Mamba.exe Interview (2024)

For someone that's never really been on set before, Mamba walked onto ours like she owned the gaff. In all fairness to her, she may as well have. There’s a specific brand of unbridled confidence that can only find home in someone that’s destined to earn it - Mamba is that someone.

With a brief stint in child modelling, it’s a wonder Mamba was so keen to be back on set, telling us:

“I’ve had pics taken but not a proper shoot. Apart from when I was a kid, my mum used to model and she took me to a shoot to see if I could model too n the photographer took pics of me and […] he said I was too big! As a CHILD! I was like 5…”

As much as we laughed, it birthed a conversation about youth, naivety and all that other depressing, nostalgic stuff. There’s an age when a smile is just sincere, and then it has to be pretty. When pictures are for memories and not just aesthetics. It’s something, especially as a woman, forced onto you by social pressures; and then have to unlearn it on your own. This evolution sometimes distances you from the people you’ve grown with as you all start to grow apart. As creatives, this seems to happen tenfold. I asked Mamba about her evolution as an artist, and its impact on her identity. She laughs: “I’ve BEEN evolved, I’ve been shitting on people from day!” 

Mamba’s resolve is beyond admirable. As a woman of colour, being so bold in your self-love is hardly favoured. If anything, it’s often criticised and conflated with arrogance and ego. Mischaracterised by archetypes of convenience by societal norms that don’t care to include us.

I wondered what stereotype she was ladened with, I had a feeling I already knew.

“I was the Angry Black Girl!  There were literally three black people in my year - most of them left…”

Being a minority isn’t an unfamiliar feeling either. Working in the music industry as a DJ and MC, she finds herself being an ODDITY. In an industry dominated by cishet white guys, it seems she has to work twice as hard to get half as far. A truth that stings in particular with Mamba’s passion lying in Jungle, a sub-genre founded by Black people.

“The Jungle scene is built off soundsystem culture, which is founded by Black people. But I’m a black person in the scene and I look out in the crowd and don’t see many Black faces. I’m a minority in a culture that’s mine.”

There’s a whole host of brilliant female DJ’s and spitters. There always have been. Thankfully, in the past few years they’ve been gaining more and more spots on line-ups - but even this seemingly positive change doesn’t come without its drawbacks. 

Mamba tells us, “There’s loads of us but we’re not integrated. There’s a lot of diversity but not a lot of inclusion. […] I saw a line up the other day and there was 19 fuckin - oop sorry for my language}

Maisie: “It’s okay we swear here!”

Mamba: “BRILLIANT! Well there was 19 FUCKIN men and like one woman? So well done them… are we going to act like there’s not more skilled women out there? It’s lazy, very lazy.”

A difficulty with grass roots events is that we often rely on the support and free-labour of our friends. However, if you come from a particularly sheltered background, you exclude people passively. There needs to be an active mindset when it comes to scouting and platforming within our respective industries. It’s not enough to be against exclusion if you’re not pro-inclusion. 

Then there’s the performative inclusion. All female lineups, but only for International Women's Day. All queer line ups, but only when it’s Pride Month. You’re included, exclusively. Sometimes. The lack of sincerity of these opportunistic promoters is evident in the way they support their ‘diversity hires’.

Mamba: “Some of the shit people say! oh my god - who is raising you! Do I need to call you mum and ask what’s going on? […] There’s a lot of shady shit that goes on that just gets swept under the rug… one thing I can’t stand - not even being on the stage but being in the crowd. Why am I in the rave and someone’s running their hands through my hair? In the toilets IN THE TOILETS? […] and there’s so many instances of people using slurs that I find it hard to draw on the specific details because it’s happened so often.”

The nonchalance of Mamba’s ‘It’s happened so often’ struck a chord. It’s not an unfamiliar experience for many women or people of colour to grow desensitised to their own discrimination. If anything, it’s a necessary evil for survival's sake. It can be hard to advocate for yourself in a space where it’s 20v1 and you’re the only one offended.

Mamba tells us of a recent run in she had with another MC:

“Recently there was a lad that said the N word when spitting some bars at an afters (you know who you are) and it’s mad cos the whole night he was sucking up to me and we’re getting on and I thought he was sound! And then I’m spitting a freestyle and I pass the mic to him - and he was RUBBISH by the way - and he said it and I had to do a double take thinking “did he say that? Am I imagining things?”  And you look at them and they’re not phased, like why aren’t you crying? Where’s the regret?

Accepting this kind of mistreatment is a lose-lose for all of us though. Accepting it for your own advancement makes you a sell out, but calling it out could stop you advancing at all. Mamba is in the latter camp, making an active effort to advocate for herself as much as possible, despite the potential backlash. However, it has made the failing of her peers far more obvious.

“I’m trying to speak up as much as I can. But when you’re the only Black person in the room you have to carry that yourself. And people will ask “why didn’t you say anything?” Or afterwards they’ll say it’s wrong but I just think “why didn’t they say anything? Why didn’t they back me up? […] It’s a lot to carry. I’m just so fed up and mad but at the same time I think that all of these things are what people call “character building”. It’s funny for a hot minute but I have to go home and sit with that.”

‘Character building’ are two dreaded words for any minority. There’s nothing like the trivialisation of trauma to really make a woman of colour feel seen and heard. Championing the strength someone has been forced to gain through hardship isn’t the praise it’s been made out to be.

Mamba: “Why do I have to be strong? I’m tired. I’ve been carrying this weight, take the fucking bag. I’m strong because I have to be , there’s this pressure to be strong. This association of the strong black woman and the aggressive Black woman.”

For anyone that’s never quite joined the dots, the Strong Black Woman and the Angry Black Girl are the same person, just viewed through whichever lens is most convenient. When your perceived strength becomes inconvenient, it’s aggression. When with them, you’re a champion. Against them, you’re ridiculed. This goes for almost any racial stereotype. You only need to look as far back as the 2020 Euros to evidence this. With Saka, Sancho and Rashford receiving an onslaught of racial abuse following their missed penalties that cost the England team to lose in the final against Italy. 

Returning to the conversation of the Angry Black Woman, we discussed the impact of culture on what we perceive to be femininity. With beauty standards hailing from western society, there’s no cultural reference point to include women of colour, despite them being the global majority. The softness we associate with a lot of western femininity doesn’t appear in the same way with a lot of women of colour because it can’t. The world forces your hardness and then criticises you for it. Black women have been forced into strength for generations, it’s only natural for us to see that as a crucial part of womanhood. 

“As women of colour, our version of femininity is different […] It’s very matriarchal.

I look after myself - and others. I handle business.”