Sheffield rapper and community activist Franz Von is back with ‘Go My Way’ – a bold, bouncing track about self-belief, resilience and finding your own path. Teaming up with producer Chris Mayall, it’s the first track from upcoming debut album Take What You Want. Exposed caught up with the pair to chat about beats, balance and making music that means something.
Tell me about the tune – when we spoke about your last EP, you said your mission was to help people feel empowered. This feels like a continuation of that theme?
FV: It’s part of an album. This is the first single, and it’s definitely a continuation from People Di Powa. That one was about empowerment – people fighting for themselves – and this one is more about asking, now that you feel empowered, how far are you willing to go with it?
I don’t like the word “advice” – I don’t think I’m in a position to be giving people advice. It’s more like, if I was in this situation, how would I look at it? It’s just speaking it out loud and hoping that somebody can take something from it, without me telling anyone what to do.
A big part of your music is making sure it’s danceable and has good energy – is it difficult to balance that with heavier lyrical themes?
FV: That is a good question. I spend so much time on that. We’ll start producing and working on the lyrics, but there’s always something else happening. We have a live drummer who comes in, someone sets up the bass…
Sometimes I’ll tell Chris to put the drums up, but then we realise the drum sounds fine – we’re trying to get more of a produced feel sometimes, but we always want a live feel too, because they’re all going to be played live eventually. So the mindset switches and we start to produce for a live sound.
So, yeah, it’s about having a bit of a good, danceable live feel but make sure it’s not as long as one of our live songs. We want it played on the radio too!
You’re known for bringing vibes on stage and putting on great parties – but is there a concern about being labelled as a ‘festival artist’?
FV: I want to cover a range of perspectives in anything I’m doing. I love high-energy stuff and I’ll never get away from that. But I also love chill hip-hop and music that you can sit back and listen to – stuff with lyrics that stay with you after the song ends.
I want to get that in without totally moving away from the dancey stuff. I feel like ‘Go My Way’ is kind of laid-back and relaxed, but still has a dance rhythm.
I’m usually like, Chris – let’s go harder, darker – but Chris is like, let’s ease back a bit and push more of the dance thing.
The album is a lot more electronic than your usual stuff – how did you approach it production-wise?
CM: It started as a beat on my hard drive. I was mucking about with a drum machine and bass synth one day and it all came together. I was listening to a lot of Boards of Canada, so the chords were inspired by that – I was playing around with that kind of harmonic world.
Most of the tunes start with a stupid name. ‘Go My Way’ was originally called ‘Flock-a-Bock’.
FV: A lot of time when I get beats, if I’ve got nothing I want to add, I’ll just listen to the beat and see where it takes me. But if the beat has a name that stands out, then that’s what I’ll go for.
So when it comes called something like ‘Flock-a-Bock’, it really helps.
CM: The beats start as a skeleton. Usually when we get together to work on something, there’s two loops – an A and a B section – and we flesh it out together. That collaboration is so important.
How did you get into producing?
CM: I’ve been in bands since I was 16. I was always into band-y music, but the first thing that made me dance was funk and soul. In my twenties I started taking production seriously – I had tons of instruments and thought, I wish I could play all these at the same time. Then I realised that with a computer, you can.
Why choose Go My Way as the first single?
CM: Most of the ideas started with just me and Franz in a room. It felt right to start with something that was just us two mucking about. We brought in Phil [bass] and Paolo [drums] for the later tracks – they’re all over the album – but this one was just stripped back. Just us.
FV: The overall vibe just felt mentally in the right space as well.
Do we have an album name yet?
FV: It’s called Take What You Want. It’ll definitely be out by the summer. Nine tracks – my first LP in music!
Any message you want people to take from it?
FV: More empowerment. More direction. Just solidarity and community – whatever you’ve decided to do, you’re not alone in it. You may not see it, but hopefully people are at least thinking it.
The album name isn’t aggressive – it’s assertive. Take what you want in life. Commit to things. You just need to take it. If you’re approaching it like a mission, it won’t work – take things like you deserve them.
I never want to sound preachy. That’s not what I’m trying to do. But if I’ve got a platform, then I’ve got to say something and people can listen, have a dance, or do both!
GO MY WAY BY FRANZ VON IS AVAILABLE TO STREAM/DOWNLOAD NOW
