Crystal Palace FC or Oxbridge beckoned, but the multitalented MC kept forging her way towards music. She explains how she poured every aspect of herself into her debut mixtape
Two weeks before we meet, UK rapper Cristale was scrambling down a cliff face to a secluded black pebbled beach in Dover, racing an incoming tide with fewer than 90 minutes to shoot the video for her single Iâm Okay With Being Lonely.
Sheâd never hiked before in her life. âI was wearing head-to-toe Stone Island, no hiking gear, full face of makeup, edges laid and Mum was doing my touch-ups on a rusty ladder,â she laughs.
As we sit in her publicistâs central London office, her hair half-braided and half-flowing past a black puffer coat, she says the rush of adrenaline hasnât fully faded.
In fact she seems to thrive on regular bumps of it: beyond her relentlessly articulate and energetic rap flow â put to work on tracks that span drill, introspective R&B and beyond â she has ably hopped between football, art, acting in Netflix projects and more.
Already with nearly half a million monthly listeners on Spotify alone, the 25-year-old has just released her debut mixtape, Clear Intentions. Itâs her third attempt at a full-length project, but the first she has actually finished. âThereâs no fillers, no bridges in between songs,â she says. âIâm very nitpicky with my art.â
Born and raised in Brixton, to a Guyanese father and half-Jamaican, half-Montserratian mother who doubles as her manager â âclose is an understatementâ, she says of their relationship â Cristaleâs first taste of songwriting arrived in nursery when her uncle taught her how to rap.
Come year 7, her English teacher organised a school poetry slam, and sitting in a friendâs flat looking across at her own house, Cristale wrote What Itâs Like to Be Young, a misunderstood kidâs response to the adults around her.
She was victorious against older students, and while she cringes at the thought of anyone looking it up on YouTube, it gave her debut EP its title, and she sampled it on recent single H2O.
Her creative drive was matched by a competitive streak across her youth, including playing football for Crystal Palaceâs academy, fuelled by boys at school telling her she couldnât play because she was a girl.
The plan was to go pro, but with exams looming she stepped away: âI couldnât take the risk because you can go into womenâs football and not make any money.â Teachers urged her towards Oxbridge, but she feared âmaybe too linearâ a path, and chose to follow what she loved at the time: drawing.
Even if she hadnât realised it at the time, music was where her imagination ran freest. âIt never feels like a job. Iâve got a big blank canvas in front of me, like Iâve got 8,000 different paint brushes going in. Itâs the most euphoric feeling ever.â
Alongside her art and illustration degree, with plans to become an architectural designer, she juggled university with 40-hour work weeks at a Chelsea boutique, and idly posted freestyle raps to Instagram. âIt was just a hobby at first, and a reason for me to spend time with my dad.â He pushed and helped her to record them properly and, by 21, sheâd signed a record deal.
As she began to gain momentum, she kept up the pace, partly to honour her parents, but also to prove the doubters wrong. âYoung, Black and female in Brixton is hard ⦠you look a certain type of way, youâre categorised into a certain type of group of kids.â There have been âmultiple momentsâ, she says; some teachers didnât want her on their courses, assuming sheâd fail. âThe least I could do was
block out all of the external noise, and care about myself how my mum has always cared about me,â she says.
The payoff came quickly. Her track Bong Bing went viral, she was nominated for best newcomer at the Mobo awards, and she took acting roles in Top Boy â for which she also wrote the song Roadents â and Daniel Kaluuyaâs Netflix film The Kitchen.
Acting taught her more about herself â âhaving to put myself in someone elseâs shoes made me feel even more comfortable in my own skinâ â but her days ran to a strict schedule, âfrom like five oâclock in the morning. Routine really helps, but it also limits my creativity.â Clear Intentions, she says, speaks to finding the balance between that and a freer life.
Musically, sheâs also come a long way from where she started. Her
