chance you can send me the tapes just to cross-reference their archives with what you have. Maybe we've missed something, maybe there's been some degradation.

Niall: Can you send us your tapes? Lo and behold, about six months later, it's on BBC iPlayer.

Matt: Amazing. Was that kind of a pivotal moment in the sense of instilling in you that it can be our duty to kind of safeguard these [00:09:15] things and to talk about these cultural reference points that don't get the attention that they deserve?

Niall: Of course. 'cause I mean, at the end of the day, I think archiving is important 'cause a part of it is like, cool if there is a demand, you know that studios and media heads should, can and will follow. But [00:09:30] sometimes it's like people haven't been given that opportunity. Other Black British shows like the Desmond's had their due on Channel 4 and Trouble.

Niall: The real McCoy didn't.[00:09:45]

Matt: How did sort of writing feature in your kind of school era, did you have the opportunity to explore much of what you were interested in in that space?

Niall: Yeah. I remember at uni, again, this is after the Wikipedia pages and after [00:10:00] all that BBC stuff. For one of my uni courses, I had the opportunity to write an album review for one of my courses for NME, or writing it in the NME style for one of my journalism assignments.

Niall: I didn’t get a good grade. I even got, I even tried to reach out to NME as well to [00:10:15] get advice for this piece. I was also really obsessed with Complex media as well, Complex in America. So I would often try and write another album review in the style of something like Complex for an assignment.

Niall: In my second year I was doing a media law module and then this creative writing journalism module. [00:10:30] And the irony of both of those things is I was okay. I wasn't great. I wasn't terrible. But I think I was confined to what the 60-year-old lecturer, 70-year-old lecturer thought what music journalism could, would or should be.

Niall: But I knew I'd read enough [00:10:45] Pitchfork or Complex or Dazed to know how it should feel from a reader’s perspective. And then the irony is my first job or internship outside of uni I worked at Complex. And then I also have been in a freelance NME writer for - coming up five, six years now. And that [00:11:00] to me is crazy

Niall: 'cause I used to collect the NME magazine after school in the HMVs, they used to give them out for free. And I used to watch Complex media on YouTube, religiously along with that Channel AKA and stuff as a kid. And then those kind of crystallised together with Complex UK, learning from [00:11:15] the great Joseph Patterson.

Matt: So that's been quite the journey to then actually see your words published in these

Matt: great magazines. 

Niall: Even all these years gone by and it's still a trip to me. Still a massive trip.

Matt: Just thinking about those early music influences then, so [00:11:30] who were you listening to, who was inspiring you?

Niall: So it's a full prompt answer. So my dad - big into r&b, soul, some really random electronic music as well he would put me onto, but he loved Faith Evans and [00:11:45] a lot of the ninties r&b and then a lot of, he had the seventies and eighties on vinyl before that.

Matt: Yeah.

Niall: It's an insane collection. By the way, he wasn't super versed in hip hop, but he also had Outkast and Tupac and some core fundamentals. He actually said the first song he played when I was born was [00:12:00] Tupac's,California Love. That's what he said.

Matt: Kicked you off on a banger.

Niall: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly. And then my mom. Had a sort of similar taste, but she also liked a lot of pop of the time as well. So she liked Justin Timberlakes. She had some Kelis she had Joss Stone, [00:12:15] some more pop leaning music. And then my brother, he's um, seven years older than me, so he had a lot of the MTV based stuff of the day and Channel U at the time.

Niall: So it was

Matt: nice.

Niall: I remember going to Woolworths and buying Dizzee Rascal’s Dream single with him. 

Matt: Between them you had a pretty good coverage of all archive. Yeah. 

Niall: Of, you know, of those big influences. Yeah. And so music was kind of just on all the time. 

Matt: Was it in the house?

Niall: Yeah. Being in Jamaican, my dad, Hi-Fi sound system, he had the, the loudest, loudest speakers.

Matt: Yeah.

