MPH Interview: "I wanted to make Substance for me"

“I wanted to make Substance for me - and if anyone else likes it, it’s a plus.”

Despite the plaudits of his 15-track 2024 release Refraction, MPH came to a realisation: “there was no real meaning behind it.” The record was a flag in the sand, filled with dancefloor rippers, but ultimately “just a bunch of tunes on an album.” His latest release, Substance, would follow a less trodden path. 

“I realised that if I were to do another album, it would be more condensed and concise, and there would be a storyline to it. I wanted it to be like Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, where there's a whole story, with interludes, and every song blends into the next.”

“I've always wanted to do something like that.”

Canterbury-born and raised on bass, MPH has spent the past few years etching his name into the new UKG canon. With releases on Night Bass, Crucast, and Black Book, and two full-length albums to his name, he’s become one of the genre’s most prolific and well-respected exports. Oe that, alongside Mr Virji, is starting to take the US by storm. 

When we chat, MPH is in between stints state-side, “I’ve just been out there touring,” he says. “I did Red Rocks, a few other big shows, and then I was on a tour bus for a bit with Tape B. That was crazy, I’ve never done a tour bus before.” He laughs when asked if it’s the stereotypical 14-hour drives, waking up outside a new venue each morning. “It’s the most sleep I’ve had in months.” Some nights even finish at midnight - a novelty for someone raised on 5am sets. “I’ll play 9 till 10, and then I’m in bed by 11. It’s amazing.”

The tour has seen him shelling out tracks from his new record, Substance, released at the start of October. The project first began taking shape at the start of the year, with MPH sitting on a few tracks he “wasn’t sure what to do with.” 

They didn’t really make sense as singles, he felt, “but they all sounded good together.”

“Then I had the idea for the concept of the album to be around going out on a night out,” he says, “the songs I already had at that time already represented that. So then I was thinking, who's going to narrate it, what's the story going to be?”

That was when EV stepped in. Also Kent-born, the same age, same slang, exactly the tone MPH had been hearing in his head, just one 12-hour session later, they’d brought it all together.

“There were like a few options, but EV just really, really stood out ‘cause his delivery is very Mike Skinner-esque.

“The album, in terms of production, was pretty much done. The writing was really just ‘how are we going to tie all of this together and make it flow?’ I knew I wanted to make something super British and rough, so we ended up doing lots of little skits and going back and forth about what we did growing up and the house parties we went to. It was just really natural and not forced at all.”

Kendrick and The Streets had been in mind from the start, but inspiration in the session came from places outside of music too, especially when searching for that quintessential Britishness.

“The obvious one was Human Traffic, that was a big inspiration for the opening monologue. We actually watched it before we started writing, we were thinking ‘what are we going to talk about?’ and that was just a perfect reference.”

While that 12-hour session might have brought the story to life, the map was in fact already drawn. MPH had spent months piecing together the production framework of the record and the narrative structure of the ‘night out.’ 

“Before the session, I had a rough idea in my head where the story would go,” he says. “Where it’s going to go up and down, where you’ve got little breaks. That skit just before ‘Alone’ where you’ve lost all your mates but you’re fine with it, I always had that in mind.”

“There was a lot of tinkering, but luckily I did all that before I got EV in because it would have been a nightmare to write and then me change my mind, and his vocals might not have made sense at certain bits. 

“I'd always had the structure of: it's quite soft to begin with because it's the start of the night, then it gets more and more energetic, and then it gets a bit dark. ‘Run,’ for instance, is when everything gets too much, and then we go back to soft to close the night. 

“That's the structure I wanted from the start, and when I had those few tracks ready in January, that's how it felt already.”

Such a concrete structure may sound like it made the session with EV restrictive, but it actually “opened up creativity in terms of production” too. He said: “It meant we could start making tracks purely to fit the larger project. ‘Pres’ was made for that exact reason, it wasn’t a track I already had, it was made to sit where it is. A few others were the same.”

