“We have some ridiculously talented musicians in this region,” says Casey Bailey in an interview with B:Music ahead of his performance next month at the Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space on Wednesday 1 October. Joining Casey on the night will be an exceptional line-up of musicians from across the region including NEONE the Wanderer, Infamous Dimez & Zoellz.

“When I was 15, 16 years old making grime music, Infamouz Dimez was one of the standout producers in the city as a kid,” says Casey. “An amazing MC, great singer, just a very all round, amazingly talented musician. As long as I’ve been engaging with music, I’ve known him to be an extremely talented musician who should probably be a million miles away from performing with me because he’s so great – but hey, lucky me he’s here.”

“Then Zoellz.” Bursting onto the national scene as a standout finalist on BBC Three’s The Rap Game UK (2022), Zoellz quickly captured attention with her charisma, originality, and infectious sound, known for her signature “wavy rap” style—a vibrant fusion of melodic flows, rhythmic bounce, and unapologetic energy. “I call her Avatar: The Last Wavebender. Her ability to just move through frequency, sound, style, all in one is second to none but I know her because I taught her. I taught her GCSE PE in school. She was smart. She was capable. People say to me “you got a way with words; they’ll get you into trouble or they’ll get you out of trouble” – and that was always going to be the case with Zoe as well,” he says. “I see a level of artistry that I have to champion, and I have to try and bring to the forefront.”

“And then you’ve got NEONE THE WONDERER who is, I think maybe one of the best musicians in the country.” Casey recalls the first time their paths crossed. “I was walking through Birmingham. He was performing outside the Council House. I was just walking by and I knew something was going on. I took my air pods out and I heard him. I stayed till the end of his set. I told him it was great. I don’t know what made me stop, but I’m really glad that I did. We’ve performed together a few times since then and he just blows my mind. He is ridiculously talented. He’s another artist who I just think, at some point I’m going to be saying to people, “you know, I performed with him” and they’re going to say no, you didn’t man, stop making it up.”

Casey’s no stranger to B:Music and the Symphony Hall stages. “I've got quite a long and storied relationship with B:Music now which I'm really proud of because I think B:Music has two of, if not the two best, venues in the city,” he says fondly.

“The first thing that springs to mind is I wrote a poem when Symphony Hall was Making an Entrance. I was commissioned to write a piece called ‘Making an Entrance’.” This was back in 2018. Casey was commissioned by Town Hall Symphony Hall, now B:Music, to introduce Symphony Hall’s extraordinary transformation.

“I still remember kind of seeing these plans for what it was going to look like, being in this conversation before this—” he motions around us. We’re at the Jane How and Justham Rooms, two of the hosting rooms that came about as part of the redevelopment project. “—and thinking this is not something that someone like me should be hearing. All these plans. I felt like I was in a secret vault of knowledge… and I was getting to write about it.”

“Then on the first night of the opening of the space that I’ll be performing in October, the first that I performed the poem ‘Making an Entrance’.” The Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space was opened in 2021 and has since hosted local and emerging talent. “It’s a real privilege to be back. Then we’ve done Beyond the Bricks of Brum, the Birmingham Festival and the Kirk Franklin event.” Alongside Ashley Allen and a line-up of some of Brum’s finest, they took over the Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space with a live reinterpretation of one of gospel music’s most iconic albums, The Rebirth of Kirk Franklin, on its 25th anniversary. “I launched my collection ‘Please Do Not Touch’ in the space too.”

But Casey’s experience with the two venues isn’t only standing on these stages. When asked who the most influential artists on his journey were, he names Kano as one of them.

“I saw Kano at Town Hall. I nearly fell down the seats,” he says, awe clear in his voice as he recalls the night. “Kano’s from London and I’m from Birmingham. We aren’t the same but seeing someone from the UK and with, I think, a level of lyricism that I hadn’t seen to that point. As Kano has grown, and I’ve grown I guess, he’s gone beyond just being a very talented lyricist. His honesty. His ability to observe.”