Niall: Known to man. No one was necessarily driven to the arts, but the arts surrounded me, so it was bound to catch on.

Matt: What did you study at university? Music Journalism.

Niall: Just journalism. 

Matt: Journalism, sorry. 

Niall: Yeah, yeah. Did news to secure all the skills and then diversify later rather than kind of pigeonholing [00:13:00] myself.

Niall: And that was what I thought in my first year. And then my second year, COVID was taking over. No internships are happening at all. And I always remember the quote, that idea that's never left me is if you work on something you love or that you like, you'll never work a day in your life. So I was kind of [00:13:15] looking at everything.

Niall: I wanted to do journalism to be a presenter. Again, I can talk for England, let's put it to good use. But then I'm kind of like, oh, wait a minute. Something kind of hit me. I was in my flat with a good friend of mine at my very first year of uni and I was like, I want to create. An IP, an entity separate from myself.

Niall: 'cause I wasn't having a great [00:13:30] job at pitching and, and getting out of the uni bubble and getting work experience outside. I was like, what about if I make up a pseudo brand of sorts and I just, you know, give it a name. And I was, and the, and the goal, there's only one goal. It was like, cool, let's make a name where there's no underscores or dots [00:13:45] or at, on that social media because you're not professional If there's a dot or an under an at, if there's too many.

Niall: Break clauses. So I was like let me think of a name. I was like, culture is kind of cool 'cause I wanted to encompass pop culture. Landed on The Culture Crypt. It kind of sat there for a good six [00:14:00] months to a year before I really did nothing with it. But I was really obsessed with this rap group from the 90’s called Organized Konfusion with Prince Po and Pharoahe Monch.

Niall: I remember at the time the album wasn't on streaming, I think it is now. So I felt like I was cool. I had the really [00:14:15] cool indie album that, you know, you guys couldn't stream. 'cause at this point, streaming was everywhere. And I was like, let me actually use this. An opportunity to just write about Organized Konfusion.

Niall: And if you actually scroll down to the very bottom of the Culture Crypt page, you'll still find it to this day. And I just wrote about it, here's why they're cool. [00:14:30] We had 70 followers and I was like, cool, lemme just keep doing this to test my pen. Because I was like, I'm going into my third year soon, I'm young, I'm a third of the way through second year.

Niall: Maybe if I just keep writing about the things I like, kind of pulling on the coattails of my Wikipedia days, maybe my journalism pen will get stronger. 'cause as I said, [00:14:45] I wasn't the best at it at the time. So lemme just keep writing, keep writing, keep writing, and then obviously lockdown’s, you know, in full swing.

Niall: And then that's like, oh, actually I have all the time in the world to do this. So I just start posting, posting, posting. And then before I knew it, I was 70 followers. 200 followers, 300 followers, and this is day [00:15:00] to day, week to week. And I said, cool, if we get 500 followers, I'll make a website.

Niall: It's a real brand. And then we hit 500 followers. I was like, damn, okay. I've gotta do it now. Gotta do it.

Niall: Bear in mind, no web development experience outside of just bits and pieces I’d done on my course, but I was like, I think I can do it. You know, I taught myself HTML. It can't be that hard.

Niall: So I taught myself the backend of how to develop the website, develop logos I did in Canva and Photoshop. And I spent a good couple months just designing the website and uploading a lot of the preexisting Culture Crypt content on the backend from Instagram, extending some of it, writing some of it, formatting some of it.

Niall: So when the website went live, it wouldn't have an article, it would have a wealth of content just from the jump. And there's also that doing that with the Instagram. Lo and behold, some people reach out to me thinking it's a brand bigger than one person. Like, oh, I'd love to write with you guys.

Niall: You guys post really cool stuff. And that's where Janan, one of my closest collaborators to this day, comes from. She joined from the jump. And again, she's East African, so being a black woman was really nice. 'cause I was like, if this [00:16:00] is a brand, it can't just be what Niall Smith likes. There's a wider scope in mind.

