Rhoda Dakar

STILL RUDER THAN YOU

What music are you currently grooving to? Gentleman’s Dub Club – you can put it on and just enjoy without it being in your face, as it were – and an Amapiano mix, which is dance music, but distilled through a South African lens – young people music!

What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album? Bowie’s The Man Who Sold The World. I literally played it to death. And it has the only prog track that I can stomach on it, The Width Of A

Circle. It’s quite bass heavy, I think that’s part of the appeal.

What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it?

Millie’s My Boy Lollipop. My cousin Janice took me to buy it in Desmond’s Hip City in Brixton. It was no later than, like, ’66. I still own it. Janice liked Millie as well – her parents used to live in Lagos and she actually saw Millie play live in Nigeria. Which musician, other than yourself, have you ever wanted to be? I admired people and I may have copied stuff they did but I never wanted to be them. I used to do impressions of Desmond Dekker and Shirley Bassey, singing Israelites and Big Spender, at family parties, I suppose that’s nearest to it.

What do you sing in the shower?

I don’t. Do what you need to do and get out.

What is your favourite Saturday night record?

Somebody Else’s Guy by Jocelyn

Brown. I’ll put on a rare groove mix and then dance to it vigorously in my front room for an hour, just as exercise.

And your Sunday morning record? When I used to hang out with Steve

Jones and Paul Cook, on Sunday mornings I’d play these records they had that I could never afford – skinhead reggae, The Harder They Come album, some Tighten Up volumes… anything with a Delroy Wilson vocal is very Sunday morning.