All about flavour: Chop.Life is serving up amapiano heat to Merseyside’s vibe-hungry underground

What sort of music can people expect at Chop.Life?

I understand that everyone comes to the scene for different reasons and different sounds, so what I like to do is to feed everyone there. I like to call the DJs the ‘Chefs’, because they are literally mixing things up. They’re mixing their ingredients, they know exactly what to bring to the stage and how to make the people move. Some of our Chefs are: Amber Rose, LanceyPioneer, Sharan, Onyx.tbh, yeahitsrenee, Soulfultiz, and Don Doopy as our host.

I wanted people to tap into different genres, not just amapiano. Chop.Life is about flavour, that’s what we do. You can’t just have salt as your seasoning, you have to mix things up. So of course, we play amapiano, but we also play dancehall, Afrobeat, garage, house, soulful house, R&B, baile funk and much, much more. We have different DJs who tap into these sounds and bring them to life. That’s what I love about it, they take care.

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How do you balance staying true to your vision with Chop.Life while adapting to feedback and changing trends?

I try to stay true to my vision with Chop.Life. Getting feedback is a hard one because I know exactly what I want, and I want to keep that alive because Chop.Life has always been doing its own thing. If I were to put certain rules on it, it would take the fuel away from it.

The feedback is always helpful in a sense. It usually comes from people close to us, and it’s always ideas on how we can make things bigger and better. I’m sharing this space with people that I care about and love, and I’m always open to their ideas because I know that they will share that same love for Chop.Life. It might be things I’m not experienced in, but as long as it helps to build Chop.Life positively, I’m open to it.

How do you recharge and find motivation when faced with challenges or burnout?

That’s a hard one because even though I’m a lively character, sometimes it takes a lot to recharge. I spend a lot of time on my own. I like to watch colourful things like cartoons, and they generate colourful thoughts in my head. This usually leads to me drawing up a sketch or something like that, and from there it can trigger an idea and I’ll be like: ‘Okay, boom, this is exactly what’s happening’.

I feel like once I tap into the spirit of creating an image for Chop.Life, I automatically have the energy for Chop.Life as a whole, straight away. That’s a buzz right there.