Niall: Let's have wider voices, slants opinions, things that maybe I can't cover. 'cause I knew a lot. I didn't know everything. And Janan came on board and she helped me just write back and forth, back and forth. Then I get my internship at Complex and [00:16:15] everything stops 'cause I'm just like cool, in work mode.

Niall: And then it kind of becomes like a Marty Supreme Tennis match where Culture Crypt took a hiatus. I'm learning everything at Complex, I'm learning what PR is, I'm learning what press shots are, da da, and then I'm like, cool. And actually let me, while I'm at Complex, let me just reach out to other brands and see, [00:16:30] let me leverage this monumentous platform and see if I can get a byline elsewhere.

Niall: Boom. Notion comes in, Clash comes in, NME comes in, and I'm slowly building up not just my pen, but how to write for different tones with different style guides and different brands. And I'm doing [00:16:45] four to six Complex news stories a day, three to four days a week. So I'm just writing a gargantuan amount.

Niall: And it's not just music. 'cause we would be covering COVID new stories. Sports stories, any breaking news that had occurred and then [00:17:00] covering music. And then I'm also writing on other brands as well. So I was just, and bear in mind, this all predates the AI boom as well. So this is - all you have is, you know, maybe a Grammarly here or a Quill Bot or a spell checker.

Niall: But you know, you're just...

Matt: Yeah, it's all coming from you. You, [00:17:15] yeah. You are the creator. 

Niall: Yeah. And then before I knew it, I was like, cool, I've written for a fair few brands now. I was like, lemme go back to Culture Crypt and kind of apply what

Matt: I love. Yeah. Take all that knowledge and all that sort of experience and now repurpose that.

Matt: I mean, one of the most interesting and [00:17:30] important messages I think that you were giving then, because I think the temptation is when you are at the start of something, is to look out and try to write for someone else. But actually through writing about the things that you love and the things that you're passionate about and things that [00:17:45] authentically sort of matter to you and you're excited about following that, the kind of the world will take notice.

Niall: Yeah, yeah. Massively. Yeah. And it helped that I had great mentorship as well. It was obviously JP at Complex and also a guy called Patrick Fennelly, who's a company called Help Musicians now, I think. 'cause he used to work [00:18:00] with MTV, so he had massive media connects and he offered a lot of that writing development, which actually helped me get my complex internship.

Niall: 'cause he helped me write a long form article that I then sent to the Complex editor and he helped me structure it and be like, this is how you do long [00:18:15] form, a thousand plus word feature writing. And so it was almost like, it was like jumping through hoops each time. And then I was like, cool, let me make a digital magazine, Culture Crypt’s a magazine.

Niall: You can't call yourself a magazine if you're not a magazine. Let me make a digital cover. And then me and Janan teamed up and another collaborator, [00:18:30] a super long-term team member called Khurram. He's now our fashion director, head of styling and what have you. And he helped me do some of the creative, Photoshop and, and development of this digital cover with this guy who made clothes.

Niall: It was a brand called 4TF. We put him on the cover, we [00:18:45] shot it in Tooting, near my house, in Tooting, in Broadway Market and whatever. He had some models modeling in his clothes because it, I wanted to emulate the Source and XXL. Also, things I collected at the time, I had other articles and stories and old style magazines, these are about other stories you can [00:19:00] read and I made the “digital issues” if it was a print issue with when you click the link in the buyer, you get a wealth of stories that are all connected to the digital issue.

Niall: As well as the cover story, and I wanted it to feel like a real magazine and it went super well and I was like, oh no. What am I gonna do now? [00:19:15]

Matt: Gotta make it an actual printed magazine.

Niall: Yeah, yeah. What am I gonna do now? I had left Complex at this point. I was doing some of my junior A&R work. I did some PR work as well, so I was learning some other skills outside.

