“I Wanted Something I Can Make Where I Don’t Have To Wait For Anybody” – An MM Exclusive With Doc Brown

Doc Brown (aka Ben Bailey Smith) has had a unique career path. After coming up as a rapper in the early 2000’s, he found his feet as a stand up comedian before turning his talents towards acting. Since then, Brown has appeared in multiple hit TV shows and films from The Inbetweeners and Boiling Point to Star Wars: Andor and the upcoming series of Black Mirror.

I sat down with Doc to discuss his journey so far, his passion for Rap music, the links between music and acting, and the timing of his new album, ‘Do More Say Less’:

How did you first get into Rap music?

I first got into it when I was like 9 or 10, but it didn’t really take over me at that time. I’d just listen to all types of music. It wouldn’t have been till secondary school when you first get those tapes get passed around. I think the first CD that got passed around was The Chronic, and everyone would just record it and then bring it back the next day. That was the first time I remember feeling like, ‘Oh, shit, this is my music.’ That would have been around 1992 and then, yeah, I was always writing little rhymes when I was, like, 15 or 16, but I only really started in battles in like, ‘99, 2000 and that was it. That was the start for me. It was never really a career. I never made money, and it was all underground, but that’s what got me into it.

What was the state of the UK scene at that time?

I didn’t know it existed. When I was a kid in like ‘97, at that stage I started buying records in sixth form, I remember getting a record that had Task Force on it, and Skinny Man. Apart from Black Twang I hadn’t really heard English people rapping. It was just a whole new thing. Immediately it made so much more sense – having people doing it well, but in our voice. That’s when I started investigating.

When I started battling in the 2000’s I started realizing that there’s male and female talent from all over the UK, but there was no industry. It’s like the early days of hip hop in 80s New York or something. No one’s making any money. It wasn’t thin on the ground in terms of artists, but in terms of how you would find those artists, there was no business around it. The whole thing was underground.

I guess you kind of preceded the Grime era back then…

I first started sort of making a name for myself when I was hosting open mics and stuff in 2003 and at the same time we started having our first few stars. We already had So Solid but Dizzee was coming through and Roots Manuva had a hit too. There was a bit more attention, but at the same time if you went East, you could see what was happening. There was a whole groundswell of new energy, so it was natural for them to come in. The key thing that they brought was structure and togetherness which we didn’t have.

Coming up through rap battles, how do you think that helped shape you as an artist?

I think it made me fearless. It gave me the practice to become a stand up without even knowing I was ever going to be a stand up. I had some transferable skills from that. That was also in the days where you had to improvise – like actually freestyle – so you’re thinking on your feet as well. Being under that pressure makes it a really good training ground, I think, for being an entertainer. 

On one of your new tracks, ‘Renaissance Man’, you actually say that Rap has been a transferable skill for you. In what other ways do you find that to be true?

I think it’s true on all levels. I don’t get paid from Rap, but I do sometimes get paid to write, sometimes get paid to act. I sometimes get paid to to be on stage. I think Rap, if you look at the best rappers, male or female, they’ve all got the same core skills, right? They can write, they can write for the stage, they can perform on stage, and they can play a role, and also they can manipulate their voice. 

When I say play a role, I’m not saying they’re pretending to be someone else. It’s more like a version of who they really are. Busta Rhymes is Busta Rhymes on stage, but he’s also Trevor Smith, and he’s got a life to live. He has to be a character in a way, but he’s writing for that character, and that character is him. You’re already writer, director and star, and you’re playing this role for this particular script that you’ve written. You’ve got to have a sense of humor, too. You could take any singular one of those skills and put them into being a stand up comedian or a writer, director or an actor.

How did you get into acting?

Through stand up, really. I think I was doing stand up, which I got into through Rap. I was developing this script I’d written for a kids show for the BBC and it was like a Rap comedy,

Sitcom. I was writing the raps for it, obviously, but it was really as the BBC who suggested I’d be in it. I hadn’t really thought 100% about doing that, but that was really my sort of training ground. That was going to acting school for me and I was like learning how to do it on the job.

That gave me the confidence to start auditioning around the same time. Then the Inbetweeners guys had seen me do stand up and I took this little cameo role, and it kind of turned into a shareable thing because it’s only a couple minutes long, so that sort of doing the round. I think that helped get me a lot of the first acting jobs I got, which were almost always exclusively in comedy sitcoms.