Yet, however big the ‘concept’ and all its narrative intent, Substance still hits like a true rave record. Conscious about being led into the stereotypical quicksand of ‘concept records’, MPH made sure that, first and foremost, every track was a “dancefloor weapon.”

“I was very conscious because ‘concept albums’ can typically go that way, where it's purely made for streaming. So I wanted to keep a nice balance: you could listen to it on a bus or spin it at peak time in a club.”

Substance is a record that’s also defined by its collaborations. Beyond EV’s narration, the supporting cast - both on vocals and production - hammered the concept home. Carla Monroe arrived early in the process via distributor AEI. 

“They came back with her topline in January,” he says, “and I was like, yeah, this is great, let’s definitely do this.” Others were hand-picked. Cameron Hayes was someone he’d wanted to work with for a while. Manc MC Sparkz, too. 

“I had an idea in my head - ‘Bouncin’ starts with a bunch of kids like ‘oh we need to leave… wait, hang on, hang on, there’s an MC’, there are parties I've been to where these random MCs jumped on and absolutely sprayed. 

“That's the concept I had, and Sparkz was f*****g perfect for it.”

The producers he drafted in brought their own texture too. ‘Run,’ his collaboration with Chris Lorenzo, was born in the final 30 minutes of a studio day. “Working with Chris… I’ll be sitting in the box in Ableton and he’s just throwing sounds at me - ‘put this in, put that in’ - constantly. He’s a machine.” 

“It was just an instrumental I'd been playing out for ages. Then I was like, we need something to elevate it, and EV came in and destroyed it.”

Habstrakt’s contribution, ‘Untouchable,’ came even looser, written on his couch in LA in under an hour. “We’d been in the studio loads before, but nothing had properly clicked. Then that one just landed.”

Some of the record’s heaviest moments arrived the same way. ‘ABCs’, with AntsLive spitting, started its life as an instrumental MPH kept close to his chest, one he’d just been using a DIY acapella over during performances. 

“I had demo-itis. I was so attached to it. I sent it out, and there were a few options, but no one had really written anything. AEI were like, why not try AntsLive? This was two weeks before deadline, so I was like, sure, why not?

“What he came back with was perfect. It was wrapped 24 hours later. It was tight, but I really wanted that tune on the album.”

If ‘ABCs’ is the eruption, ‘Vulnerable’ is the crescendo. Positioned as the euphoric ender to the night, it was a track built in an unorthodox manner, stitched from a Cameron Hayes vocal written for a completely different track. 

“I do that a lot,” he says. “I’ll send a basic tune, get bored of it, keep the vocal, and then weeks later I’ll be stuck on something else and think, hang on, I’ve got that vocal.” Luckily, it landed in the same key. “It just worked so well. I built the rest of the instrumental around it. It was meant for the end, to chill people out.”

For all its chaos, collaboration, and concept, Substance, perhaps most of all, marks something much more pivotal for MPH: a fundamental shift in how he approaches making music. 

“I used to overthink releases so much. I put something out at least once a month this year, sometimes too much,” he laughs. “In the past few years, I have released a lot of music, and what I've learned is simply that you don't know what's going to do well.

“You can hope and pray and put all your efforts into one release and expect it to do really well, and it can flop, and then another tune you effortlessly put out can blow up.”

“So I learnt from making this record to just not think about it anymore. Just put out what you want. Make music for yourself.”

In a scene increasingly defined by social noise, speed, and streaming metrics, an album like Substance almost feels defiant. A story built to last longer than a trend cycle. A record studiously designed to work as a complete experience, both in the headphones and at club peak-time, without compromising either side.

“Maybe it won't reach a massive audience,” he said. “But as long as my core fans enjoy it, that's what matters most.”

Find out where you can catch MPH live by clicking or tapping - HERE

Find more information on, and where to listen to, Substance - HERE

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