Matt: You’re getting really broad experience across all the -

Niall: Yeah, late ‘22, early ‘23. I think Khurram came to my house, we were [00:19:30] just hanging out, just having fun. And I was like, why don't you make a print magazine? It just, it almost felt one of those silly, high-minded pitches. Yeah, and we can make it modern and we can do this, and we can do it like Dazed and have four different cover stars, but then also do it like Source and XXL and have this kind of styling and we'll have this [00:19:45] kind of ad and it’ll have hundreds of pages and it'll be super glossy.

Niall: It'll look better than everyone else has done. And we were just talking rubbish. And we were just like, yeah, we're gonna make this happen. And we mapped out a mind of all the people we wanted to work with. Take four different cover stars from four different disciplines and give them the print magazine, haute couture treatment that you wouldn't expect from someone who is still ascending.

Niall: Ascending to the point where they’re at the precipice of blowing, but they're not quite blown yet. So the four people we chose was a singer called Natanya, who's now super famous. She's co-signed by [00:20:15] SZA, Doechii, Ravyn Lenae, super, super talented. She's doing her thing now. We were like, we’re a magazine,

Niall: we need a model. So we got this model influencer girl. She's super sick. Her name's Ray Jpeg. She's really incredible with styling and clothes. She makes [00:20:30] incredible content to this day. I said, we need a rapper, right? So we've got Zino Vinci, and then we were like, we wanna do something a bit wild for our fourth cover, which we kind of 

Niall: left as an after the original. That could be a group cover. The group cover we’ll come back to that. And then I remember that day, I [00:20:45] sat with Khurmaan and was like, let's start the outreach. Let's start the comms. 'cause I'd met Natanya briefly at an event, I think months prior. So that's how I was introduced to her.

Niall: So the Culture Crypt page went dormant after posting consistently for up until two years. At that point, we're not gonna say what we're doing, but quietly in the background, we're [00:21:00] gonna be shooting these four covers, learning how to do editorial shoots, both producers, creative directors, dealing with lighting, dealing with PR.

Niall: Over the course of 11 months, we worked in the background and then it almost out of nowhere, the page literal, she went from our first digital cover and then just boom Natanya. [00:21:15] I said, oh, that's an incredible magazine cover what next? Boom. A Ray JPEG. Boom Zino Vinci. And these covers looked insane because the graphic design was really colorful and it looked nothing like what other magazines were going on at the time.

Matt: Yeah.

Niall: And it went really well. I was like, oh, so when's the next one? And I'm like, well, we just, we just spent, [00:21:30]

Matt: That's the problem about making something good, is everyone wants more of it.

Niall: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was crazy. It was crazy.[00:21:45]

Matt: In terms of someone who's listening to this who might be thinking, I'd like to do something like this, what are some of the key skills do you need? I mean, it sounds like from you, you've got this incredible [00:22:00] energy and ambition and no fear in terms of just reaching out to people. Is that the case or?

Matt: Have you learned these skills over the years?

Niall: It's yes and no, though. You gotta have tough skin 'cause not every request and not every ambitious idea is a yes. [00:22:15] There are a lot of no’s along the way, whether it's interviews that almost happen on the day and then things, you know, don't pan out as expected.

Niall: It's, it's a lot of. You need tough skin. That's the first thing. But I also think what's really important is starting with what you know, so 'cause now [00:22:30] when you look at a Culture Crypt shoot, we have haute couture, luxury fashion and editorial shoots. I actually just started with what I know.

Niall: I didn't actually have a grand plan. Yeah. Because I thought it'd just be cool to mix a Cortez Air Max with FUBU and RockWare and [00:22:45] Avirex. So I start what I know, and then the stepping stone from that is then expanding the shoots, expanding the scope. It's gradual growth, I would say.

Matt: Yeah. Have big ambitions. But sort of also be realistic in a way. 

Niall: Yeah, yeah. For sure. For sure.

