A rare interview with Peven Everett (Blackout Mixmag)

For many years I’ve wanted to speak to Peven Everett across all manner of topics. In that time, one thing which has become glaringly obvious to me is that there has been a public sentiment, a stigma, built to discredit anything and everything that came from him, especially via social media. Peven, in my humble opinion, is one of the greatest vocalists in electronic music, and much of that accolade has been marred by conjecture and hearsay designed to ostracise the Chicago genius away from the more agreeable elements of the house music industry.

Peven Everett, for those who may not know, is essentially garage (via house) royalty. His timeless masterpiece ‘Gabriel’ with Roy Davis Jr. from 1996 would certify him in the hearts and minds of a generation. Dance music had found a savant. A multi-instrumentalist, out of the musically esteemed city of Chicago, who has been able to command an undeniable presence not just on wax, but in live performances also. From playing at Carnegie Hall, touring with Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz outfit, to amassing over 300 or so records of self-released music. Peven not only oozed an otherworldly ability to write music, but an unwavering degree of self-belief. The very sort of self-belief and confidence frowned upon by gatekeepers and their sycophants.

Peven was fast becoming a representation, a warning if you will, of what happens to Black musicians who dare to articulate any sort of self-value or worth, or worse yet. articulate a different way the business can be run. Reputational damage has been significant in later years of his career, and all because he chose to speak up about how he had been discredited in the writing process of ‘Gabriel’ (he claims he alone wrote and recorded the track). Peven again posted something similar in 2023 on Facebook. He has always been consistent when drawing attention to the injustices around his talent and in doing so has caused a gulf in opinion largely based on allegiances to the rights holders in that situation. Historically I’m drawn to those voices and to the injustice many face for being outspoken on their value system. The creator economy and the creative economy are faced with new challenges and much of the solutions are held within the minds of those who have experienced the full length and breadth of the music industrial complex.

Peven has a very tempered persona and a very admirable assertiveness and clarity in what could only be described as a dulcet tone of voice. The fact he had taken the time out to speak to me, despite everything he is dealing with regarding health (he is currently undergoing treatment for lung cancer), is indicative of the importance of what he has to say and the timing of when he felt comfortable to say it. The now-established ethos of Blackout Mixmag, to go where no previous editorial on Black music genres has dared to go, both consistently and authentically, has provided as much of a safe space as you can do in the very harsh world of digital media. This is perfect for Peven Everett who has faced a very brutal faction of the music world, committed to misunderstanding him. Peven has never done an interview like this before, and again, this is a first for Mixmag.

I think firstly, I just want to say a huge thank you for taking the time out. It’s an honour, brother, as a big, big fan of your music and your voice. I think you’re a very important and powerful voice, as well. Obviously I’ve been aware of what’s been going on. But I think I want to start things off asking, how are you doing today? How are things at the moment?

Things are things, man! You know, just trying to etch out an afternoon after a long morning… It was kind of tiring, but yeah, man, just let me know what’s on your mind. Whatever you want to talk about, we could talk about.

Definitely. Blackout Mixmag was set up about five years ago, and it was meant to be a space for Black musicians, who had been doing music, had been performing, had been hitting all the metrics that the system had said we needed to do, and we could see that there was something else in the way inhibiting us, but we didn’t really have a space to articulate that. So it’s really developed into a library of information where those nuances which people won’t understand, because they haven’t done that much of their career, where legends like yourself can sort of give someone the foresight. So I think I probably want to start off by just hearing from you on what support looked like for you when you were coming up. You’re doing your music and you’re identifying what the Peven sound is, how you express yourself in music, what was available for you to help you get on?

It was mainly record stores and venues, the occasional interview, you know… the social media thing wasn’t happening, popping like it is now. But it’s become a lot more of an integral part of how artists do their things these days. But you know, I don’t think it’s ever been myself, the social media thing. Because in the end, it’s going to come down to the up close and personal, live and in the flesh moment that determines what a fan feels about an artist in the first place. So I use that space, that live music setting, that was very important for me, because that’s the school I’d come from, and the school I understood.

I understand how to make the music apparent to the community that I was serving, and to also bring newness to that community without having to actually go to vinyl and press up. Or go to CD and press up. You know, it was more of the organic knowledge that the people had that disseminated me as a household name, if you will. So, I wanted it like that, because that’s the way I understood, how the animal of the music career really operated. I’ve used that, and it was something that I’m glad I chose to do, because particularly, it didn’t get in the way of my ability to create, which was the most important part. If I can’t create, and I can’t feel free to create, then what am I showing anybody?

