Blonde Ambition

Reclining in the back of a black cab as it zips through London’s rush hour, Ben Hudson – a.k.a. peroxide-mopped Brit-rapper and Kanye West protege Mr. Hudson – is choosing his words ve-ry carefully.

“I haven’t actually spoken to Kanye about it,” he says when asked for his reaction to West’s recent usurping of Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles. “My instinct was to look away. I guess that was the way I was brought up. If someone falls over in the street, if you can’t help them, don’t make a scene. It’s none of my business, really. All I would say is that nobody got hurt.”
It’s a little after 4pm and Hudson has been “dashing around like a headless chicken” all day. He spent the morning giving interviews; right now, he’s in a taxi heading towards BBC Studios in Shepherd’s Bush to film an appearance on Never Mind The Buzzcocks, the music-themed comedy panel quiz.
“I’ve heard a little rumour that I’m on the same team as Noel from The Mighty Boosh,” he smiles. “It’s brilliant. I don’t have to do anything. He can be funny and cool and I can sit there and be part of the audience.”
For some up and coming artists, a slot on prime time British telly might rank as a career highlight. Having shared a stage with hip-hop A-listers like Kanye and Jay–Z (Jay “executive produced” new album Straight No Chaser in return for Hudson guesting on his The Blueprint III), it’s hard to imagine the Brummie becoming too excited, though. He’s already left BBC novelty shows far behind.
“To go from wandering around north London on a diet of egg and chips and pints of Guinness to being in the back of a bulletproof Chevy with blacked-out windows eating sushi and drinking expensive drinks that I didn’t even know the name of... it was like an alternate reality for a while,” he reflects.
He’s still astonished at the enthusiasm with which the hip-hop A-list took him to its heart.
“I could quite easily have felt like a bit of an alien, a bit of a Marco Polo, to be honest. But they all quickly became my extended family. I soon forgot I was a white boy from Birmingham and started to think I was from Chicago. There was a funny moment where we did a show in Houston. I was on stage with all these other artists. I realised everyone else was African-American and from Chicago or LA or Detroit or New York. And I’m this guy from Birmingham with bleached blond hair. I must have stuck out like a sore thumb. I’d completely forgotten.”
He hooked up with Kanye after the rapper became enamoured of Hudson’s debut album, A Tale Of Two Cities (a droll blend of rapping and singer-songwriter angst, recorded with his previous band, The Library) and booked him as the opening act for the European leg of his Glow In The Dark Tour. Thereafter, West seemed to make it his mission to turn Hudson into a celebrity, declaring him to be the future of hip-hop at every opportunity.
“Ah, he’s an incredible artist,” Kanye told MTV last November. “I believe Mr. Hudson has the potential to be bigger than me, to be one of the most important artists of his generation. He’s playing these songs, he’s playing them back-to-back-to-back — ‘Dude, I’m telling you, your problems are not going to be getting hit records, blowing up and being a big star — your problems are going to be living real life, and dealing with real life, so just prep yourself.’ Everything I hear from him is a smash.”
Is there a danger that West’s endorsement might actually start to become a liability? What artist truly wants to spend their career being referred to as someone else’s protege? Especially, if like Hudson, you’ve already been around the block a few times.
“Hopefully I’m going to be able to stand on my own two feet,” he says. “That’s got to be the plan, hasn’t it? I can’t hang on his coat tails forever. Not even ‘forever’ – that implies I’m doing it now.”
The influence of Kanye is most evident on Straight No Chaser’s foray into AutoTune-drenched electro pop (also, albeit inaccurately, known as the “vocoder effect”). Hudson reckons about 40% of the record contains treated vocals. Considering Jay–Z has just released a song called ‘The Death of AutoTune’ and most everybody else is bemoaning its influence on music, isn’t he a little behind the times?
“I used it when I reckoned it would add value,” he counters. “It’s like a distortion pedal on an electric guitar. Or any effect you might have in the studio. You want to use it sensitively. I’ve never worried what anyone else is up to. At the end of the day, if I thought it added value to the track, I put it on. If not, I took it off. It was rather unfortunate that Jay-Z did ‘The Death of AutoTune’ on his new album. But luckily the track I did with him didn’t use AutoTune – so there was no falling out.”
Back home, Hudson is on his way to becoming properly famous. For instance, a quick Google search reveals he’s been romantically linked with UK presenter Fearne Cotton, a rumour he has consistently denied. Is he ambivalent about celebrity?
“I wouldn’t say it makes me uneasy. I’m realising that I’m going to have to change certain things. I can’t walk down Oxford Street picking my nose any more. Obviously things have changed. The funny thing is that they tend to change quite slowly. You might have suddenly noticed the kettle has boiled. I was inside the kettle. You noticed it was getting hotter and hotter. I was trying to keep my feet on the ground.”