Matt: Yeah, I mean that's [00:23:00] fantastic advice. 'cause I think sometimes people really aspire to do something, but it feels, it feels so far away from where they are at that starting point. It just feels unachievable. But actually, if you take incremental, consistent steps towards it, you can.

Matt: You [00:23:15] can get there.

Niall: Yeah. Massively.

Matt: And now that. Culture Crypt is of a size where it's on lots of people's radar and people are coming to you saying, can we write for you? How do you choose the stories you want to tell?

Niall: So this is bad of us. The old me [00:23:30] would often try and either overedit. Or basically say, have the idea that I want every article, no matter if it's a junior writer with, you know, who needs tutelage or a senior writer to have the same spec, the same scope, the same.

Niall: I wanted everything to be as perfect as it could [00:23:45] be. I used to treat other people's articles like they were my own and I would mill over every line, every sentence. Sometimes I might, you know, put my hands up. I might have injected too much of my own personality into it.

Matt: Okay.

Niall: But then Davina comes on board.

Niall: She's our deputy and digital editor [00:24:00] and she's very much instilled the idea of being more selective now in terms of what commissions we accept. Does it align to the brand? 'cause sometimes it would be trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Whereas now we're trying to marry those two ideas of trying to give everyone a fair shot.

Niall: 'cause I know what it's like[00:24:15] to be -

Matt: But that's a commendable and worthy intention, isn't it? Because obviously there was a time where you were knocking on the doors, of course, asking for an opportunity, a chance to write something, and now you are that person who has the gift to let someone have something published [00:24:30] with you.

Niall: It’s so weird.

Matt: It's yeah,

Niall: so weird. Yeah.

Matt: It's taking a bit of getting used to?

Niall: Yeah, no, massively. So it's really nice to have a team where someone like Davina can really take that delicate hand and be like, Hey, maybe we could try this one. And especially with AI now, that's a big thing that we're trying to be a deterrent of where, you know, if you're gonna [00:24:45] use ai, let it be for a social caption or to refine human invention.

Niall: But sometimes you get a lot of clunky AI journalism and the telltale sign is the AI algorithmic model. I've realized after writing for so many years, it's so simple to spot. It will always say, isn't [00:25:00] X, it's Y. It wasn't reinvention, it was this. It wasn't a door, it was a whatever. And quite often one of the biggest challenges I have now isn't accepting commissions or not having good ideas.

Niall: It's more so like if you wanna write, let it come from yourself. 'cause again, like I say, writing what you know and [00:25:15] putting yourself on the paper is what matters. It's not the grammar and whatever can be worked out after the fact, but I wanna know what you think. And what you have to say, and I think that's one of the biggest hurdles to wrangle with now.

Matt: Now that you are where you are at with your career, how do you choose what [00:25:30] you want to write about and how do you stay in touch with the things that influence you? 

Niall: Ooh, that's a hard question. I feel like I don't write as much as I used to. Again, there's a lot of overseeing. We literally did a shoot a few weeks back with this American talent and it was super incredible.

Niall: [00:25:45] So I was the shoot producer, PR liaison. I'm then commissioning the journalism for another writer I think might fit. So sometimes it is creative endeavors in other ways, and sometimes I've had gigs to present on Rinse FM, which has been incredible. Or being on talking [00:26:00] panels or hosting events.

Niall: That's been really cool. But I think for me, if I'm gonna write about something, which actually, in the latest print magazine we just dropped, I've written quite a few articles in there, and some of them I think are very reflective of the kid I used to be. Because remembering who you [00:26:15] are, who used to be and kind of what gets you outta bed in the morning.

Matt: Nice. So you are sort of using the writing to ground yourself again.

Niall: Yeah. Yeah. As I mentioned earlier, I'm type one diabetic. So getting there in 2008 was quite traumatic as a kid. So a lot of kids' memories are just [00:26:30] one big blurb. But my memory of childhood is a lot sharper than - it's very palpable and a way I kind of channel that is not to just navel gaze and be nostalgic for nostalgia’s sake, but kind of pull on that and mix the archiving with the lived experience I have.

