After putting on a standout performance at Tower Fest 2018 with fellow Sunderland based rapper E-Mence, Claymore is this week’s ‘Artist of the Week’.
He’s only been rapping since January this year, but experience is the only thing that Claymore is lacking; his hunger, attitude, confidence and ability was more than a match for the rest of the North East talent performing at Tower Fest this past weekend. Clay arrived at the festival well before he was due on stage, well before anyone was on stage for that matter, quickly offering to go hand out flyers to promote the event.
He then waited patiently for near on eight hours before he got his chance to perform, making sure he was front and centre supporting every other artist on throughout the day – despite his lack of experience, Claymore could teach a lot of seasoned artists a thing or two about the right attitude.
Claymore then went on to smash his set, with help from the incredibly talented E-Mence, coming with an intense energy that meant you couldn’t take your eyes off the pair – the hunger coming from both of these upcoming artists was palpable.
We caught up with Claymore to find out more about his music and what makes him tick…
You haven’t been rapping long, what inspired you to get into it?
Most people’s answer to that question would be big inspirations such as Eminem etc, but if I’m honest my inspiration came from local talent and seeing what was happening around the area I come from. I was then really keen to be a part of it so I decided to get involved.
You performed at Tower Fest with E-Mence last weekend, how was the show?
Performing with E-Mence is always a pleasure, we usually perform with Listaa too but he wasnt available to perform that night, but as far as how it went I thought the night went really well, crowd participation was amazing and over all Ace Musiq Management put on a fantastic event – so a lot of credit is due to them.
Do you get nervous performing live?
My first live performance I was really nervous, this was at the Independent in Sunderland, also with Listaa and E-Mence, and you’d think it would have taken a while to overcome those nerves but it was on that very stage at the Independent a few tracks into my set I told myself just to have fun with it and enjoy what I’m doing and from that day that’s how I take every show now.
Whats been the highlight of your music career so far?
The highlight of my career would have to be performing at Lindisfarne Festival last week. I mean its not often you hear a rapper who’s been doing it eight months gets to perform on a platform like that – that chance has given me major drive and great reason to persue what I’m doing.
What else have you got coming in 2018 in terms of music?
I am hoping to release an EP I have been working on for sometime now, that’s my current goal. I’ve also been working on a joint EP with E-Mence but havent quite agreed a set release date for this with E-Mence himself yet, so I wouldn’t like to state a release date.
Where do you want to be with your music in the next few years?
If you asked me this six months ago I’d of probably laughed thinking nothing of it, but since I’ve been writing music eight months and performed at a couple of festivals I can see major progress from where I started and I guess I’m just going with the flow at the moment since its still early stages, but I think in the near future goals and self achievement will have to be put in place.
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