Octavian has lost his keys. He lives in an apartment in south-east London, with two friends from school: Cillian, his manager, and Armin, who directs his videos. Octavian is outside in the courtyard finishing a photoshoot; Cillian, who has also lost his keys, can’t leave the flat until Armin returns. He sits on the apartment’s balcony, overseeing the shoot without locking everyone out in the process and directing an endless flow of friends, deliveries and takeaways.
It has been a busy week for Octavian. He is on the verge of releasing Spaceman, a 14-track mixtape that, true to his signature style, has no signature style. Instead, it is a spectacular medley of the past decade of UK subgenres – the raspy-voiced rapper amalgamates elements of drill, grime and house to create something dextrous and distinctive. Take his breakout song, last year’s Party Here, the snarling intro of which gives way to an unexpectedly euphoric and club-ready chorus. This is Octavian’s forte: he can create a mood and then manipulate it into something completely different.
It didn’t take the rest of the world long to get wind of a new British talent. In January, Drake posted a video of himself rapping along to Party Here at a Golden Globes afterparty, while Louis Vuitton’s artistic director, Virgil Abloh, flew Octavian to Paris to walk in his first runway show. Suddenly, the rapper’s sleeper hit became a global phenomenon, with record labels battling to sign him on the strength of one song.
“We’ve been here six months,” Octavian explains as we take the lift up to his home after the shoot. “The flat we were in before this, now that was mad. It was massive: it had a pool table and all these LED lights everywhere. That was the place everyone would come to party.” I ask why he left. “We got kicked out for partying,” he says matter-of-factly.
Moving house no longer fazes him. Born in Lille in north-east France, Octavian moved to south London with his mother when he was three, but their relationship became strained. When he was a teenager, she sent him back to France to live with his uncle. They fought a lot, often physically, and after two years he was sent back to his mother. Knowing he wanted to pursue music, Octavian landed a scholarship to the Brit school – previously attended by Adele and Amy Winehouse – but soon grew disillusioned. “There were literally people doing backflips and singing harmonies in the corridors … it was not my type of thing,” he says. “I just don’t believe that you can teach someone how to be creative. As soon as you start teaching someone, they lose their originality.”
Evicted by his mother, he dropped out of school before finishing his course. Several years of homelessness followed. He tried to get a council house, but he didn’t qualify because, on paper, he was from France. “That’s just how life works,” he shrugs. “There’s bare things that come with being poor. I didn’t have the money to be English, but I was English, I was raised here, I went to school here … then you have someone telling you you’re not English enough? I hated those authorities.” But he says hetook those turbulent teenage years in his stride. “When you’re young, it’s cool. I didn’t have no money, but I still managed to eat, to live ... it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Once you’re there, that is your life. You can only look up, because down there’s nothing left.”
There is something startling about the speed at which Octavian leapfrogs through life. His biggest fear is being predictable. In our hour-long conversation, the word “pigeonhole” comes up eight times, as he complains that “the industry always try to pigeonhole me”, while scoffing that the US artists Lil Uzi Vert and Lil Pump “pigeonhole themselves” by having “the same hair, the same name”.
Octavian’s refusal to assimilate has become the driving force behind his success. Like his unexpected musical heroes Bon Iver and James Blake, he thrives in the intersection of genres. As a teenager, it was his fear of being labelled that steered him away from gangs; he was deterred not by violence, but by the homogenous fashion aesthetic. “Everyone wore tracksuits – that was your uniform for the streets. Everyone had a hood on. I was like: ‘Why is everyone dressed exactly the same?’”
He admits to taking a step back from former friends who are “too gang. You tell them once or twice – of course you try to pull people out – but they won’t, because they’re too in that world.” Was that ever Octavian’s world? “One hundred per cent, but I felt like I wasn’t them. I always knew I was going to blow, and at the end of the day it depends on you. Do you want to follow your dreams? You have to risk it all and not be shook.”
Spaceman by Octavian is out on 10 September on Black Butter
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