Niall: And I wrote an incredible [00:26:45] story on Tracy Beaker, believe it or not. So

Matt: What a show.

Niall: What a show. Exactly. What a show. So I grew up with this r&b singer that my mom used to play called Keisha White. And I remember hearing it, my mom played the CD today. She even had a Bob Marley feature on her album.

Niall: It was rad. I heard it all the time. Turns out the B [00:27:00] side is the Tracy Beaker theme song. My mind's just blowing. And I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a. This singer I've grown up loving and enjoying and whatever. First of all, the album's way more obscure than I thought it was.

Niall: Second of all, you sung the Tracy Beaker theme song? It's actually a great lesson for what I [00:27:15] think is journalistic anchoring. Why do we care? Why are you reading this story? So I would love to write about Keisha White, but again, unfortunately due to things that had gone on. Is that necessarily clear to someone who's just picking up the magazine?

Niall: Obviously we have a diverse audience, [00:27:30] so that's contextualized through the Tracy Beaker theme song. So on the actual page of the mag, our incredible illustrator, James has like hand drawn, her name in the Tracy Beaker style. It's called The Story of Keisha White, like the story of Tracy Beaker. And I'm able to kind of chart her career, my relationship with [00:27:45] her music and the incredible career she's had since like, she just performed at the Jazz Cafe, she worked with Sade's producer.

Niall: Yeah. This incredible story that people just wouldn't know. But I really had to be persistent and reach out to her and she was very hard to get a hold of, believe it or not.

Matt: Yeah. 

Niall: I got to, again, in part of [00:28:00] myself, part of my archiving, kind of slant and also tell a really interesting story.

Matt: Well, you've got that kind of really great blend of tenacity to pursue it, but then that

Matt: bit of knowledge that shows that person that you are genuinely [00:28:15] invested in a way that's more than just, I've gotta write an article about something, but actually this is something that I'm genuinely interested in. And I know this stuff and it means something to me.

Niall: I thought about pitching it to other brands, but I was like, no, I'm gonna keep it for Culture Crypt.

Niall: And I'm so glad because the page design and the colors, and we even have little kids illustrations to represent the Dumping Ground. I'm super proud of it. And it's so cool being your own brand, 'cause it's like I don't have to worry about a media company and selling that pitch.I sold it to myself, cool, we're gonna do it.

Matt: You mentioned earlier, Rinse FM. Could you tell us a little bit about what you're doing over there?

Niall: Yeah, so I have my own radio show. It's really cool. Again, I'm not a DJ, I know I wanna learn a bit more. I wanna dive onto the decks and develop my skills. But more than anything, it's just an opportunity for me to play really cool songs I like - rare songs.

Niall: I can have an interview on that. If there's a new artist I'm really messing with, I can have 'em on the show. It's just my opportunity to have an hour free to just hijack the radio. 

Matt: Where you have total creative control over it.

Niall: Yeah. Play whatever I want. As long as it's clean, of course, [00:29:15] you know, play whatever I want.

Niall: I played some real obscure track. I played an MJ Cole, Jill Scott remix. I've played the first song from Marsha Ambrosius of Floetry from ‘97. That's one of my, again, think I'm digging in my own vault and just spinning 'em on radio or talking [00:29:30] to the Queen of Rhythm and grime, r&b and Grime.

Niall: Katie Powell, I play some of her music. I get to play just so much cool stuff that maybe isn't right for an article, you know?

Matt: Yeah. I just wanted to ask a question a bit, uh, if I may, about, about [00:29:45] magazines. What's it like printing a magazine these days and, and what are the challenges for sort of sustaining that?

Niall: It's really expensive.

Matt: Yeah.

