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The Lyrical Eye

In the Age of the Internet it is even possible for a cosmopolitan rapper to rise out of a quiet flat in suburban Nicosia. THEO PANAYIDES meets one

‘All odds against me, like in roulette, no chance,

‘But I’m a workaholic, focused, with some true plans.’

Those are the opening lines of a brand new song by Stefan Eliades – though when you hear it on the radio it’s likely to be credited to his rapper name, The Lyrical Eye. Whether you’ll ever get to hear it on the radio is another matter; the odds are stacked against Cypriot rappers, especially when they’re based in Cyprus and working unglamorous day jobs as computer technicians. But the odds are getting better.

Stefan (it seems weird to call him ‘Lyrical’) is up-and-coming, so much so that he’s “not very focused on the Cyprus scene anymore”. Instead, his latest single ‘It’s Official’ has been getting airplay on UK radio stations (Choice FM and BBC 1 XTRA) and he’s also been in touch with Eugene Foley of Foley Entertainment, a top American music consultant who told him he has “great potential to make it in the US market”. Indeed, Foley was sufficiently impressed to sign a six-month contract promising to promote Stefan in the States, trying to “get me into newspaper articles” and generally push him into the orbit of the major labels. 2010 looks like it could be his big year.

I’m not really sure what to expect when I meet the 26-year-old in his apartment, on the eastern fringes of Nicosia. Certainly, the flat doesn’t look like a rapper’s abode, furnished in a style best described as 70s Genteel – gilt-framed landscapes on the walls, large pine cones scattered around for decoration, a fireplace, religious icons. Puzzlingly, a rack of frocks and gowns stands in a corner, like costumes in the dressing-room of a travelling theatre company. Does Stefan have a taste for playing dress-up? But it turns out the clothes belong to his mother, who runs a shop selling vintage clothing – and indeed his mum also owns (and furnished) the apartment, and is napping in her room as we chat in the living-room. Stefan looks around with a touch of embarrassment: “I’ve been living with my mum all my life, basically…”

Not very ghetto, you might think – but in fact there’s a good reason for this lifestyle choice. Almost all the money Stefan makes from his day job gets ploughed back into his music, so living rent free is a necessity. Besides, it must be said Stefan isn’t very ghetto in general – pale of face and slight of build, with sleepy eyes, a slight lisp and occasional tendency to nervous laughter. His demeanour is boyish, easy-going. For a while, I’m not sure how seriously to take him – at least till we head to the in-house studio (financed with a personal loan and lots of day job salaries), and he plays me samples from his songs on the computer.

The ‘studio’ isn’t much to look at, just some monitors, a mixer and a mike in a soundproof booth (not even really a booth, just a couple of partitions), but when he sings, Stefan sounds like the real thing. His voice becomes more assertive, his accent more American – it’s already Anglo-American, a combination of English-language high schools and a five-year teenage liaison with a Yankee girlfriend – and his phrasing sounds different in general. It’s all about the “flow”, he explains: “In hip-hop, the way you flow is very important. The way you rap on the beat, the way you put the words together.”

So how does one become a rapper? Nowadays, it’s surprisingly easy – though of course that makes it harder to stand out from the crowd. Stefan turned to hip-hop in his mid teens, influenced by a combination of Biggie, Tupac and an older cousin with an interest in rap. The first song he wrote was called ‘Life’, though he can’t remember any of the words; he’s been writing ever since, scribbling words on paper when he gets home from work – he currently works in the IT department of Lanitis, the drinks company – then “jumping in the studio with my paper and recording it on the spot”. As for the music – the “beats” – that comes ready-made (though you do have to mix it with the vocals), often from producers who make a living supplying beats to rappers.

That’s the thing I didn’t realise about “urban music” – that, unlike the old stereotype of budding pop musicians jamming for hours in their parents’ garage, rappers don’t actually have to play any instruments. It’s a composite art, an art of mix-and-matching – which is why it’s so well-suited to the Age of the Internet. “It’s crazy, because you can communicate with everyone,” says Stefan, who works with people from all over the world; “We’ve got our web pages up, as artists, you know, all kinds of profiles everywhere – so you’re in contact with all kinds of people. I have beats coming in, people sending me beats”. Since he’s now an “established artist”, other hopefuls send him music by email, on the off-chance he might use it (they don’t expect to be paid). Even if you’re just starting out, “you can just go on the internet and find a producer, even pay him for a beat. That’s how things work”.

