Brothers Adam and Joe Wilson talk about being independent, representing Ashford and the occasional talking dinosaur…

“I remember actually feeling ‘I don’t know how people are gonna take this’”

— Star.One

Star.One (@staroneuk) have been making music together for more than a decade, but, it’s pretty clear that ‘making it’ in the industry (whatever that might mean today) is not necessarily linear.

In fact, it’s a total mindf*ck of highs and lows that range from a debut album that featured the glitterati of grime to record label traps. As it happens, Star.One hit another high in 2022 with the remix of Ed Sheeran’s track 2step, which went viral on social media and was fully endorsed by the singer himself…

Adam: We’re just getting our next batch of music ready at the moment. So, the Ed Sheeran thing happened, which was great. It’s taken a couple of months just to kind of, like, ‘OK, what’s the plan for after that?’, So yeah, man, we just got a lot of music coming out. A lot more remixes came off the back of the Ed Sheeran thing as well and a few more singles just to try and drop before the end of the year.

‘cene: Do people approach you about remixes more now, especially off the back of the Ed Sheeran one?

Adam: We remix a lot of stuff anyway, so the Ed Sheeran one, we did for fun anyway. And then it obviously became an official remix. But other times this just happens industry-wise, where someone’s got a track: ‘Can we get Star.One to remix this?’ or whatever. So it happens in various different ways. But I think because we started off doing remixes… we’re kind of known for the remixes now.

‘cene: Is that annoying? Because obviously having written so much music as well, do you feel like you ever get pigeonholed into remixes?

Adam: It’s a slight blessing and a curse. Take Tiktok, for example, we use it quite a lot. And you get quite a lot of love on TikTok. And sometimes you get a lot of love for remixes, but when it comes to your original music, it’s harder to get that same momentum and same kind of buzz. It’s really hard to break original music anyway. So sometimes the remixes help because you’re collaborating with big artists and so you can raise your profile a bit more. But yeah, you need to get your own music poppin’ to be known as artists as well.

‘cene: Your first album Elements (2014) had some monster artists featured - how did that come about to be working with?

Joe: It was through relationships and people that we knew. So, it started off with P Money. We met him at Glastonbury and then we just got in the studio and started making music with him.

Adam: I think at that point, it was a slightly different time. It was before the explosion of grime artists being complete superstars. I think between us and our manager, we made a list to just hit them up and they were available. Like, I mean, I think with D Double E we sent some beats on the Sunday and were in the studio on Wednesday.

I think Twin [Alec Boateng], who’s now head of 0207 Def Jam, helped us out with a couple of artists…. put us in contact with Doktor, and one was G FrSH.

I think now, it’d be a lot harder as a starting artist to go get those kinds of features. That was a crazy project to put together. It was so fun. And we’ve always thought that Elements II needs to come out at some point.

‘cene: Definitely. So, how did you end up in Ashford?

Joe: I live in Ashford at the moment. I was born in north-west London and we moved to Kent when I was like 14 or 15. Adam actually lives in South London now.

Adam: I always say I’m from Kent because I think that the years that make you are your teenage years. So from, like, 12 to 18 I was in Kent. I love Kent. Our parents are still there, too.

Joe: And, you know, the rise of Kent and the musical talent, especially, it’s come a long way. It’s good to see.

‘cene: Did you know that you share a name with a Dutch progressive metal group? And have you ever been booked for a metal festival by mistake?

Joe: I can’t remember what we were making, but we needed a name to call ourselves and we were going by different aliases at the time. So we just kind of meshed them into one. And we came up with Star.One. We didn’t know about the rock band.

Adam: I always think we’re gonna get sued.

Joe: But it’ll be a good time when we get sued because hopefully [it means] we’ll have taken off!

Adam: We are also Star dot One. That’s our clause.

‘cene: So, for people who don’t know, what do you both do in the band?

Adam: When we first started, Joe was producing for a crew in Ashford called Blackstar Productions and Joe was rapping and producing for them. I was a DJ in Manchester at the time, but I wanted to learn how to produce. So I was, like, ‘Joe, can we do some stuff together?’. And that was basically the start. I think, over time, those things just become a bit more merged in a way.

‘cene: I saw in your bio on Spotify. It says you’ve given up trying to define your style or your genre. Is that a question you get asked a lot? Because obviously tracks like This Way are so far different to so much of the other stuff you’ve done.

Adam: I think This Way, in particular, was a major label trap. We came up with the idea, but I think the environment you put yourself in is quite important. When we got signed, we came into it knowing what we wanted to do, but the music we put out wasn’t a reflection of that. When people say they get signed and change their style… now I see how that works.

It’s not, like, you go in there and say ‘Yeah, I’m gonna change everything completely’. It’s just the environment you’re in. The songs you get sent and the feedback you get, and then your mind just starts changing a little bit.

‘cene: Are you guys signed now, or what’s the state of play?

Adam: We’re not signed at the moment and I feel quite good about it, man. We’ve been going for 10 years and we’ve had three record deals. I’ve never been like ‘f*ck the labels’ or anything like that, because sometimes they’re really helpful, but at this point in our career we kind of know what we’re doing in terms of how to market songs. And if you have the money, you can just go and do it yourself. So where we’re at now, we’re independent and loving it and this gives you a bit more musical freedom.

‘cene: You’ve worked with so many people over the years - do you have a favourite project?

Joe: I really liked the Asher D and P Money tune We Run The Show. That was just like quite a moment. And it was working with people that you grew up listening to and with the new talent. The beats were sick and the video was sick. And the studio session was sick. It was a good time. But there’s so many tracks that I love, so it’s a hard question.

Adam: The thing with music, sometimes it’s not about the sales and all this kind of stuff. It’s that feeling and that We Run The Show track, I mean, two of our favourite MCs crossing generations. And that video, we felt like we’re part of So Solid Crew - it was just like teenage dreams ticked off.

I’d also put the Original Badman [in there] because the collab was a drum & bass track with semi-poppy elements with Takura, who’s a good friend of ours, and then we had that dancehall flavour from Agent Sasco. And I was, like, that’s the kind of stuff that we wanna be doing.

‘cene: You guys produced the Ikea Christmas advert with D Double E in 2020. That was everywhere for about eight weeks.

Adam: I remember actually feeling ‘I don’t know how people are gonna take this’. Are they gonna think it’s really cheesy or something, is it going to flop?

That morning, I think I woke up late and my phone was going crazy. In a lot of group chats people were like ‘Have you seen this? It’s so sick!’… not knowing that we’d done it. From that moment I was, like, ‘OK, this is gonna go well because it’s so talked about’.

‘cene: Christmas adverts are usually those covers of old sorts of 80s classics, slowed down and emotional. To take it into the grime realm was totally new.

Joe: It was completely different. The visuals were sick to it, as well. D Double was sick on it, it just all worked really well. And I think that you could tell that from the reception it got. When you make music there’s some [tracks] that might pull on your heartstrings, some might give you feels in your skin, but some others just get a really good reception, which that one did.

Adam: I mean, I’ll give you a little insight: multiple MCs tried for the advert. But as soon as D Double came in, it was just, like, obviously the voices and the cadences and his tone. Everything was hit perfectly and it was just ‘Yeah, this is a moment’.