Niall: I think I set out to make it annually. And also from the perspective of making it big and [00:30:00] textured to the point where it doesn't feel flippant, where the content's out of date within a week or two months. To have a lot of evergreen stories, stories that - let's say it's a movie anniversary in their retrospective or an interview with an artist that people really, really love or a think piece on how people really love.

Niall: [00:30:15] Basically trying to make it as evergreen as humanly possible. So that's the first thing in terms of making sure that print costs makes sense. And the second thing is I treat it like Bitcoin and how I used to treat websites and [00:30:30] logging and archiving back in the day. What I mean by that, you've gotta invest in it now because a magazine might be cool today and it's got the rarity curve, isn't it?

Niall: Things are cool when they release and then they might falter in popularity and then they might come back up again in 10, 20, 30 years. It's the rarity curve because when [00:30:45] things are present in the moment, we don't think it's gonna go away. I remember my dad had bought this r&b album from a group he really liked, it had a really terrible cover art.

Niall: And we thought it was bootleg, but it wasn't. And then years later, people on Reddit are talking about, oh, this album's lost media. Does anyone have a copy of it? And I'm like, oh yeah, I do. I've actually got two copies.

Matt: Yeah. [00:31:00]

Niall: Or the Chappelle show. The music jump off episode only aired once.

Niall: Never hit DVD, never hit streaming. I literally set my laptop up for a month to download it because I was like, I'm gonna get it. Yeah. And now I've helped preserve that. To me, it's the rarity curve. So I treat magazines the same. The magazine isn't cool now, but don't forget the [00:31:15] Source magazine with.

Niall: D’Angelo or a tribe called Quest was probably £2.99 back in the day.

Matt: Yeah.

Niall: You could flip that for a hundred pounds on eBay in the future. So the rarity curve is the answer to it all. It'll all make sense in the end.

Matt: Well, it sounds like you are brilliant at is seeing the value in these [00:31:30] future things and kind of

Niall: Yeah.

Matt: Collecting and archiving and holding onto it.

Niall: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think again, it starts with the passion of my dad always telling me you can't rely on these bandwidths. And best example, Disney Plus did a reboot of a TV show called Willow, which I've not seen. I think [00:31:45] it's based on an eighties film.

Niall: They put production into it. They had it on Disney Plus, I think they said the cost of viewership was way lower than the price that it took to make the show. So they just took it off Disney Plus. Bear in mind, it has no DVD release, it has no Blu-ray release. You can't watch it on another [00:32:00] streaming service. They didn't auction it off to another, they just took it off Disney Plus. It doesn't exist.

Niall: So how does one watch that show? I used to watch a TV show called The Parkers back in the day on Trouble. Spin off of Moesha that aired in the UK on Sky Television, back in the day. To this day, you [00:32:15] cannot - unless HBO max changes things soon - you cannot legally stream that show in the uk.

Niall: Yeah. Without using a VPN or something. It's crazy. We, we really don't know what legalities prevent us from seemingly mundane things.

Matt: It's so interesting if you are sort of passive or not knowledgeable to [00:32:30] these things, you just end up consuming what's dished up in front of you. 

Matt: You don't question it, and then you start to realize the things that you are denied. So in your busy schedule, do you ever get time to just listen or watch things? And if so, what are you [00:32:45] currently listening to? What are you watching?

Niall: Yeah, I do actually. I think that's super important for the process. It can't always be work.

Niall: That's another thing. I feel like there's a ceiling on everything. Sometimes I'll dispense creative ideas with Wax Poetics or with Dazed based on whether I consumed it at that moment or what made sense for the [00:33:00] brief. But I realize that you can very quickly run yourself dry if you don't live more life, go more places, watch more things, explore more things.

Niall: Blog for new music and I'm always doing it. I've been doing it since I was maybe seven, eight years old. Some of the things I'm really enjoying right [00:33:15] now. Al Pacino movies. Love Carlito’s Way. Um, Donnie Brasco. Yeah. I also love Robert Deniro Midnight Run. King of Comedy. Yeah, love it. Really enjoying that.