There’s quite a clear relationship between comedy and Rap as well, especially battle rap…

Yeah for sure. Battle rap now is 100% comedy. When I was doing it was more like half and half.  There’d be funny things, but also it would just be like survival of the fittest and quite a serious melodrama. Battle rap now it’s like, if it’s not funny, what? Where is it? So, yeah, 100% there’s a crossover. I mean, just the fact that you call them punch lines tells you all you need to know.

In your acting career you’ve obviously worked with some legendary people. What have you taken from them and those experiences?

That’s a really good question. I think the first thing is, it’s surprising when you work with someone who you think is just sort of like, almost like a fantasy. When I used to listen to Rap, I couldn’t imagine Prodigy being in a studio recording Shook Ones. It’s too magical, do you know what I mean? I feel that way about some of the guys you’ve only ever seen on a screen. You don’t even think of them as three dimensional. They have this two dimensional image that you’ve seen your whole life, so it’s very surreal when you’re standing opposite them. 

I think what I’ve learned is that so many of them have made it to where they’ve made because they’ve always been honest with themselves, and found a way of expressing their true feelings, so they tend to be quite good people. There’s a real eye opener to go, ‘Oh, wait a minute, of course. Everybody’s shit smells the same.’ Everybody’s got the same deal, right? There’s only one deal, really, which is that you will eventually die, and that’s the only guarantee, and nobody’s above that, so everybody really is equal. It’s just a mad way to sort of really take that in as a concept. Maybe because we’re all scared of death, I don’t know. I just remember thinking normal people can do anything. You just sort of need to have belief and keep plugging away.

Your project, ‘Do More Say Less’, has just dropped. Why now after so many years out of the game?

Another good question.  I didn’t plan to do it is the easy answer. I just finished one job when I was working on Black Mirror, and I just thought that another job will come around, and it didn’t. More time passed and the waiting started to make me feel sick. I thought to myself that if nothing I’m creating is making money, I’ll just have to create something myself. I wanted something I can make where I don’t have to wait for anybody, and that’s always been Rap. There’s no gatekeeper, there’s no editor. It’s just me spilling out some thoughts. I didn’t really think of doing it until I heard Tony’s beats on Instagram, Tony Bones. They spoke to me and made me want to rap. 

I messaged him and he sent me 10 beats, and I just suddenly had written to seven, which is unheard of for me, and I was just sending him stems every day. We got more time and more time then I did eventually get a job, which started on the first of July. I’d started Tony in January so we had a deadline now. I thought we’d do an EP, but then we just kept making more songs. Tony said to put a name on it and call it an album. That’s why we called it ‘Do More Say Less’, because we kept talking and talking about the states of the project but in the end it was just a case of shutting up and doing it. When I first listened to it, I was just like, ‘Holy shit! This is actually not shit.’ It’s the best thing I’ve ever done by a country mile, music wise. 

It’s just really refreshing, and I have no expectations for it either, because the music game is not my game. That was my game 20 years ago, and it wasn’t even a thing then. I don’t mind what happens. I think my main thing is the people that need to hear it, hear it, and the people that want to see it performed get to see it. That’s it. It’s just another beautiful thing to just have out there. So when, when my time comes, which comes to us all, I can say, well, there’s a little body of work there. My kids can enjoy it. Or, you know, it could be a little memory. It’s like a diary entry.

At this stage of your career would you say you get more out of the acting side or has this project energised you in a different way?

You know what it is? If I stay doing one thing for too long, I end up getting disheartened. I love that feeling of jumping into something else and meeting people who are doing things for the first time or if it’s like a dream for them. Jumping on that energy and taking on challenges. I just love the challenge. The times I get to do animation and voiceover work I absolutely love it. I like the challenge of manipulating my voice, making myself tap into different characters. But again, maybe if I stayed in that for 20 years, doing the same thing, I’d get jaded. I get restless too easy. In show business for a lot of people, it’s about being household name, being number one. That means you’re a superstar and you’ve had incredible success, but your private life is gone. You belong to the people, basically. I just haven’t got the energy for that. I love my life, my friends, I don’t want to give that up. So I kind of quite like being a mid level dude in all of these different arenas. I enjoy it.

Off the back of that, what’s your next challenge? Do you see it in acting or music or further afield?

My next intellectual challenge is adapting a novel for television. That’s the thing that’s really taking up my time. I suppose the next place people will see me would be maybe in Black Mirror in 2025 or maybe in Little Disaster, which is a Paramount Plus thing that I shot a

few months ago. There’s couple of things to look out for, but right now all I want people to do is just take in the album see if there’s anything they can take from it makes them feel happy, or make them celebrate the fact that they’re still here, because that’s what that album is about■

Doc Brown’s album, ‘Do More Say Less’, is out now.