“When I listen to Kano, I’m seeing things that I’ve seen a million times but the lens that he puts on it helps me see in a whole new way.”

He names Tupac Shakur as another influential artist. “Tupac managed to be everything. I think there were probably periods of my life when I didn’t value that very much and there is a lot to be said about not trying to appeal to everything. But we contain so many different things. We can be the reflective, socially conscious person who thinks that the way we’re treating each other is negative. We can also be the angry person who is then therefore advocating that same treatment.”

“What I got from Tupac, in many ways, was a lot of contradictions – and in those contradictions was honesty. You know, today I might feel like A. Tomorrow I might feel like B. But I’m not going to hide A because I might say B and I’m not going to hide B because I might say A, I’m just going to say it all, and you can pick from it what you will and what you find.”

This relationship with music and poetry started early. “I grew up in a house where music was always playing. It was often R&B music like Toni Braxton, Tevin Campbell, Céline Dion, and then there was a little infusion of reggae, music lovers, rock, hip hop music, and my dad was a Tupac fan.”

“I remember some of my earlier conversations about music were me and my dad really getting into the lyricism. You don’t hear this kind of lyricism from the rappers I was listening to. I’m not seeing this kind of socially and politically conscious messaging in this way which is so musically brilliant and high energy.”

“I guess what made me want to write, before anything else, before becoming a part of who I am, is that writing created space for expression,” says Casey. “Particularly when I was listening more to Tupac. I think of, there’s a Ludacris song about how him and his friends grew up. I remember feeling like he was telling a story that was very much like my story and feeling like I could tell this story as well.”

“People always say I’ve got a way with words. Positively or negatively. Sometimes my words get me in trouble,” he says with a laugh. “But very much that feeling of “I can express it and I can capture it for me and maybe for other people.” That was at some point during secondary school so probably when I was about thirteen.”

Former Birmingham Poet Laureate (2020-22), a history of performance nationally and internationally and poetry pamphlets and collections under his belt including ‘Please Do Not Touch’ which inspired a brand-new play at the Belgrade Theatre, you’d think he was a poet first – but music found him before poetry did.

“A lot of people know me more these days for the poetry work than the music work which, considering my early music, I’m very happy with,” says Casey. “My early music was very angry and potentially controversial, although very much a reflection of who I was, where I was, what I was going through.”

“For me, first of all, music became a catharsis – it became a space to release into and to be angry or to be upset. To be passionate about something and to put it into words.

“At about the age of 15 I’m emceeing over grime beats. I’m going to raves in people’s houses. By 16, 17 I’m getting booked to do under eighteen raves and the people there know my lyrics. I’m thinking, how do you know my lyrics?” he recalls. “These were Bluetooth days, so you’re not going “It’s on YouTube or on Spotify”. Someone had to send it to somebody else on their phone.”

“Now I’m emceeing at a rave and a hundred people are chanting my lyrics back at me. I’m going: “Hold on a minute. This is a thing. Something’s happening here.” It was a weird time in my life.”

He adds: “In many ways, my love for music was kind of lost when I realised the things I was making music about was not about things I wanted to promote or wanted to share. To free myself of the negativity that I had surrounded myself in, I had to free myself from the music. Because I’ll try to make a positive song and people will say to me, “Casey, rap about the horrible stuff man, why don’t you talk about this, why don’t you say that” – well I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t believe in that. I don’t see myself in that anymore.”

“I fell into poetry because it filled the void that music left. I still wanted to write. I still wanted to express myself. But every time I wrote music, either I’ve dragged myself into a kind of negative space or other people were kind of inviting me back into a negative space.”

“People who I grew up with, who I have lots of love for but were living different lives and they’re going “come and do a verse on this song” and I’m like I don’t agree with that song. I don’t want to rap about that. I don’t want to emcee about that.”

“I had space to write poetry about whatever I wanted to write poetry about. That created space for me to write about how I grew up and where I grew up and the things I saw in a reflective manner. Rather than how does this serve what people want to hear from me, it could serve what I needed to say.”

