ArrDee’s mixtape Pier Pressure really puts the pressure on his peers.
ArrDee, born Riley Davies, has blown up in the past twelve months and he’s only 19-years-old. The rapper has been working his ass off for years to perfect his art and already, ArrDee’s lyrics flow with fully-fledged finesse.
ArrDee’s career has was propelled in early 2021 when he featured on a Russ Millions & Tion Wayne track, Body (Remix). Now, the young rapper will floor fans with his debut mixtape Pier Pressure.
HAPPY: How are you today, ArrDee?
ARRDEE: I’m good. I’m good. Just at somebody’s launch party for their clothing brand. How are you?
HAPPY: Oh, sweet. Awesome. Well, thank you for taking the time to do this. I’m good. It’s like 8am where I am. So I’m not at a party haha.
ARRDEE: Opposite round here. 9pm.
HAPPY: Where are you, by the way?
ARRDEE: Literally, proper central London, West Marylebone if you know where that is.
HAPPY: Sweet. Are you living in London now?
ARRDEE: No, I could never leave my hometown. I love it too much. Plus, London is too loud. I’d probably end up going broke as well. It’s too expensive around here.
HAPPY: No, that’s fair. I was wondering because I know that you’re from Brighton, right?
ARRDEE: Yeah.
HAPPY: And it’s a pretty small town as well?
ARRDEE: Yeah very communal, and a lot cheaper and a lot more fun in life.
HAPPY: Good, good. Well, I mean, it’s been a massive year for you. I imagine that everyone in Brighton would be aware, right?
ARRDEE: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
HAPPY: What’s it like? I’m sure you already know many people in town but do you get recognised more now?
ARRDEE: You know what? As much as the town is so aware because it’s so small and I’m one of the first, if not the only, to do it out of there because I always say the town is like a very nonjudgmental place. It’s not like they don’t care, but it’s very accessible. That’s the wrong word because it sounds negative. But I can move about around the town freely, and people know I’ve always been around there before I’ve gone clear and made music and everything. And like any bars or clubs, I’m going to, there will still be people that come and ask for pictures. But the people that are from the town and are not there visiting or from uni, they let me breathe and they let me be. Whereas London, I’ve got to be with security.
HAPPY: That’s so good to hear. And yeah, so like I said, I mean, it’s been a huge year. Congratulations. It’s very exciting.
ARRDEE: Appreciate it.
HAPPY: It’s nuts. I feel like it’s pretty different, what you’re doing compared to what most people are doing at your age, like going uni or travelling or whatever… I mean, I was just bumming around and, you know, getting into trouble. How do you feel about being so young and kind of just getting straight into the hustle?
ARRDEE: I think it comes with positive and negative. Like the positives are, obviously, I’m young, so I’ve got a very long future ahead of me and however good I am now, what I’m doing now, shows the potential I have to grow into in the next five years. But also the negative that comes with it is, I am as young as I am, but in the league that I’m in with other rappers and like the charts and what I’m doing down there compared to their ages, there’s the same amount minimum expected of me when I’m still learning.
I never got to go to a club or a party or a festival because I turned 18 in lockdown and then lockdown continued for the next year and I blew in that lockdown. And then as soon as it came out, it was like boom, all the VIP entrances. Sorry it’s not something… it’s almost like top one per cent first world problems. I don’t want to complaining that much.
HAPPY: Yeah, still, I mean, I don’t know… I feel like you’re going to need a holiday at some point.
ARRDEE: Don’t worry, after my tour, I’ve got one booked. I told my whole team, ‘Don’t call my phone, I’m away lying down on some beach, somewhere in the Caribbean.’
HAPPY: Perfect. So, I know that you kind of blew up with the Body (Remix). What were you doing before that? How long had you been doing music? How long have you been rapping?
ARRDEE: So we started… I’ve been making music for about five or six years. Brighton’s a very hip hop culture town, so I was making a lot more like real rap 90 bpm and hip hop rather than like current UK drill or whatever the faster current sound is. But in terms of being in the public eye, I dropped Cheeky Bars, which was a freestyle and 6am in Brighton, which was another freestyle and Tion has shown love on both of them and he’s is quite good at it in almost like an A&R sense of spotting things that are due to be massive before they’re massive. And he’d hit me at a show and said ‘oh keep going’, and 6am came out. And then he gave me the opportunity and said, ‘I want you to do a verse and we’ll just see how it sounds.’ And yeah, so I was still making music before it. But prior to making music money, I was a studio engineer. Me and my friend, he was next to me, were doing studio sessions and basically making absolutely fuck all. And I used to have a night shift as well in an Amazon warehouse, which was 10 pm till 10 a.m., which was massive.
HAPPY: It sounds like you’ve been working very hard for quite a while.
ARRDEE: Yeah, hundred per cent. Years, yeah. Like they say, it hasn’t been 10 years because I’m not old enough, but it takes 10 years to become an overnight success. So for me, about five or six minimum.
HAPPY: You’re right. You’re killing it. I mean, look, you’ve got such incredible flow. It’s really impressive, especially at your age. And I feel like that’s something that’s probably brought up a lot. Do you feel any kind of… I mean, you already said, in the league that you’re in, there is a lot of expectation. You feel like that’s just going to keep growing or you’re kind of like, ‘yeah, this is me’?