When you speak about the continuation of hearing you, clearly you’ve identified that connection that can happen from your live performances with you and the crowd, you and the consumer, you and the family. But… obviously, we’re now in a generation where some people have to manifest that connection through social media to bring themselves closer. How do you think you’ve maintained the ability to do that, when there’s so much external pressure to go to this new way of operating? How have you managed to still be authentically you with all that pressure?

Well, I don’t want to call it pressure…. I just want to call it a new climate! And just because there’s a new climate, that doesn’t mean there’s a new modus operandi. It means that the people have to find out where they are and how they can access me through this new medium, or through this new way of experiencing music.

But, you know, it’s been quite interesting, navigating through social media. I can’t say it’s been all positive, but I can’t say that it’s been negative as well. It’s a little bit of both! Everything has its perks and has its cons, if you will. I just didn’t want one thing. I didn’t want people to forget about the importance of being live and being able to perform, because, you know, if you’re ready, you don’t have to get ready. If you maintain that level of expertise, you’re always prepared for whatever medium is going to pop in front of you… you’re just going to be prepared. Preparation was always a thing for me. I never liked looking like we didn’t have my [our] thing together. Starting there is, to me, the beginning and the end for professionalism.

True. I want to go back a little bit, and I want to celebrate you through this conversation. You’ve had a very, very illustrious career, full of so many different touch points. And there’s probably details which may have been missed by some of the community in the UK or even globally. So, for you, was you doing vocals before you were playing? Or was you playing before you were doing vocals? When did you sort of identify that you could actually build the music around your talent for playing?

I was hooked on the joy that I saw on the people’s faces. Not what they look like looking at me, but what they were feeling because I was playing… and that hooked me. From that point, I just tried to connect my music to what became my tenor voice. In that moment I was just describing to you, with ‘We Are The World’, it wasn’t until a while after that it just gelled together. I never really sang so much until probably around 17 or 18, when I finally started publicly using my voice, my singing voice…

Wow!

That was after I really got my trumpet thing together, and I played all this stuff with Betty Carter and Roy Hargrove, and I really got my feet nice and wet in the idea that I was a musician. Because I didn’t want to be, you know, that sort of musician guy…. I wanted to actually be somebody that people hired to play! So I knew that I would be accepted in that space, in the way that I thought was, in a professional manner.

So there’s a few things there. It’s really amazing to hear how committed you were, even at a young age. And obviously, when people are young, normally, they just want to go straight to the top, but you already had an understanding that you needed the foundational bricks to help you first. Once you acquire them, like you said, you get your feet wet, you’d feel even more confidence when you’re put into those roles. Like you said, if you’re ready, then you don’t have to get ready.

Explain what it was like for you as you’re taking your proficiency in playing music, writing songs, singing… the next transition of your music career, understanding that business element. How is that? What does that feel like when you’re approached with your first deal, and you kind of get that… gut instinct that this isn’t right. Obviously you want to be loyal to Betty, and finish your commitment to what you’ve built, and there’s now this whole contractual thing, and it’s very… it’s quite rigid. It’s not creative. It’s just a whole new universe! So how is that for you, when you sort of get into that stage of your development?

It’s funny you should ask that, man, You know… just like the face you’re making over there, I was making the same face when I… I didn’t really like it. The idea that somehow now paperwork and all this other stuff is going to have to come into more of a full view and take over a great majority of what I thought was the business. I’m still dealing with that right now, man, like trying to make clear to everybody how [to me] it’s not 80% business and 20% music. I think it’s the opposite.

But as it’s come full circle for me, I feel like the business part has taken too much of our attention, and it’s also left behind lots of business that was possible, because we weren’t looking at the business properly as a collective. As musicians, if you can recall some of the stories of the old school guys, they had long-term contracts with the clubs. You know, not a one-off gig here or there throughout the course of a year, but weeks on end: eight weeks, 10 weeks, 16 weeks of a contract with a particular club, which built a synergy at that club based on that artist, and it also allowed bigger deals to be hashed out, and sponsorships and all of those kinds of things were a lot more accessible and a lot more applicable. It made more sense to the companies and it made more sense to the artists to do business that way, because we could both benefit from that exclusivity that had been garnered, playing for all of those weeks consecutively.

