Producer Toddla T and rapper Cristale are an unlikely duo. Toddla has recently turned 40 and stretches well over six foot, but that hasn’t stopped him living up to his epithet. He stomps around his West London Steez Factory studio, flailing arms and cracking jokes while we set up the interview. 23-year-old Cristale, meanwhile, is an old head on young shoulders. Her words command an audience, picked carefully and delivered with a gaze hardened beyond her years. “People say opposites attract, yin and yang and all that,” says Cristale. “That’s just the kind of wavelength me and T are on.”
The pair are hot off a series of genre-defying singles, with many more cocked and ready. “Ready 2 Go” transports 90s hip-hop into the modern era, colliding J Dilla-esque swung production with Cristale’s signature aphorisms, while “Olive Branch”’s off-beat piano stabs and throbbing bassline take cue from the music of Cristale’s Caribbean heritage. Each track arrives as a diversification on the drill pigeonhole Cristale had previously found herself in, having first achieved back-to-back virality in 2023 with “Roadents” and a “Plugged In” session with Teezandos and Fumez the Engineer.
“I only became a ‘drill’ artist because that’s the sound that was there at the time,” Brixton-born Cristale tells Dazed with characteristic brevity. “Really, rhyme, that’s what I was raised on. I’m coming from spoken word and poetry. I can’t stay within a box, because then I’ll get bored.”
Despite his youthful energy, it is also Toddla T’s decades of experience – previously holding an 11-year stint on BBC Radio and producing some of the UK’s biggest hits – that allows him to fully appreciate Cristale’s unique artistry. “I was making all these big tunes that made loads of money for people, but I often found it very unsavoury to be a part of,” he explains. “I was representing a scene, a culture and a community disproportionately. When I met Cris, it was just a higher heights. She had an alternative view on things.”
As the conversation wound on, it appeared that both artists had a mix of youth and wisdom within them, each contextualising and complimenting the other’s idiosyncracies. It’s the reason that their recent releases are so compelling, and also why their collaborations speak to something much bigger than music.
In this spirit, below, rapper Cristale and producer Toddla T go head-to-head on their unlikely musical chemistry, as well as their generational differences.
I bet you have a lot of memories in this studio. What’s it like working together?
Toddla T: Yeah, man, a bag of memories. I love working with Cris because I’m very hyperactive but she takes her time a bit more. It works well because we can zoom into one piece of work, rather than me jumping between 300. That’s why we’ve got a whole bag of tunes, too. How many do you reckon we got stacked?
Cristale: Last time I checked, it was about seven, but there’s a bunch of ideas that are unfinished…
Toddla T: Another thing about Cris is that there are so many layers to her as a human and an artist, people have only seen one. She’s like a granny in a baby’s body… That sounds bad, but she’s just got so much amazing wisdom. When I’m reasoning with her, she feels older than me and I love that. I’m 40, but I’m a big kid. She’s just so much smarter than me.
Cristale: It’s a different perspective, but also similar experiences. It’s like I could have walked your life, just taking different steps.
You seem brimming with pride, Toddla.
Toddla T: She bad, bro. She bad. You know, there’s not one person who’s come in to my studio who’s not gifted, but there are certain people you come across and you resonate with quickly. I got that with Aitch, I got that with AJ Tracy, I felt that around Stormzy, and I got that with Cris right quick. It’s something that I can’t necessarily put into words, but it’s just a higher heights. I just love really good fucking rappers.
What about you, Cristale? What drew you to Toddla?
Cristale: I never used to like working with producers. I used to just spend hours sifting through YouTube beats and write to them. So, when I finally agreed to get in and have a session with a producer, I’m happy that it was Toddla. I expected the worst from the session, because I’ve worked with producers before where it just felt like they were doing me a favour. But that first session with Toddla was the day that I learned that the term artist is on a spectrum, do you get what I’m trying to say? I don’t just have to rap, I don’t just have to make a song. I can be a part of the instrumentation and put together the whole track.
Every time I walk into this room, it’s like me and Toddla are new people. Anything that we’ve accomplished before today means nothing. It’s a lack of ego. I just feel like how I feel when I go around a family member’s house now.
