Hak Baker is the rebellious artist pioneering ‘G-Folk’

Amid the vibrant energy of FORWARDS Festival in Bristol, Hak Baker greets me with a laidback warmth that feels instantly genuine. Despite having wrapped up his lively debut performance just ten minutes earlier, he’s relaxed and radiates warmth, making it feel like I’m catching up with an old friend. Hailing from the Isle of Dogs in East London, Hak describes this authenticity as “homegrown” – shaped by the grit of his upbringing, the chaos of inner-city life, and the bittersweet pull of nostalgia. These experiences are at the heart of Nostalgia Death, the second part of his EP, where Hak continues to narrate his journey with unfiltered honesty.

Released in part during the height of summer, Act I of the EP laid the groundwork for the intricate musical tapestry that is Nostalgia Death. With themes of purgation and self-destruction woven throughout, Act I offered listeners an intimate glimpse into the myriad challenges Hak has faced while striving to stay on the straight and narrow. In the opening track, “Nameless,” we witness Hak poignantly grappling with the tension between the comforting familiarity of his destructive past and his desire to break free from the encroaching darkness. This internal struggle is encapsulated in his candid lyrics: “Wish I could askew the old me / Scold him with the hottest of water / But then where’d all the naughtiness come from? / And how would I write down what I’m oughtta?” Through these lyrics, Hak captures the complexity of personal transformation and the intricate dance between past and future.

Now, with the release of Act II of the EP upon us, Hak seeks to only deepen his exploration of the inner self, from the emotional turmoil explored in “A Great Day to Die” to the spontaneous collaboration with Pete Doherty that gave birth to the EP’s cathartic closing track, the final components of Nostalgia Death reveal even more about Hak’s vulnerabilities and moments of doubt, all while showcasing his resilience and determination to grow.

Yet, despite the heaviness of these themes, Hak’s music feels hopeful – driven by the belief that looking ahead is the only way to grow. Below, Dazed speaks to Hak and delves deeper into the world that is Nostalgia Death.

What were some of the inspirations behind the EP?  

Hak Baker: Life, as cliché as that sounds, in order to write songs that affect people you’ve got to be in tune with yourself. I’ve been at a place where I want to move on from things – habit wise, vice wise – and in order to do that I have to do it through music. I think music and my thoughts really come naturally, you know, this is where I was and I was gagging, starving, to move on and stop making the same mistakes. With nostalgia, we try and relive certain times back in the day and this was the key catalyst for the EP. In order to move forward I have to reflect on who I was, who I am and who I’m trying to be. We use nostalgia a lot to reminiscence with our friends but what about the times in fruition? I think we should be concentrating on the present and the future, the past is the past for a reason.

It’s easy to get hung up on the past.

Hak Baker: Yeah, you spend your whole life trying to relive it, but you never get there, so this is my statement to that. Nostalgia is so powerful, it can be triggered by music, the pub, the smells, and it’s so easy to go there. But my message with this EP is that the key is fruition and looking forward.

And you’ve recently released your music video for ‘Nameless’, which is the opening track to the EP. Can you tell me about the filming process and how you co-directed it?

Hak Baker: I was lucky because some lads contacted me from Australia. And I’ve always co-directed my videos and projects. This particular one was special because it was filmed in my home, and I think it took a stranger to the place to help me visualise the beauty of my home. It takes a stranger’s eye to see what you might not. And with the conjunction of that with my knowing of the place, it was something that needed to happen. I have a feeling it’s probably going to do better than most things of mine that are out because it’s homely and has this certain energy. I think why people feel synonymous with me is because I have that homely vibe and that is all I perpetuate. I don’t perpetuate no arrogance, no egotism.

You recorded the video in early August during the riots and during a heightened time of racial violence, do you think that affected the filming? Did you use the video as a message?

Hak Baker: I don’t think we used it as a tool, I think it is what it is. I just wanted to shine some light on it. Fortunately, we don’t have that issue in the Isle of Dogs, we have such a small hub of community, and we’ve been through that already. We’ve been through that as kids and people have been through that [in the Isle of Dogs] prior to me being alive. I think we have an amazing place over there with myriad people. I think [the Isle of Dogs] is a beacon to what England could be and should be. It’s a melting pot with so many different races and ages. We soar by perpetuating who we are and what we do.

Photography Simon Emmett

I saw that Vice mentioned that you subvert what a British folk singer can be. How do you see your role within the British folk scene? And what does it mean to you to challenge those stereotypes?