So now we’re talking about, you know, whose philosophy is best about how to get the money and how to get the business together. You dig? That becomes the topic of conversation. And when you got men talking about things like that, you know, his word’s better than mine, mine is better than his — it just becomes apples and oranges at that point, and who you know. So now we’re in a situation where we have people as coordinates [people who connect one another], when they should just be people who either know what they’re doing or not. Let’s say, like, [Sony Music’s Chief Creative Officer] Clive Davis, or [UMG CEO] Lucian Grainge or somebody like that. These are coordinates. A particular person that you must get next to in order to get a certain effect on your career. When that has nothing really to do with actually being good or actually being talented. If you’re talented, Lucian Grainge doesn’t make you talented, nor does Clive Davis… you’re either talented or you’re not. So who you find yourself next to, it becomes really important that they understand that they’re not Lucian Grainge, and they’re not Clive Davis, you know? There’s a thought process that has to go on the manager side and also on the artist side, to respect what kind of collaboration is actually happening for the sake of the business.

Well…..That’s why, because the gaps are very large. The gaps will expose the players, you see? And people don’t like being called professionals and still being exposed at the same time. We have to realise that people have their apprehension for self-preservation reasons.

Your perspective, your ability to see what needs to happen and even then articulate it, is really brave and challenging, given the fact that we’re both Black, and there’s an expectation of what we’re allowed to speak on and what we should be speaking on to help oil the wheels of the industry. Do you find that, as you’ve become more aware and articulate about what is going on, there’s a correlation between that and the blacklisting that you mentioned?

Yeah man! I’ve always known about it. Man, since I was starting with Betty, since I was 17 years old, I’ve known about how people’s emotions can get involved with the business. They like to call it something else. They like to call it my attitude, but it’s really their own emotions…and my attitude is fine! You know [what] my attitude is? I make music and you like it or not. You know what I mean? Everybody doesn’t have to like my music, or me as a person, but I’m always going to have my door open for the idea that, like I said, I started playing, on the basis of the joy in people’s faces. And I’ve never left that philosophy behind. It’s been the whole reason I’ve done anything, and it has its downside, because people want to use folks like that who think like me. But you know, my reservoir is almost infinite, so I never really cared about it. I believe it was Jazzy Jeff who said something like musicians should “die empty”. I think that’s impossible for me. I laughed at it. It’s funny. I make 30 records a day. Easy! I’m not dying empty. I’m dying with music on my brain and on my heart and on my soul, just like I was born. There’s me making music until the Creator stops my heart and stops my breathing. There’s just nothing else. You can’t empty out something that is replenishing second after second, minute after minute. And that’s what the gift from the Creator does. It doesn’t stop when you want it to, it stops when he wants it to! And as long as I have that understanding, then I can present the kind of music that I present to people.

I want us to talk about the context of some of the ways that me and my generation would have found Peven, which is through dance music. You are an icon within dance music, and you actually redefined the male vocalists, especially within house music, up until that point in time we were very conscious and comfortable of female vocalists, but we hadn’t really seen the dynamic of how a male vocalist approaches dance music, song structure, what they even sing about… Do you want to give your perspective on how your journey has been with electronic music, and house music in particular?

I’ll start with my appreciation for the awesome male vocals that came before me. You know, Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, Barry White, Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, Willie Hutch. I lived two blocks from Curtis Mayfield, The Dells lived one block behind me and one block in front of me. There’s a huge amount of respect for soul music and “sped up R&B”, which is what I like to call it, because that’s what house, dance music, disco, all of that is.

If you slowed the disco down, like Gloria Gaynor, when she [Peven sings] “don’t leave me this way” like, come on! if you just slow that down, that’s a ballad! I love Aretha [Franklin], I love lots of female vocalists too, so I have a great respect for the people who came before me, and I loved those voices, and how they made me feel.

So I said to myself, what can I do to be the chapter that follows them? Which was really important for me to think about. I thought long and hard about what sound was kind of missing from the pantheon of all of the stuff that I’d heard, And I said, you know… Stevie is super smooth, but Stevie’s also very acrobatic in his voice. So that’s been covered. I have to be very mindful of not sounding exactly like someone else. Just figuring that part out, and then when I heard Terence Trent D’Arby, and I heard Omar, that kind of put me right in the centre of where I wanted to be. So, I’m giving you the script here!

To me that, that’s what music was all about. And those vocalists pushing me through with the way they sounded helped me find myself, and helped me to say, OK, now this is where my ground zero is going to be, and from here on out, whatever I do is what I’m going to do, but at least I have a foundation of the best singers on the planet to refer to, as to what sounds good, what doesn’t sound good, and how to make body-full music. Music with really thick rhythms in it, with really good lyrics and just juicy stuff, that’s all I really cared about.