“Music beautifully gave way to poetry in that sense,” Casey says. “Then the flip happened where I started re-engaging with music. I came to music, in most people’s eyes, as the poet who made music. People knew my poetry.” Casey has been commissioned a by a long list of organisations including the BBC, B:Music, West Midlands Combined Authority and more. “They’d seen me do this thing and that thing, and they’re like oh he makes music as well. So now they weren’t expecting me to rap like a rapper raps and to talk about negative things. They expected me to be more reflective and that was where I wanted to be.”

When asked what the best advice he heard when he first started was, Casey says: “There are a few things that my dad used to say to me that I kind of stick by. He taught them to me, then life taught them to me and I realised I should have listened to him in the first place. I had to experience those things for myself.”

“One was just because it’s true, it doesn’t mean you have to say it,” he shared. “I’ve got myself in a lot of bother in life and in music. Just saying things. Saying them like: “well I think it so I can say”. There are two aspects to that. One is the position it puts you in as an individual because you upset people. You don’t want to be the person who’s upset people. Then there’s the hurt that it can cause.”

“The other thing is: a lot of what you believe in or a lot of what you hold true right now, you may not hold true to in five years. Which is not to say don’t honour what you feel and believe in right now, but to understand that it’s probably not concrete – so I try to write from a point of reflection.”

“The third thing that I learned is, you know, a few people who had engaged with the music industry told me that this thing is not all that it’s cracked up to be.”

“Don’t lose yourself on this dream of “I’m going to be a superstar” or whatever,” Casey says. “Not because you can’t do it, but because actually a lot of people have done it and it still didn’t add up to much for them. It didn’t bring them happiness. It didn’t bring them joy. Didn’t bring them the sense of completion that they thought it was going to bring them. So, if you hang everything on that, there’s something really dangerous in achieving it and realising – oh, this is it.”

“I’ve found so many layers of success, joy and happiness in my life that are not attached to any of the conventional ideas of success,” Casey says. “I realised, you know, that there are much bigger things in life than what people say about what we put out.”

“There came a point where chasing the ‘music scene’ lost its glamour, and when putting out things that promote positivity and light became the main objective,” says Casey on his introduction to the music section of his website.

“As a 16-year-old boy, I saw this journey of I wanted to be a rapper as you’re gonna get money and you’re gonna get jewellery and you’re gonna drive fast cars and all that kind of stuff,” he adds. “I think that there’s a danger for me that we will then do whatever it takes to achieve those things.”

“My good friend, Leon Priestnall said to me once “the writer who writes purely for their audience loses their Self and the writer who writes purely for their Self has no audience” and the balance between the two is where we make things that really represent us but also really mean something to other people.”

“These days, I’m very fortunate that I do make money from music – but I don’t make music for money,” Casey says. “I don’t have to sit down and think, is this gonna sell? Is this gonna meet that criteria? Is this gonna go viral? Is this gonna tick that box?”

“I work outside of music. I work outside of my creativity. But I’m a poet. I’m a theatre-maker. I’m a musician. I also work in a way that sustains my life in the way I want it to be.

Don’t miss Casey Bailey alongside fellow artists NEONE the Wanderer, Infamous Dimez and Zoellz on Wednesday 1 October at the Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space.

“I’m really setting myself up because with all these people performing with me, I better bring my A game,” he says with a laugh. “I’m excited about anyone who hasn’t heard those artists, that they’re going to get the opportunity to hear them and hear us all together. I’m really excited about the prospect of sitting down and taking them in. It’s a double privilege for me because I get the best seat in the house to see these amazing artists do what they do.”

“And I’ve got new music I have been working on and essentially a new project. I’m excited about sharing some of that, doing some live band stuff around that. It’s going to be a good one.”

When asked what he wants people to take away from the evening, he says: “There are rappers, right here, at home, who are saying stuff and it’s worth listening to them.”