"City's steel, concrete, hard like my music" - Matic Mouth talks music and home

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“My music career would be so different if I moved to Manchester 10 years ago, or London, so different.” And so begins my conversation with Matic Mouth aka Marcus Smith, a long and winding discussion that veers in a multitude of differing directions over the course of the next three hours.

We talk about Sheffield, comparing it to other cities and even countries, yet still Matic is firmly of the opinion that “Sheffield is up there, it’s alongside those places”, and when you listen to the words that come from within whether in conversation or those that are delivered with an emotive veracity on Hear Comes the Pain - written in the shadow of the city and the world’s BLM protests - you can’t help but be intrigued.

“I was happy being… I don’t want to say conscious rapper, conscious rapper seems so… when I think of a conscious rapper, I think of these brilliant MCs who are a lot more politically minded than I am”, words that are spoken in stark contrast to some of the lyrics that are peppered with passion and wit throughout Hear Comes the Pain. He’s distinctly not a political rapper, a notion he previously emphasised in an interview back in 2018 with Exposed, where he said that he hates politics. But a lot has changed for Matic in the intervening time period, from seeing the growth of younger family members to expecting one of his own (a girl, born just as this interview was being written), his perspective has undoubtedly changed… irrevocably so.