I was on stuff, you know, [people] like, Main Ingredient, The Spinners, The O’Jays. Some music was so good…like, I’m not even talking about my stuff! Some of this stuff is just so good, you gotta hear it over and over and still, it just sounds better every time you hear it. So I wanted that too! I wanted my music to last in people’s ears. So, you know, you get a feeling after a while on how to do that, based on listening to the right people. And before Prince passed away, he came to my show, which was extra confirmation to say, “Yeah, you on the right track”. So, I feel fine man, as long as I’m alive on this planet, and I’m able to make music…thats all I really care about bro.

Yes. There are two levels of the dance music business, and that’s the DJ business, and then there’s the live music aspect business. The DJ business is limiting the live music part of the business, which is stifling the evolution of the business. Self-interest can’t take precedence over the evolution of the music. It’s that simple. When you allow that to happen, you allow gatekeeping to happen. You don’t allow the music to breathe and allow people to see the music and hear the music and feel the music that they’ve grown accustomed to, learning a newness.

Remixes? [Male vocalists are often used for remixes.] Yeah, they’re fine and everything, but they don’t sustain people, and you can’t sustain a community off of remixes! It’s a nice thought, because it’s comfortable for you, but it’s not comfortable for the people, and that’s who you’re serving.

This is why we talk to the people that have been here longer and know more. Those brilliant minds within the sector, to extract these sorts of gems into how we fix things… because we need ideas right now, the world is in a pretty bad place, financially, economically, we need new ideas to stimulate more opportunities and growth. And something as as nuanced as that, that there is a live component in electronic music, where, for most people, electronic music is just a DJ and the crowd…

…until they see my show! [Both laugh]

You know, look man, you know what I do in the studio, what I do with a band; if you’ve seen my band play, you’ll see that it’s not a rehearsed band. And people often wonder, how do you not rehearse with the band before you do a full hour-and-a-half, two hour show with them? I was like, if you know music well enough, and you’ve studied it well enough… if you’ve come from where I’ve come from with the artists I’ve had a chance of working with, brilliant artists from Wynton Marsalis to Roy Hargrove…if i could go down our list boy, that would kick your butt! But the fact of the matter is, this tutelage that I got from all of this exposure to these great musicians developed me into the tool, if you will, for the future. And to usher this information in as one coordinate, to disseminate to the people who are willing to listen to the fact that I have this information, that can suffice in making sure that they make the right decisions from now on. And evolving the material, getting it out there to the people, yes, but also growing the business at the same time.

I work with tons of artists, I work with tons of DJs, I work with tons of venues, and, you know, they all know. I know they know. They know, I know they know! It’s just one of those things. The people have always been in the deciding position to decide who it is that they like to listen to, but they also have the burden of falling wayward to propaganda! And to hearsay and smear campaigns, and all of these other things that start to come into this business that we all know. But I’m not one of them dudes, man! I make music, I play it, I go to the venue, do my job. Rock it. Rock the brakes off of it, break the stage, burn it to high hell and leave! That’s what I do! And after that, it’s up to the people to say, ‘Was that one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen?’. And then they say yes or no, and if they say yes, they go buy the record until they see me again. The record is just a commercial until they see me again. You understand, this is how the organics of the music industry really work, that people aren’t giving respect to, and this is why it’s all disjointed and weird and going in this odd direction that it happens to be in now.

That’s so interesting because you said the record is the commercial…

Yeah.

Because I feel like we’re in a space where the live performance is the commercial!

And they twisted it around because they prefer the guy who plays the record to be more important than the people who made the record, when it’s actually a joint effort. We need both, the commercial has to be played and the live show has to be played. A live show can exist without the commercial, sure. But if you think about it, if you’ve ever turned on a TV station or radio station, have you ever stayed on any radio station or TV station that had nothing but commercials?!

Never!

There you go! So how the hell do you expect to have a good time living that way, in live and in the flesh moments where you’re just listening to commercials all night? You have to have an end result to that. There has to be something that you’re actually going towards to appease the people and for them to say, I got my fix. It’s never going to happen with a DJ, you know why? Because a live music scenario and a DJ scenario are very, very different.

This brings me on to the part which I wanted to conclude on really perfectly. I always felt that, even as myself, a DJ, an electronic producer, who is nowhere near the level of musical comprehension that you have, I’d admittedly, humbly, say that there’s a lot of electronic producers that will struggle to find the middle C on the piano. But I feel as though I’ve always occupied a space of being secure and aware of talent, and being in awe in the presence of ability, and it just makes me want to learn. But I can understand that in the presence of ability, you’ve probably felt friction because they identify a threat to their economy, a threat to their status,,,

Yes! Think of it like this. Have you ever played a PlayStation game, like John Madden Football?

