Music has always been a focus here at Footpatrol. In line with Frequent Players, we partnered up with New Balance in hosting an in-store listening party celebrating the launch of Lord Apex’s new album, ‘The Good Fight’. 

It’s not every day you get to speak to the sensei, so we took our chance to catch up with him and find out more about his journey so far.

FP: Lord Apex, great to have you here with us. How are you?

LA : I’m great! Thank you for asking, man. It’s still one of the world’s most underrated questions. So I appreciate every time I hear it, bro. How are you doing? 

FP: I’m good thank you, interviewers rarely get asked that! 

LA : Yeah, bro. I can’t help but ask. I’m speaking to somebody, you know what I mean? So, I’m not, not gonna ask you. You don’t wake up and slap an interview on your head, you know what I mean? You’re a person.

FP: You’ve been a busy guy traveling, dropping new music and doing shows. Life seems like a movie for you right now, how you been finding it?

LA: Man, it’s been a movie for me since I was like seven years old. It started off like ‘Cheaper by the Dozen’ or a PG 13. Now we have an R rated movie, bro. I mean, we be taking life by the balls. It’s cool!  More than anything, my whole energy is just waking up grateful.

I pray every morning, every night. I’m very thankful to be in the position I’m in, whether I felt like it’s like God given or a blessing. My main thing is just being thankful.

FP: That’s a good way to look at it. I feel like a lot of people these days carry some sort of ego with these things.

LA: Don’t get me wrong, I felt like there was part of me that had a big ego and I just had to kill him off, but now I can look at him from an outer body perspective and bring myself back down.

FP: From bamboo forest, all the way through to some of your recent projects with Cookin Soul and now Madlib. Your discography keeps on elevating. Did you ever see things going this way when you started?

LA: Pun intended every time. I’m always going to elevate, because that was the plan. There’s no way I can’t remind myself that we want to be doing better than we did last time. So even down to collab, I would never put people on levels in terms of how big they are. Whenever we get together, that’s a whole different experience. Even with Madlib, everything else he’s done aside, I think it still would have come out the same way. But outside of that, it was just a beautiful experience to be able to get that done.

It did a lot for the kid in me. And it made me feel like I should keep inspiring people to go above and beyond for real. 

FP: How do you go about choosing who you work with, it’s such a diverse mix of artists and producers?

LA: I’m very big on just being in the present. Very Gemini in terms of the music I want to create. It changes all the time. It could be like one day, let’s just get trappy. So, For me it really varies on what vibe I’m in at the time, what music I’m listening to.  

It naturally becomes something different.

FP: Do you have a list of people you’d one day like to work with or you just freestyling or now?

LA: Ah, you know what? I would like to one day be seen as that actor that everybody wants to work with, you know? Every director needs him as opposed to me having a crazy list. I’ve got a list and the more I see that list, the more it changes and fluctuates.

So right now I could sit here and be like, Alchemist, Primo, all that shit. 

I also wanna know who produced Toxic for Britney Spears, you feel me? Let’s go crazy. Let’s get crazy. Get me in there with them Swedish boys, man. Like, Screw That Click, all that shit. I grew up heavily inspired by DJ Screw, so I would love to be on, some of that, Houston type slow down. You know what I mean? I love that Memphis sound all sped up. But I like the Florida sound too and thats sped up twice as much. So it varies, but I listened to so much. It’s only weird if you don’t know that I’m into that music as heavy as I am.

FP: I know you’re a man that’s trying to push your own boundaries with your music. Do you have a direction as to where you want to take things later in life?

LA: Life’s the direction.

FP: How do you look to elevate your sound?

LA: Production. I feel like that’s the next step in terms of solidifying my sound. I want to hear a song and be like, yeah, this is a flat song. But before the lyrics come in, you know what I mean? I’ve always had a good ear for beats. Even before I started making music. 

FP: One thing we’ve always loved is the visuals in your music videos. Do you do the creative direction yourself for each project?

LA: I like to do a mixture of both where we have a set. We kind of have a set family that we work with all the time. So like my guy Above Ground. He’s probably shot my best videos. All the ones that we’ve done on film, like Speak for Yourself, Life Goes On.

I’m glad we get to document the journey because, instead of me having to tell people like, yo, this was like this or that like the listening event tonight for example, it’ll be documented, but then it’s documented on a Bolex. It’s beautiful.

I love films, I study films. So I always try to put effort in my visuals.

FP: You are also prepping for your 2024 EU & UK tour for your latest project The Good Fight. What can you tell us about this latest release?

LA: What can I tell you? Man. UK wise, definitely critically acclaimed. I feel like wherever it stands, it might not get in the conversation immediately.  But then that might be something that also comes as a surprise to me because I’m  my worst critic.

When it comes to me critiquing myself in terms of how I’m viewed in the UK, in my eyes, it’s always a bit more negative. In the beginning, when I was still in ego mode, I felt like there were a lot of conversations I was getting left out of. But in retrospect, bro,  who cares? I enjoy making music and my favorite thing to do is represent everybody that feels like they resonate with the space I’m in.

FP: Sensei, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you again for having the chat with us, before we let you go. Can we get 1 fun fact about you that people may not know about?

LA: Fun fact about me is none of the things I’ve done in the last three years would be possible without Max and Connor over there. [points at his team]