 Childhood Hudson's arrival at that sound is the culmination of an unlikely musical journey. As a kid in the Black Country, his first loves were New Kids on the Block and Michael Jackson. Then, when he was 11, his brothers recruited him as drummer for their heavy-metal band. "I was always trying to make them less thrash," he says. "Even then, I wanted space in the bar." By 16, he was listening to Nirvana and the Lemonheads and gigging as drummer with the Beatles-inspired Moneypenny. That phase ended when Hudson headed to Oxford, to read English. Oxford "I loved it," he says. "People don't realise you don't have to have gone to a Harry Potter school to go to Oxford. I honestly believe that someone like Dizzee, who is fiercely intelligent, could've smashed it there. You just need a brain and the desire to learn. I spent ages reading poetry and plays. I don't mean to rant, but if you want to be a good MC or a good songwriter, you should read books, listen to Radio 4, learn new words. There's too much monosyllabic 'don't go, I can't stay' songwriting. An active vocabulary is crucial." One thing Hudson didn't find at Oxford was a music scene. "To get my fix, I hid in my room, listening to Joni Mitchell, David Bowie and Jeff Buckley. I was soaking up good singers, singing good songs. I'd be looking out of the window listening to Nina Simone or Chet Baker with a pot of tea going cold, feeling a bit miserable because I couldn't pull." After Oxford After Oxford, Hudson fronted an indie-rock outfit called Phoenix Green. Developing a knack for grand artistic gestures, he moved them to Suffolk to work as farm-hands by day and rehearse at night. "I wanted to do that Led Zeppelin thing," he explains, "where you get fresh air in the country, then go into London for shows. We had a brilliant time and I learned how to write and arrange songs. But the band was too noisy. My voice got lost. And, ultimately, it didn't excite me enough." Hudson quit the band. "For the first time in my life, I was in no kind of institution or structure," he says. "It was a terrifying but invigorating feeling. I could've gone to Japan or New York or to pick turnips in Bulgaria." Instead, he took the rather less adventurous option of moving to Camden, where he fell into the singer-songwriter circuit. But that didn't satisfy him either. "I was bloody bored," he says. "Do you ever get that thing in a supermarket where you think, is there anything I haven't eaten before? Y'know, like when you're in the condiments section?" And you find yourself reaching for the Gentleman's Relish? "Exactly! Actually, I've got some of that in my fridge, goes very well with toast. But, yeah, I needed something new. I felt stale. So I cancelled the shows I had and hid for a while." First, the book-lover tried to type a novel on his grandad's typewriter. "But I soon realised I didn't have the patience for that." Instead, he started to experiment with a 1980s drum machine his brother had given him. "I was messing with beats and playing along to them. Suddenly, everything clicked. I realised I love beats, I love singing and I love good songs. So I decided to combine those things." Hudson had discovered his "new blueprint". The Change A few weeks later, he had another epiphany. Dumped off a broken-down train at Swindon, Hudson killed time in Waterstone's. There, he came upon the book Where You're At by Patrick Neate. "It's about his travels around the world trying to figure out what hip-hop is and his place in it as a middle-class white boy from the home counties," says Hudson. "Isn't it funny that my way into hip-hop was a book?" Hudson devoured the book on the train back to London. It prompted a conversion of almost religious proportions. "Well, hip-hop is a religion," he says. "The wisdom I took from that book was one word and that's represent. That's what hip-hop is about. It's not about guns, or being black or living in America. It's about representing yourself. It rejuvenated me." Hudson had found the condiment he'd been looking for and threw himself into London's hip-hop scene. "I wasn't interested in American hip-hop, I thought if this is going to mean anything to me, it's going to be about what's happening in Kentish Town and Kennington. I totally tuned into it and started noticing the graffiti tags on trains, posters for parties and radio stations like Itch FM." Although he bought himself a pair of trainers, Hudson didn't adopt a conventional hip-hop look. "I made a conscious decision to represent who I was, to dress like a librarian." Donning a jacket and a trilby, he hung out at London hip-hop nights such as Breakin' Bread, the Jump Off and Lyric Pad, usually by himself. Having developed his beat-making skills at home, he eventually summoned the courage to enter a live producer battle at the Jump Off. "You have to get up in front of 600 people and make a beat in five minutes, with a verse, a chorus and a bridge. Unfortunately I lost. I was gutted, because I knew I hadn't represented what I can do. But I came off stage and a dozen people came up and said hello. I wasn't on my own after that." In true 8-Mile style, Hudson returned for a second shot at the producer battle. This time, he won and went on to become Jump Off's undefeated 2005 champion. Soon, he found himself in the studio making tunes with UK hip-hop's biggest names. He also started to make real progress with his beat-driven songs project, recruiting musicians through contacts made on the scene and developing the band at his club night, Let's Get Lost. Finding "The Library" "I wanted Mr Hudson and the Library to be conspicuously different from anything else," he says. "I wanted to scare myself by trying out different musicians each month to see how we could integrate a steel pan player or a classical pianist." After a year of experimenting, the current line-up was complete (both the steel pan player and the classical pianist stayed). Ask Hudson who he sees as the band's contemporaries and his answer is typically well-considered. "The Roots because of the way they make music. The Guillemots, because of their irreverence, eccentricity and sense of fun. And the Scissor Sisters because they don't care about being part of a scene, they just want to go around the world entertaining people in as big and bold a way as possible." Notably, all three of those bands are famed for their live shows. Later, squeezed in front of the science-fiction shelves, Mr Hudson and the Library will deliver a vibrant, intensely musical performance that has the library crowd in raptures, adding converts to a growing fan base that already includes Zane Lowe, Jools Holland, Kanye West and Jerry Dammers. Almost two decades after joining his first band, Hudson finally looks set to succeed with his fourth. If he does, the struggle between his two sides - the hip-hop mogul and the librarian - could be interesting. "Oh, it already haunts me," he grins. "The Jay-Z in me would love to cruise around town in a gleaming V8 Land Rover with high-profile alloys, blacked-out windows, massive sound system. But my sensible, environmentally-conscious librarian half knows I should probably be riding around on a bicycle. I guess, for now, I'll just walk." Mr. Hudson is probably born in 1980. |
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