I know it…

You play a game like that, and then you get really good at it, and you’re making $30,000, $40,000 a year off of playing this game. That doesn’t mean that you can go on the football field and run up and down it just because you can play a video game! You know what I mean, you can play the video game, but step on that field, you’re going to get your clock cleaned! They’re going to break every bone in your body, and you’re going to be out of breath and you’re never coming back. You know what I mean? Those are two different animals, sir! And being a musician and being a DJ are just like that! Being a musician and being a producer are very similar, but even a producer has to know how to play all the instruments in order, and that means he must be a musician first. You cannot take a shortcut and skip the musician part and call yourself a producer. I feel that’s what sampling does. It allows people to not have to play those instruments and get all of those blisters on your fingers and cuts on your hands, and, man, my hands are beat up like crazy. But I like that! Because that means that I can do what I need to do, and I put in the work. Alright? So these are two different animals. I’m not taking away from people, because some people have a talent for sampling, but having a talent for sampling is something that a musician can have in addition to being a musician. But as a sampler, can you have the talent of being a musician, if you’re a sampler?….You see what I mean? So those two are not interchangeable. Those are two totally different talents that you need desperately in order to put across your ideas in today’s music, because it’s hip hop-influenced, it’s R&B-influenced, it’s rock, it’s everything. People like that edit sound here and there. So I’ve learned to…I just make a record, and then I sample myself. I edit myself, chop it in. if I feel like I need that sound. I’m not grabbing some record down at the shop! I’ve never gone to a shop for anything but to buy a record from Luther Vandross and listen to it. I’m not sampling anything. I never sampled not …one… time…. none of it has ever been a sample, not one time. And I pride myself on that. I absolutely do.

[Laughs] I’m in envy!

And it makes me feel good that I put everything I had in this little body onto those records. It makes it feel good.

I would actually say, in addition to that, that what you can do is actually future proof. AI is more threatening to people who represent me, than represent you. Because a lot of the human characteristics are going to be incorporated into live music; the performance, the playing, the experience, and AI is really concentrated in that record, that product, that you don’t know if it came from a human or computer. I guess, naturally, your confidence in the future is supported by the fact that, if you don’t believe I made this record, then come watch me do it.

Yeah! Right. So, it becomes, you know, who was smarter in the end?! [laughs] And, you know, am I the pig with the straw house? Or the one with the brick house? It becomes: how have you built yourself? Have you built yourself to last or to be temporary? I’ve built myself to last. AI can’t stop me from making a new record right now. No streaming company will ever be a company that I feel has a bigger catalogue than I do on my own website, because they cannot control one thing. My ability to make a new record! I’ve always got a bigger and much more fresh and up to date catalogue than they do. There’s nothing they can do about it! And if we all empower ourselves with that capability, huh, how we’re talking, you see what I mean?

So this is not about me just buffing my collar about this moment. This is about me telling everybody you need to be able to buff your collar, bro. I don’t need to be by myself doing this. I need to have an army of us. You understand? Because right now, the power is not in our hands. And until we realise that the ability to create is the lifeblood of capitalism and our future evolution of this music, we’re missing the plot. There’s so much money being left on the table. So much great music being left behind because people are paying attention to these shortcuts, that are just shortcuts to something that you could develop on your own and not have to worry about a shortcut. As funny as it is for me, I sleep super easy, man. Because I know I’ve reached the ground zero space. Where as long as I’m creating from here, I got something to offer the community.

Peven, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for your time. Have you ever done anything like this? Where you’ve been able to articulate yourself in an electronic music publication, or…

…You’re the only one that has had the guts to try! [laughs]

That makes me feel good, because I wanted, from one Black man to another, to be able to help you, in a very small way to…

Thank you. And you said my favourite word there…..community!

Me too… The community raised me, man, how dare anybody say anything other than that. That’s all I’ve ever, ever, ever cared about. That’s what created Peven Everett…the community.

Kwame Safo AKA Funk Butcher is a DJ, Broadcaster, Label Head, Producer and Music Consultant. 

Blackout Mixmag is an editorial series dedicated to Black artists, issues and stories, first launched in 2020. Our 2025 features are co-guest edited by Kevin Saunderson and Kwame Safo (AKA Funk Butcher). Read all of the previously published pieces here