Niall: Some David Lynch stuff as well. So Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. What else am I watching? [00:33:30] Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, Babylon. My friends have been telling me to watch that for ages. Damien Chazelle and Brad Pitt, I believe. That's the movie side of things.

Niall: Other things? Oh, House Party’s recently had a Criterion release. Incredible. [00:33:45] African American, hip hop driven film. And my dad just had it on DVD. I didn't think anything of it. I watched it a billion times and now it's in the Criterion Collection. Wow. House Party. I'm not surprised, but I'm also, you know, I'm surprised.

Niall: That's really cool. So

Matt: Is that Kid ‘n Play? 

Niall: Yeah, Kid ‘n Play. [00:34:00] Yeah. With the haircut. With, with the high tops. Yeah, with the high tops.

Matt: Amazing. So the way you talk about stuff is fantastic. Like you said, sort of like cultural crate digging that you do on all of this stuff.

Niall: I didn't even explain my best one yet.

Niall: There's a website called 94 Hip Hop. This hip hop museum [00:34:15] used to be an illegal website. You could download cool rap albums. It has since transformed obviously into a museum or vault of super high quality preservations of rare hip hop tapes and albums and whatever. And when I was 16, 

Niall: After J Dilla had long, long after he passed, [00:34:30] he had an album that was unreleased. It was called Page A. It was due for release in 2003. And this album’s spin was, he was gonna rap, so not produce. He was gonna rap other producers' beats like Kanye West at the time, and the Knocks, I think. And he went with Bilal.

Niall: It's an incredible album. Got shelved and there was a [00:34:45] lot of that promo bootlegs of it floating on the interweb. I remember I found a copy of it, 'cause it, at this point it's very hard to find and I believe it was hard to find because Mass Appeal records were gearing up to release an official version of it and I managed to find it.

Niall: I got it posted on that hip hop blog, which I love. [00:35:00] It’s an information resource just to study things. And if you go onto the link to this very day, it was posted March 21st, 2016. It says, listen, the unreleased J Dilla promo album, thanks to Niall. That is my career. 'cause I've really got decades in this.

Niall: [00:35:15] And this predates Complex. It predates Dazed, it predates interviews. If I wasn't doing this for work, I would be doing it for fun.

Matt: Props for it, man. That's great. If there's a young aspiring writer, creative someone out [00:35:30] there at the start of their journey, is there something that they could do today, an idea, or something that can set them on their journey?

Niall: I would say try and write 400 words, not even like 500. Just write 400 words, 300 words on [00:35:45] the thing, the entertainment, the news story, whatever it is that makes you tick the most in the world. Write about that and experiment with it and test yourself. 'cause sometimes with journalism of writing, you're trying to write to a brief and trying to understand like the task at hand or the [00:36:00] red tape you're trying to get across to.

Niall: To tell a particular story, but when you write about your news, it's just coming out. You're flowing like water and if you can do that, you can actually then experiment and test your skills and test your pen and test the metal to like really elevate your storytelling acumen. So I think just writing again shortly as well.

Niall: 'cause again, brevity's super important to be succinct. Like writing a little amount about what you love most in the world and going crazy with it is one of the things that was super beneficial for me. For sure.

Matt: That's fantastic. Niall. Thank you ever so much, man. Thank you. That's [00:36:30] been, uh, just amazing. So interesting.

Matt: Thank you.

Niall: Appreciate that.

Matt: A massive thanks to Niall for his time and energy today. I so enjoyed the conversation. There's so much in there that just brought [00:36:45] back so many memories for me. Brilliant. Really, really enjoyable. Thank you, Niall. If you want to know more about Niall’s work, we'll include links to his website and the Culture Crypt in the podcast episode description. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please do recommend and share with [00:37:00] someone else, and as ever, thanks for listening. Bye-bye.