That’s how it worked for him in 2003 – he was in the UK, studying Computer Science – when he wrote a song called ‘Bounce’ and got it produced by a German guy he found online. That was his first song to get radio play (albeit mostly in Cyprus); more importantly, that’s the song he entered in a couple of major competitions, doing incredibly well – winning the Urban section of the Great American Song Contest and ending up a Finalist in the International Songwriting Competition, a prestigious event whose judges included the presidents of most major record labels. Did offers come flooding in, in the wake of that success? Not really, he admits, but it’s a handy thing to have on one’s CV – and probably explains, for instance, why Eugene Foley was happy to listen to his demos.

In one of his lives, Stefan Eliades is a mild-mannered techie, working 9 to 5 and sometimes through the weekend at Lanitis (his previous job was even more stressful, doing Customer Service at Spidernet – the internet provider – and dealing all day long with computer crashes and email problems). This Stefan Eliades is “comfortable” with everyone at work, though he seldom joins them on office nights out to bouzouki places – but every evening he comes home, says hi to his mum, closes the door behind him and transforms into The Lyrical Eye, cosmopolitan rapper trading hip-hop beats with kindred spirits. One of his latest tracks is ‘She Likes’, on which two of the verses are sung by someone he’s never met in the flesh – an online American friend with whom they “exchange tracks every day” – and on which Stefan semi-consciously adopts the braggart persona of all successful rappers. “She likes the way that I don’t act famous,” he raps; “She likes my style, called the swag outrageous”. Never mind that he isn’t especially famous, and the “swag” – at this stage – isn’t outrageous so much as non-existent.

You have to do it, he shrugs of the bragging and posing – just like he’s changed his style in recent years, writing more commercial ‘party’ songs (he describes them as “industry-ready”) instead of personal lyrics. Clearly, he’ll do whatever it takes to succeed, making it all the more surprising that he still lives in Cyprus – but, despite the frustrating day-jobs and tiny music scene, he loves the place, and indeed mentions Cyprus in almost all his songs (“I try to represent it to the fullest”). What does he like about it? “I love the fact that it’s so easy-going,” he ventures. “You get from place to place in, like, 10 minutes, you got your fam around you – you got your grandparents, you got your mother…”

His parents are divorced, incidentally, having separated about 15 years ago. Stefan and his dad are (apparently) on good terms, but don’t see much of each other – once a week, if that. He used to be angrier about the divorce, he recalls; when he was younger he went through a “crazy” phase, though never any real trouble (“Just a crazy kid running around”). That begs a question, because hip-hop – at least in its original form – was the music of the ghetto. Can a white boy from Nicosia really summon up the rage to sing such aggressive music? Isn’t he being a bit hypocritical? “Not really,” he counters. “Hip-hop’s become so worldwide now, it’s changed. Anyone can become a rapper”. Besides, you don’t need drive-bys and crack houses to have things you want to get off your chest. “My father not being around a lot of the time, that was a lot of anger there,” explains Stefan. “School, you know, fights. All kinds of stuff. The Army was really hard for me too… I wasn’t used to people, like, on top of me and ordering me around. So that was crazy for me. I did two years of that, which was hell. So, you know, everything that you go through in life. Anyone can become a rapper, as long as you can express yourself and have something to say.”

Can Stefan Eliades make it on the world stage? After all, if “anyone can become a rapper” it follows that only a small proportion will become successful at it. At the moment, things are looking good – but 2010 will be important, he says; if nothing happens this year, “I might even consider slowing down”. Clearly, this exhausting double life can’t last forever – but he does have a trump card, in that he loves performing as well as writing. Back in London, in his college years, he often took part in the “Jump Off”, a regular event featuring “MC battles” – rappers having to freestyle, i.e. make up rhymes in front of hundreds of people, “dissing” each other in witty ways; “You can dis them about their shoes, or what he’s wearing. It has to be something smart”. He always made the Finals, he recalls, though it doesn’t really work when I ask him to freestyle during our interview – he needs the adrenaline rush of being onstage. He loves to “showcase”, it brings out the risk-taker in him; even in concert, he tends to improvise. “A lot of times when I go and perform, I’ll forget my lyrics,” he admits – so he makes it up, and the audience never knows.

Later, he plays me ‘Ola ta Heria Psyla’ (‘Everybody Put Your Hands Up’), the song he sang with two other Cypriot rappers – John Wu and Mario Mental – at the launch of the Cyprus Rally, opening for Sakis Rouvas before an audience of 7,000 people. Was he nervous? Not much, says Stefan, bopping to the beat like a clockwork toy; “I never have a problem when I’m performing in big shows”. That’ll come in handy when he breaks into the big time – but meanwhile he sits in his little souped-up studio, hunched over the internet, bopping along to the song’s majestic call-out: “Nicosia and Limassol, everybody put your hands up! Famagusta and Paphos, everybody put your hands up!”. All odds against him, like in roulette, no chance, but he’s a workaholic, focused, with some true plans.