Hak Baker: I’ve been doing that all my life. It’s not like a staged thing. It’s just who I am. I’m a walking talking beacon of where I’m from. It’s nothing that I put on and it’s not forced, I leave it to other people to interpret me. That’s who we are. And I use the term ‘we’ because I wouldn’t be who I am without my friends and family.

Why did you decide to release the project in two parts? Is there a meaning behind that?

Hak Baker: At first, I just wanted to whack it out there, but I realised that it does have two parts. The start outlines the madness and the parts of life that we see that are connected to traumas and stories and our past. And then the end of the EP is more of the purging element and saying things out loud until the ultimate climax at the closing track with Pete. That song I feel is the purge of my feelings. Pete [Doherty] and I wrote that song in literally five minutes. I was playing the riff, I started singing and Pete sat down, got his typewriter, typed it out and we recorded it.

Why the typewriter?

Hak Baker: You’d have to ask Mr Pete Doherty. That’s his method of scribing.

“Nostalgia is so powerful, it can be triggered by music, the pub, the smells, and it’s so easy to go there. But my message with this EP is that the key is fruition and looking forward” – Hak Baker

Do you have a favourite track on the EP?

Hak Baker: Oh. I don’t know if it’s a favourite track, but it’s a track that I subconsciously saw myself reenacting in real-time. There are elements of the track that I was like ‘That’s fucking dangerous man’, I was asking myself, ‘Do you still feel like that?’ and ‘Why do you still do that?’. It’s called ‘A Great Day to Die’ and it’s a look at how I love to live my life on the edge, I’ve done it for 20 years, and there was an instance of things that have been happening this year that made me question what I was doing. I realised I was living too dangerously and close to the edge and I could ruin my career when I go off the handle. I always tell people, please don’t look up to me because I am actually who I say I am. That song is dangerous man.

Is it hard to get the balance of experiencing those things that inspire your music without taking it too far?

Hak Baker: 100 per cent. It’s hard because all I write and have written about is my life. I’m just trying to figure out how to balance it. I know I can always write about how crazy I am and how crazy I feel on a day-to-day basis and there’s nutters out there that really understand it.

You also just realised a new track with Joe James called ‘Blender’ which follows these themes of inner turmoil. How was it collaborating with him and making the track itself?

Hak Baker: The first thing I want to say is that Joe James is an intellectual and a gentleman. In terms of the song, it’s mainly about how you’re a product of your environment, where you’re born, what’s going on in your house and how this can lead you to go and take on the world by yourself. You don’t want to do it indoors anymore, there’s too much war there, so you find the other survivors and bond with them through your pains and traumas. You might not even talk about it, but there might be eye contact or an emotion that you see in someone’s face that you recognise. When you have that safety net of hound dogs, you come together and do what you’ve got to do to better our lives.

Do you feel that you and Joe established common ground in that way also?

Hak Baker: Of course, how he speaks and how he expresses himself, shows that there’s a high level of awareness and intellect behind any of his decisions. There are not a lot of people that I meet who are aware of everything, what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and the necessity of it all, and I guess that’s what I gravitated towards when I first met him. We have similar experiences in East London and Essex, which are areas that I visited frequently at a young age, and we have similarities surrounding our survivor’s guilt too.

Could you talk a bit more about the survivor’s guilt?

Hak Baker: Yeah, I think it’s just this feeling of looking around and seeing a lot of your friends in jail or still affected by jail, mindset-wise, freedom-wise and family-wise. And knowing people that have died or been killed, doing the same things I was, it’s hard. I go to my area and see the trap that people are in with their actions, and they feel that they can’t do any better. It’s a 50/50 chance that you might go to prison and that’s just accepted.

What I find difficult is going there myself and knowing I get to go out, like the next day I may have a show, or I’m invited to a nice place, I feel guilty. Back in the day when I was with my closest family friends, I always felt like I needed to talk the most; now I say the least because people are just happy for us to all be together.

And finally, you’ve stayed true to your background throughout your career, is it important to keep this authenticity in your music?

Hak Baker: For sure. I could easily make something that might be more digestible to a mainstream crowd but that’s not the path I want to go down. It’s important to me to keep representing my people and express myself as homegrown because the people I grew up with literally crafted me. My parents and my area crafted me and I’m this weird hybrid of different worlds now. This has allowed me to communicate and connect with others seamlessly, and I wouldn’t have got that without being where I’m from.

Nostalgia Death Act II is out now.