Photographer: Frayser
Stylist: Ruben Douglas
Set Design: Carlotta Tazatorri
Words: Ramy Abou-Setta
Studio: Flash Studios
Brooklyn, New York, is a mecca for culture, style, and music. It is a timeless yet dynamically ever-changing part of the city. It transcends its geographic boundary; Brooklyn has a sound and look that is recognisable without the need to be aware of current trends. Jay-Z, Lil’ Kim, Mos Def, to jazz icons like Buddy Rich—this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to musical greats from this part of New York. Rising from the ranks of the new jazz generation, the Brooklyn-born, South East London-based Goya does not only seek to follow his predecessor’s footsteps but vehemently stamps his mark as an incoming great with his new offering Warlord of the Weejuns. Goya borrows the album title from a magazine headline once placed upon Miles Davis (given how well he wore the iconic Weejun loafers). Here, he channels not just that storied style from the king of cool but an artistic ingenuity and timeless sensibility, redefining his recording project with rich, full-band arrangements. Dance Wax sat down with the Brooklyn native prior to the launch of his “baby,” as he called it, to understand his vision, his channeling of Miles Davis, and what this particular album really means to him.
When describing the anticipation of the release date, Goya let out a sigh and commented, “It’s the stage after giving birth when you take your child to school for the first day, and that feeling of, okay, I can actually have a couple of hours to myself. Now my baby can grow and start interacting with different people in the world and making them feel different things. So, it’s an exciting, exciting time and an exciting feeling.”
Before and during sessions spread across London, Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles, Goya mentioned that he leaned into his jazz collection with a heightened sense of awareness. When envisioning the concept for Warlord of the Weejuns, Goya focused his intentions on creating a soundscape that embodied the sound, feel, and look of Brooklyn—all encapsulated within the confinements of sonic experience. He explained: “I did envision it [the album]. I kind of just wanted to make something that could really be listened to from beginning to end in one sitting. For a lot of the other music I was making before that, it was a lot of sample-based music. So, you’re kind of boxed in within the sample, you know? I kind of just wanted to make something that was thought out from the very beginning, from the very idea to the final execution.”
Warlord of the Weejuns is interlaced with voice memos of everyday moments on the streets of Brooklyn and London as an ode to Goya’s upbringing and a medley of cultural experiences. “Like normally, I just voice record mad shit,” Goya chuckled to himself. “I just voice record all types of things. Cause, you’re just chilling with friends, and then the conversation can go from something really funny and light to something quite serious, like some type of criminal enterprise. But the idea was that I needed to now tell the story in between the tracks in the project. I listened to a lot of Redman, and in his first album Muddy Waters Too there’s mad skits, which when I heard them, made me feel like I was really in New Jersey with him and his crew.”
“Then when I listened to Graduation, I felt like I was in college with Kanye. Both those atmospheres were created through the skits and little intricate parts that made the story cohesive around the music. I was envisioning this album to be a world that you can close your eyes and see something through the music. The skits paint a picture when combined with the music. For example, the opening intro, the sound in the intro is by one of my homies named Will Stowe, who is from London, and we used to work together in this store way back when. In that store, it’s where I really found my grown adult swag, if you catch what I’m saying—so me and him were working together and just knew that I needed to write a piece that encapsulated that moment. So now with that intro, it sets the tone of the album from the jump. The track is an ode to London. Then further in the album, I knew that I needed to get on some New York shit to cement the roots and tell where I came from, where I was going, how I kind of got there. So I just wanted it to be a world within itself, a sonic world that you could listen to. And everybody could paint their own kind of picture around it.”
Miles Davis is one of the key inspirations behind Goya’s seventh studio album. The jazz legend from Alton, Illinois, was considered by many to be one of the greatest jazz musicians to have ever graced a stage. In his own words, “The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project, and does he have ideas?”. Based on his own interpretations, Miles would be considered otherworldly, with his ideas still being dissected to be understood to this day.
Goya shared his fascination with The Dark Magus himself, his style, and his non-conformist attitude to life in racially tense America and music. “The Miles situation is kind of crazy because at the time I was just reading about Black history and Black activist figures and those that pushed the needle,” Goya stated. “Nikki Giovanni, Joseph Ben, a lot of these guys, and I kind of got to a stage where I started reading Miles’ autobiography and realised this guy was an activist, but in his own way. It wasn’t even on some ‘fight the power’ type shit, it was just him saying ‘I’m not going to conform to the construct of white society and its ideologies. I think that’s why he was outspoken in a time where he wasn’t really allowed to speak. If it wasn’t for him being the biggest musician at the time, kind of like Muhammad Ali in boxing, they would be treated differently.”
