On a cold and rainy Tuesday morning (typically British), Pretty Green met up with rising artist Master Peace at Tooting and Mitcham Sports Club. This location is Peace’s choice; once an aspiring footballer, he spent formative years playing on these very grounds. As we walk through the stands down to the pitch, it’s obvious he feels at home. Peace is still buzzing from a wild weekend, having just won the Ivors Award for ‘Rising Star,’ one of the most prestigious awards a songwriter can attain. The London-born artist is clearly still riding high from his win, even though he didn’t expect it at the time.

“I’m sitting there, drinking my Peroni, feeling depressed, knowing I’m not gonna win, and then I hear ‘this artist is really special and I can’t wait to see what he does…’ then I hear ‘Master Peace’... I was screaming, I jumped on my manager like ‘let’s fucking go!’ It was crazy… and my old major label was in the room when I won it… that was an extra win.”

Peace has an infectious enthusiasm and confidence, but his path to acclaim hasn’t necessarily been easy. In many ways, he still sees himself as the underdog. His relationship with music had rocky beginnings. “Music definitely wasn’t something I always wanted to do. I was quite against it; I just thought it was a bit naff. But then I kinda got into some shit, wrong side of the law kind of bag… I saw my friend go to prison and that shook me up a little bit, like I should pattern up and stop rolling around with the wrong people.”

Peace’s debut album ‘How To Make A Master Peace’ was released earlier this year in March. It’s been hailed as genre-pushing and boundary-breaking - an 11 track journey through Peace’s psyche via indie pop sleaze. It’s an album, however, that could very easily have never been made. When he started the sessions, Peace had just left a major label and was in a bad headspace, feeling he’d been putting in a lot of work but not seeing the fruits of his labour. “I felt like I’d had enough. I was selling out big capacity shows very early on, and not getting any love… I just felt like what’s the point, people are always gonna clap for someone who is doing something very bang average.”

“ I jumped on my manager like ‘let’s fucking go!’ It was crazy… and my old major label was in the room when I won it… that was an extra win.”

He credits producer Matty Schwartz, known for his work with YUNGBLUD, with helping reignite his passion. “My team put me in a session [with Schwartz] and I got in, was just on my phone… he was showing me something and I wasn’t really focussed on what he was showing me, and he’s paused the thing and is just like, ‘Where’s the hunger? Don’t you wanna be here?’. He’s a very direct guy, and I’m very direct as well, so I kinda gave it back to him like, ‘No, not really bro…’ and he was just like, ‘You’re wasting your talent… you feel hard done by, but what you don’t realise is you haven’t even reached your final form, you haven’t even reached what I can see in you yet.’

‘Look: we’re gonna make this album… we’re gonna have two weeks to make it… we’re gonna do a song a day, and if you still feel like this, then cool, I’ll leave you to it. But let’s make the album and see how you feel after that.’ And the first song we made was ‘I Might Be Fake’ and oh my god, when he said I hadn’t reached my final form, when I’d made that song, I realised what he meant.”

For Peace, getting rid of expectations and allowing himself to create music for the pure enjoyment of it was the key. “I felt like I needed to cut a piece off myself and let go of the anger and the frustration and go into this new side of the Master Peace project with a new mindset like fuck what’s happened in the past, let’s go straight… make the music you wanna make and see what happens. And when I exercised that, more things started happening. Now I’m just addicted to winning. I wanna be winning all the time.”

I’ve got all these types of people around me, but that’s ‘How To Make a Master Peace’ - it’s what shaped me.”

‘How To Make A Master Peace’ is symbolic of Peace’s childhood and adolescence, growing up with conflicting influences from two worlds that couldn’t be bigger opposites. This tension is explored on Peace’s debut, on tracks like Shangaladang (“If you come to the spot you’ll get yourself laid/I’m not about it, I don’t claim to be/but my friends will take you for fifty P”) and Los Narcos (“Hated my friends cos they wanted me dead”).

“I went to quite a posh school in Wimbledon and they were like, good guys, and a lot of my music taste came from going to that school… but then I had friends from the hood who were really about that life.. really lived what they rapped and lived what they said… with songs like Shangaladang that’s exactly what I mean, it’s like I won’t rob you but my friends will do, or like I won’t pull up on you but my homies, if you get on the wrong side of them, it’ll probably be that… it’s just giving them the reality.

I’ve got friends who are in jail, friends who are not in jail but are still about that life and I’ve got friends who are good guys and they’ve never seen a box in their life… I’ve got all these types of people around me, but that’s ‘How To Make a Master Peace’ - it’s what shaped me.”

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Lucky for us and for Peace then that he managed to escape bad influences and self-doubt - his career so far has seen incredible highs, with the aforementioned Ivors win and a bucket list collaboration with The Streets in the form of their 2022 single ‘Wrong Answers Only’. “I don’t actually know how that happened… Mike Skinner messaged me and just said ‘hey’... I replied like ‘hey, I’m a big fan’ or whatever, and he didn’t actually reply after that so I just thought oh I’ve scared him off in the DMs. Then he messaged me a few days later like ‘Yo I’m working at Church Studios, let’s make a song’.

I’m not thinking it’s his next single… after I laid down my vocals, I was like ah he ain’t gonna want me on this tune. Then literally a couple of weeks later my team got an email like ‘yeah we’re putting out the song’.... I love that man.”

“Now I’m just addicted to winning. I wanna be winning all the time.”

Much like his music, Master Peace’s aesthetic can be interpreted as a style that brings together different groups and subcultures - primarily through the track top, a symbol of working-class sportswear, streetwear and classic UK indie rock culture, and something that Peace wears everywhere; he even picked up his Ivors award in a track top. “The track tops, that’s all I could afford when I was a kid… going into JD, getting them and just going out with your boys and having it up on the weekend, that was our reality. So track tops… they needed to be the blueprint for when people are coming to shows… for my headline show at Scala, all my fans were in track tops… it felt so emotional, like this is where I’ve come from, this is my world.”

So what’s next on the agenda? Peace says album two is sounding “fucking heavy… it’s a bit more fun, a bit more in the ‘I Might Be Fake’ bag… more sleazy and more rocky with it.” He’s also got plenty of collabs coming with some artists he can’t name but we’ll all no doubt recognise. “It’s motion, it’s motion innit.”

Master Peace’s debut album ‘How To Make A Master Peace’ is out now via PMR Records.

Peace wears the Dribble Oversized T-shirt, the Ancoats Straight Leg Jean and the Nylon Crinkle Zip-Up Jacket.

Instagram: @masterpeaceldn

Words: Joseph Mumford

Photos: Matthew Willcocks @matthew__willcocks