ARRDEE: I feel like it will definitely keep growing, but it’s also something that I want to keep growing because I’m always trying to keep expanding and pushing myself past limits, not just limits for myself and expectations, but just in terms of the scene and what’s expected of certain people in general. So to answer your question, yes, but also I think that it’s a positive thing rather than a negative.
HAPPY: Yeah, that’s awesome. The lyrical content as well, it’s pretty, you know, some of it’s a bit more just fun and cheeky and everything, but the more recent stuff, it is pretty serious. Do you find it easy to open up in general or do you think that you feel most vulnerable in your music?
ARRDEE: I got asked this question the other day, and I answered it in a long-winded way. But basically when I first started music, what I used to do is be really, really intimate and open and not depressing, but talk about stories and things I’ve been through and where I didn’t have that massive fan base because Brighton’s small, then when I went to house parties and met with friends and things like that, people would try to play them in front of me and it’s like, I don’t like to talk to people about my problems. It’s not something that clicks with me in my head. So it would not like… it wouldn’t make me annoyed, but I didn’t feel that comfortable. And then it’s like if I’m putting that music out there on YouTube for anyone to see, whereas public and day to day, if you’re meeting me and you don’t know me, you’ll see like cheeky chappy and happy and big vibes and the loudest in the room and party and blah blah blah.
So I feel like that was to build the global or like my country or Australia, or whoever else is tuned in and following and supporting, that kind of big fan base where every artist has their kind of… not half-hearted, but listeners that listen to their big songs, then you have the core fan base that wants to know not just more about ArrDee, but Riley and who I am and things I’ve been through. And I feel like I’ve had a year of showing them that I can do Top 10 after top 10. And that is half of the point of this whole project that’s about to be released. I’m unravelling the layers of me as an artist, as a person and showing that it’s not all just top 10 bangers and that I have deeper and different sides to me as a person, as everyone does, and I’m here to stay.
HAPPY: Yeah, of course, that’s cool. I think that’s it’s generous to open yourself up to people like that. Ok, so the two singles from the mixtape that have been released so far, they’ve got that kind of drill beat, that rhythm with your flow as well. I guess I want to know is the whole mixtape… I mean, you kind of just touched on this anyway but it feels very much like a hype up. Is that just kind of to introduce yourself to the world in a broader way?
ARRDEE: Yeah. Well, there are hype songs and there’s deeper songs. It’s not drill all the way through. There are different tempos. There are bouncy and dance and really slow down, intimate, kind of like if I was doing it live, you’d have acoustics and really be flashlight out, intimate with people. I’d more look at the project as, like I said, as fast as I come into the game, as much as the numbers are crazy and I’ve got the map of listeners that I’ve got on different things, I think there’s a difference between having that and having a core fan base because a core fan base loves you as a person as well as your music.
And the tape gives me an opportunity now that I’ve had and proven that I can do all of this, especially because I come in so far, and everyone’s like, ‘OK, he’s got the viral verse, but can he do a viral song?’ And then it was all ‘Can he do another big hook? Can he do another one? Can he do another verse?’ So yeah, now it’s time to get that intimacy, and I feel like the project does that very well. So it’s not just all hype, but it has the aspect to it as well.
HAPPY: Would you say that you enjoy kind of making both just as much as each other? I know that when people have been creating for a little bit longer and you’ve obviously been creating for a while anyway, a lot of people do want to just only take a step back and chill and they’re like, ‘No, this is all for me. Some of it’s for you but…’ Do you kind of feel like it’s all for you anyway?
ARRDEE: Part of it’s always going to be for me and part of it’s always going to be for the fans. If you’re asking… I enjoy making music in general. What I find easier and more comfortable and feel like it gives me a different kind of feel and is more of the intimate sounding opening up. And the music is my venting tool. I never had got along with things like counselling and like talking to people and opening it up, but for some reason, music and that outlet seems to do something different to my brain and lets me do it.
So yeah, that kind of music is, I’d say… To be honest, it’s more of my forte. I find it even a little bit easier than writing them smash top 10, top five global kind of bangers and whatnot. As much as the viral verses may seem a little bit less lyrical or whatever, they’re actually more difficult to come across because they need to be accessible and listenable to a much wider audience.
HAPPY: Yeah, I totally understand what you mean. Cool. Well, you’re going on tour pretty soon. That’s very exciting.
ARRDEE: Yeah, I’m excited.
HAPPY: Very exciting, I saw you’ve got Brighton pretty early on, so are you expecting a big show?
ARRDEE: Yeah, that’s going to be… well, it’s not the biggest venue, but in my head, without being biased, it’s definitely the biggest one. I’m going to go hard for all of them, but we have special plans for my hometown.
HAPPY: Good. It’s awesome. I hope you’re filming it, I’d love to see some.
ARRDEE: Yeah man, we’re documenting the whole thing. You’ll see it. Trust me.
HAPPY: Sick. Okay, great. That’s really all from me. Thank you so much for chatting with me.
ARRDEE: Beautiful, appreciate you.
HAPPY: No sweat. Enjoy your party.
ARRDEE: Thank you.
Pier Pressure is out March 18.
Photos Supplied
Interview by Chloe Maddren