“It inspires me to just stand up for myself and to say that my music is not the only thing of me that is of relevance. He showed me a different type of love for myself, that was motivational for me. It has made me want to love myself in a whole other light and love my culture and love my people and push us forward. There’s no bounds to us or to our art or to our existence. Miles did like 65 albums, and that’s mad albums. His last album before he passed away was a hip hop album (Doo-Bop, 1992), which is crazy. Just going through the decades of his music, it made me realise that art really has no bounds. Even though people really try to box you in and define you, you can’t do that with art. It comes from expression and passion and determination and drive and just love for the art itself. He just made me feel boundless and understand that there was no box to fit.”
Threads of affirmation and self-worth—unlearning past constructs, manifesting knowledge and power from within—run throughout the new album. After the swaggering, a cappella intro (“All I do is write, rap, scribble, scat, wear long coats with pressed slacks…”), the horn-backed “Beautiful BLACK” sets the celebratory tone. Goya wrote the song after visiting his mom’s birthplace far outside of London, and his uncle’s recording studio in Nottingham, hearing him talk about Bob Marley’s influence, realising the lineage of it all.
When talking about Warlord of the Weejuns, Goya exudes with the excitement of his creation. “A couple of songs that I made on the album, like “Beautiful BLACK” and “One Hand Washes the Other”, those are songs of me wanting to write songs to my younger self. I wanted to write a song that my younger self could look at and see growth, honesty, and character development. When going into the making of the album, I placed myself in a period of time that I could look back on and differentiate where my mind state was. I try and create that through each album, that later on in life I can look back on it and say, ‘this is where I was, this is who you were, you’re not really that person anymore, you’ve grown, you’ve adapted, you’ve evolved.’
“The first song I made was “Beautiful BLACK”. I was just sitting down and thinking that I want to make a track that praises blackness, without being all ‘I’m black and I’m proud,’ but also being ‘I’m black and I’m proud.’ You know what I mean? “I didn’t make this music for it to be pushed for playlisting and like we’re trying to connect to the masses. I just want to make some shit that people can relate to and people can look at in years to come and see it as uplifting.”
Goya welcomes a wide range of artistry across the spacious collection, replete with vibe-shaping skits and interludes. London-based Swedish soul singer Fatima, and frequent collaborator with Goya, appears in two singles: first, there’s “FireFly,” a cosmic R&B groove that captures the rawness of a recent breakup, and then “Chase The Sunrise” alongside Yaya Bey and lojii.
The Brooklyn pioneer shared with Dance Wax who he loves listening to and who is next up in the music scene. He explained, “I love Pink Siifu of Young Morpheus. I love lojii. I love Joel and Jones, Omari Lyseight, one of my favourite producers right now, he’s up next. Ade Hakem, amazing guy too, and Demay is so fire.“
“Fatima is the best, honestly, she has the best voice, and I love her stuff. She’s been on a lot of albums of mine. She’s someone I really like calling upon because she’s literally the GOAT. John Glacier, GOAT. Anais Kim, GOAT. Lord Apex, GOAT. He’s Prince of the City. Prince of the country, not even the city.”
As Goya closes his album on the gospel-tinged outro, “FOREVER POOH,” produced with Omari Lyseight, he is surrounded only by soulful hums and strums, his closing remarks cross the looseness of a freestyle with the poignance of something greater, a 21st-century artist deeply in the pocket of his pleated craft. A timely closure that leaves a deep longing desire for more of the artist’s creative expression—Goya answers on what’s next for him. “I think I’m going to follow the Miles Davis suit and I’m going to make something a little bit different for the next album. Music and art is kind of a reflection of where you are in life, and life and the human experience are about change. So, I’m just going to go with the flow, part of me feels like it’s going to be something different just because I made this album now. This album was very much jazz and hip-hop inspired, Americanised music, if you will, and now that I’ve spent a lot of time in London, I want to make something that is purely London-sounding.”
“I want to push the boundary; I want to try something different and test myself. It’s all about feeling comfortable whilst being uncomfortable.”
Listen to Warlord of the Weejuns below.