Doing an interview in a pub is a fairly win/win situation in anyone’s mind; if conversation dries up, you can always resort to pub banter or whatever ramblings come out of your mouth after a few Shandies! There’s a jukebox you can argue over (in this case, it was “Who’s better - Jurassic 5 or Method Man?”), a sticky menu and microwavable grub served with salad from a bag you can snack on.

The pub is also a place when some of the most thought-provoking, intellectual conversations can be found. This occasion was an example of one of them; London-bred Queens English were sat spread across the leather sofas chowing down on some hearty pub grub when I turned my Blackberry on to interview them. Whilst I try and make most interviews not time relevant, the UK elections were held the day before (May 5) and I saw this as a chance to get the opinions of true spokespeople for the youth of today, talisman of their time perhaps… Surely they were swimming in a sea of thoughts and musings?

Perhaps not.

“I drew a dick on my ballot paper” proclaimed a rather proud Hass looking up from his chickpeas and rice.

“He checked to see if he was breaking the law first though, so not as rock and roll as it sounds” adds Jess, shooting her band mate down with a  crushing blow to his ‘middle finger to the man’ attitude.

Jess and Hass were joined on the sofa by band mates Tom and Leon. Formed in 2004 whilst at university in Leeds, the hip hop four-piece have attracted some rave reviews from all over the shop; BBC 6 music have described them as ‘wonderfully epic’ and rightly so, they have just walked away with the award for ‘Best Hip Hop Group’ at the 2010 UK People’s Music Awards.

I’m not going to lie, hip hop isn’t my stomping ground, but politics was on the agenda, so thankfully, I was treading in familiar waters… Here are the pure, honest, brutal and beautiful words of Queen’s English, and a bit of great pre-perspective before Mr Cameron won our government’s hot seat:

Why did you draw a dick on your ballot paper? Bold political statement perhaps?
Hass: It had to be done; I wanted to spoil my ballot because I don’t believe in media influenced reactionary democracy, so I thought - what is the most childish thing I could draw? Hence the wang. I was a bit worried that I was wasting my vote and that I’d get a bit of stick, but it went through and no one said much, even when I put the picture on Facebook… Got a few ‘Likes’ though.
Leon: More people seemed to be surprised that it was actually legal take a photo of your ballot.
Hass: It wasn’t about the cock anyway, it was more about the fact that I wanted to ruin my ballot.
Jess: It’s never about the cock.

I see, not a fan of British politics then?
Hass: No, and I haven’t been for a while. We claim we live in a democracy but I feel that the media just has so much sway in what the outcome is; which kind of defeats the point in my eyes. We are being led by tabloids, and in some cases, tradition; some just vote for who their parents choose. And some politicians are so corrupt - the country should be run more like a company; if you’re bad at your job or you do wrong, you're fired! 
Leon: Things need to change I feel. There needs to be more unity within the major parties because it seems that they all build their principle policies as reactions to the mistakes of the others.
Hass: I nearly didn’t vote, but a friend talked me round.

Do you think voting is important?
Jess: Yeah definitely; although this is the first election I’ve voted in, I just haven’t been bothered before.

What changed?
Jess: If I’m truthful, some of it is to do with just how I felt on the day. But another big part of it is that I think that more is done now to tackle voter apathy; there’s a kind of greater insistence on people to talk about it, so politics is more accessible.
Leon: So many people were getting turned away because they didn’t expect so many people to turn out. I think that’s crazy; granted they didn’t realise there was going to be such a high voter turnout, which is great, but they shouldn’t have just assumed that no one would bother.
Tom (sarcastically): Maybe they were trying to save money on ballot paper; it’s ridiculous.
Hass: Why didn’t they just say, at like 9pm or whatever, that “everyone beyond this point won’t be able to get in”? - instead of leaving people to wait around like lemons, some of which were probably trying to work out when the deadline was…

Okay. But before we get into a war or words with people from polling stations, let’s focus on the music. Educate me!
Hass: With pleasure. Our new album ‘QE’ is out now, produced by ‘The Lost Boys’ and ‘Aries’ who together made us produce two very different pieces of music; one very deep and thought-provoking, and the other is more party, lets-get-wrecked-and-feel-good kind of thing. We originally had the concept of having the album in two parts…
Jess: There was a lot of planning involved, and it was a very ambitious project.
Hass: But then ultimately we decided to put everything under the same banner and onto the one album; a mixture of both ideologies, because essentially we are a mixed group in that perspective.

So when it comes to influences, do you all bring different ideas to the table or do you all share a common ground?
Hass: I think we all bring different ingredients to the table; we have all come from vastly different musical backgrounds so there’s a lot of different levels to it. But when we all got into hip hop, I think we all thought ‘Okay, this is good, let’s sound like that.’
Leon: As a group though we got into hip hop quite late. But as time has gone by and through the people we know, we have been able to be involved with some of the biggest nights in UK hip hop; so our sound has evolved into something that has been created using all our previous influences and what we have picked up from listening to hip hop.
Tom: I think we have opened it up a bit. Most of UK hip hop at the moment is quite mundane and their voices can be quite monotone; there’s a lack of style and swagger that they bring to the table. The music is quite simple as well compared to the amount of work that has gone into it, compared to American hip hop like Method Man and J5 where there’s a lot of that style and swagger. I don’t think that anyone in the UK is replicating that…
Hass: Method Man is so so so much better than any British rapper could ever hope to be.

Do you not think it’s important for British artists to carve out their own identity though? Rather than just copy what the Yanks are doing?
Hass: No yeah I agree, I’m not saying we are trying to replicate them but I’m just saying that they have so much more and their styles are so different. Even down to the way lifestyles of hip hop groups are; for example in America you're not fighting over who’s going to make the rent payment, rather you're fighting over who is going to sell a million records! We certainly aren’t the best, and the scene doesn’t seem like its ready to accept us yet, but we are trying.
Tom: We are trying to make UK hip hop popular on the level that indie music is popular; make it accessible to all and hopefully to the heights of US hip hop. But we just be ourselves and rap about stuff we care about.
Leon: But we are never going to try and be Method Man, we are just trying to be QE!
Jess: And succeeding!

Succeeding indeed. The chitter-chatter ended there. Enough talk, we moved on and got some drinks in!
 
Words: James Prosho

For more info on Queens English and their upcoming shows please visit: www.myspace.com/queensenglish

And if you want to follow the adventures of Queens English in the world of Hi-Fi, check out their blog at www.queensenglishhiphop.blogspot.com