Take a kid from the block, if he likes his reality, and he’s talking [about crime], I have no problem with that. But, if the corporate world is amplifying that side of working class and Black culture, and they’re not from that background, then that’s a problem – Toddla T
You guys have quite a special take on the rap scene right now, right?
Cristale: I’m not trying to be a conspiracy theorist, but the industry and the powers that be love to push low vibrational music. It keeps everyone’s brain robotic. I’m a consumer of art, but if you just look at everything as a whole: the videos, the music, everything that’s being produced looks and sounds dark. I understand that it gets dark sometimes, but it can still be light. As an artist, I’m supposed to be able to combat it and show people that this is where you were, but you’re not there no more.
Toddla T: It’s dark times, and we are attracted to negativity as human beings from the cave days. I mean, I’m not quite as plugged in as Cris, but I think it’s got slightly better in the last year.
Cristale: I think it’s got worse! Where do you see that improvement?
Toddla T: I see it in my generation coming together again, in grime people spitting together again.
Cristale: From that perspective, I can see a lot of healing in yours and my mom’s generation. Boys were told they have to be masculine men. It was shunned to have certain emotions and feelings. Now, you guys are working through your emotions, but the rest of us are broken. You get to the age of 40 where you’re just taking every day as it comes, feeling what you want to feel when you want to feel it. But the toxicity you guys had as kids is still bleeding through us.
Speaking about all of these negative influences, how is your approach different?
Toddla T: Two things. First, when I was making all these big tunes that made loads of money for people, it was so lopsided at the time. I was part of the tube. It was like, ‘Right this kid’s hot, bring him into this corporate world, viral label, throw him in with T, amplify his message and sound, send it to the streaming services, everyone eats off it. Onto the next.’ A lot of the time, it was not my favorite work.
Secondly, I felt a responsibility. I was representing a scene, a culture and a community disproportionately. Take a kid from the block, if he likes his reality, and he’s talking about crime, I have no problem with that. Speak your truth. But, if the corporate world is amplifying that side of working class and Black culture, and they’re not from that background, then that’s a problem. What I was doing then was amplifying a very small section of a community, not only for a public viewing, but also for corporate wealth. I just found it very unsavory to be a part of. There was loads of money, but I’ve never felt so anxious and low in my life.
It was around that time that I shouted Bashy saying: ‘Bro, this scene is lopsided as fuck. You’re someone from that community who’s lived the same life, but your narrative is totally different, so get back in fucking booth, man, alright?’ When I met Cris, it was a similar thing. It was like you have an alternative view on things, but you find the exact same spaces amplify you as much as them, you know?
Speaking of doing things differently, that reminds me of the line on “Ready 2 Go”: “This isn’t hip-hop, this smooth rock”.
Cristale: I feel like it was hip-hop, but it wasn’t hip-hop. It was more just me smoothly rocking. I’d written a song on my wardrobe at home, on the mirrored side. I told Toddla, and he’d ordered an adhesive one for me next time I came in. That’s where I wrote “Ready 2 Go”. I was wearing my blue Crocs, my tube socks and my Stone Island cargos that day. Then I was like ‘Toddla, do you have a bass guitar or something?’ And he added that bit after I said, ‘smooth rock’.
Toddla T: It’s super fun for me doing those records with Cris. She’s obviously got a wide taste in rap beats, but she’s particularly into my era. That’s one of my favourite instrumentals I’ve done in ages. It’s my era with someone on it that makes it sound up to the current time. I always say she’s a producer, she just doesn’t see herself as one. She has an idea that I help her produce. Really, it’s her vision.
I feel like this also speaks to what you’re trying to achieve with Steez Factory.
Toddla T: This is a prime example of someone that I spent a load of time with, making loads of beautiful work with. But the label said no because it didn’t work in their capitalist lens, so all the tracks didn’t leave the room. I wanted to set Steez Factory up as a way of sharing everything. If something goes well, we split the profit 50-50. It’s really not that deep, but in the lens of Babylonia and major labels, it’s like ‘Oh my God, how radical!’
For me, as a creative, it’s nice to work with cameras, and I get to link more people than I normally can because producing normally takes a day. But, with a freestyle, I could do five in a day. Meet five amazing people and share art. If it goes well, great. If it don’t, it don’t matter. If it goes really well, we might make some money… Imagine that!
