The Ballad of Wee Willy Winky OR: How To Find Purpose In A Rap Desert

Bristol has long held a reputation for nurturing musical subcultures, spawning artists that excel in creating multi-genre and multi-medium projects. Massive Attack incorporated hip-hop beats into atmospheric electronica in the 90s. Dizraeli was rapping over folk and performing dystopian rap drama in the 2000s. And the 2020s have brought us rising stars like the clubby, punky rapper Grove, maintaining Bristol’s place on the map for musical innovation. Play and experimentation are inherent to this scene - and if defined genres or mediums have ever held much weight, they’re definitely fading into obscurity now.

Nestled in Bristol’s experimental hotbed, Binbag Wisdom have shifted many times over the last 10 years. They’ve been a busking duo, a four-piece rock band, a couple of gangster rap artistes and now they’re stepping into new territory once again. Known and loved in Bristol and beyond for their sharp lyricism and high-energy live performances, the duo are now blending their trademark humour and honesty with theatre and storytelling in a unique and absurd rap am-dram performance. It’s equal parts musical, sketch show, and UK hip-hop bangers, and already a hit with audiences at Shambala and Green Man. This playful new experiment will have you pouring one out for Scottish folklore icon Wee Willy Winky one minute and nodding along to a heartfelt plea for self-compassion the next – and it’s a fucking great time, a certified “2 for 1 well rounded human experience coupon”.

I joined Jack Wisdom and Jake 'Binbags' Blackmore before their Jam Jar show to discuss medium melding, space cowboys, pushing back against the rise of AI in art, and how to creatively roll with the punches while still aiming big.

Even though I’ve seen the show before, I have no idea – how many distinct characters are there? It felt like upwards of… 50.

Binbags: Good!

Wisdom (counting): Well, there’s Bobby Bologna, my mum as an audio…

Binbags: Yeah, your mum's in it. Wee Willy Winky. Maybe seven total?

I think [within the show] there's this fragmentation of self in both of you. I think all the other characters that I'm picking up on are just different versions of you two.

Binbags: I think, because we're on this journey, you get Jack and I as Lost Boys – but then there’s also these other bits, like there's me as a ballerina, there’s you [Wisdom] as a cyber security expert. Then there's us as pious, religious boys.

If you had to each pick one character from the show, and develop an entire concept around them, which would it be?

Binbags: For me, easily, Bobby Baloney. Reverend Robert Baloney.

Wisdom (deadpan): Wee Willy Winky, I’d say.

Binbags: Ha - but really, that’s actually what happened, right? The whole show comes from us wanting to write a way to lead up to a room full of people chanting Wee Willy Winky. That was our concept – like, can we do that? Yes, we've done that. Can we now make that a whole story? And yeah, we can.

Another idea we had was like a couple of mob bosses… in space. That was one idea that got floated.

And then we wrote a skit for our EP that we haven't finished or released yet, that's called Sons of Gloin, and wrote a story about the Sons of Gloin where they're sort of an underground Luddite culture. I guess they're like – it’s set in the future, but these people have found Lord of the Rings and take it as a holy scripture, and they follow the fragmented teachings of Lord of the Rings, which they interpret. Gloin is a really small character in the original LOTR series. He's got like one line, but [in our story] these Sons of Gloin find him, and they go, ‘yeah, this is the guy’. And then they follow his ways, and they mine. They live underground, and they mine just like the dwarves did in Lord Of The Rings.

It's a short story, it's also a song that we've recorded, and it's part of a bunch of skits we've recorded to go along with this EP. So it might be that we finish fleshing that out for a live show.

This show [Wee Willy Winky] is such an unexpected direction coming from the genres of rap/hip-hop – doing am-dram is very out of left field. But it sounds like you guys have been mixing mediums for quite a long time…

Wisdom: Hmm…I would say the only similar thing we were doing before was writing skits. Like audio plays, I guess, in between tracks of albums. We always liked doing that, doing characters and recording audio of little skits here and there, but this is the first time we've ever actually brought it to a stage. The short story [Sons of Gloin] was written with the intention of fleshing it out into our first version of what we're doing, a theatre show. But then we actually just chucked in the Wee Willy Winky thing. And used loads of other tunes, and just did that instead.

Because it was a lot of work - the next step would be to make something more like a musical, where it's all set within that world, and it's all within those characters – whereas this time we've just sort of shoehorned it all in.

Binbags: Two years ago, we started recording another set of songs and we were writing skits to go between them – a skit that we had on an album called 100 years of Binbag Wisdom was our starting point. We were like, let's continue that story. There were characters from the Midlands in the post-apocalypse times, in this skit that we have released, and we wanted to expand on these characters, and we already had a couple of songs, so we thought – let's try and write some songs that actually tell a story here.

But writing songs, writing skits, recording the whole thing, is so much work, you know. And life very much got in the way. As much as we had the best intentions to do that work, we had to accept and appreciate that we didn't get it done in time for what we wanted to do. So instead, we thought, let's work with what we already have.

Wisdom: I think it's a more natural way of doing it. If we had gone with grander plans and come up with a whole new concept, yeah, there's a lot more pressure. We’ve done festivals, like daytime festivals, and it still translates – you could turn up [to the Winky show] halfway through, and you wouldn't be that lost.

Binbags: I think it's important to give yourself, like, leeway not to finish things and not to achieve exactly what you set out to achieve. Yeah, aim big. And, you know, finish in the middle.

Aim big and finish in the middle…yeah, that’s what they say, right?

Wisdom: What’s that, your mantra?

Binbags: Ha, yeah. But as long as I've moved forwards a little bit… You know, I think it can be really easy to go ‘fuck it’ – with that original EP, it started to feel a bit like, well, we're not going to have this finished, what is the thread here? We could have easily just kept doing gigs as we've always done them – just music, and then us trying to crack each other up between songs.

Wisdom: Helpfully, at this point, we had a bit of a push from Chai Wallah as well. They said to us: ‘we’ve booked you again, and you said you were going to have a theatre show. So do you have one?’

Binbags: Yeah - they basically didn't want us to come back in the same format – they were like, we love you guys and we want to book you gigs, but we can't just keep booking like a DJ and MCs from Bristol. So – can you do something different this year?

Wisdom: Which was really supportive – it wouldn’t have happened otherwise!

Binbags: I said to Potter [from Chai Wallah] “oh, we're thinking of doing an EP that's got some skits in it, and we'd quite like to translate that to the stage at some point”. And his wife is a great actor, and she teaches acting classes as well. And he said, “we’ll meet up with you guys. Why don't you write your idea down and we'll chat to you about how maybe we can make it happen”.

We went for a meeting with them – and then life got pretty hectic and we didn't hit that running like we were hoping to. Jack lost his dad earlier this year, and I had a few months off my prison work for poor mental health. The spring was really difficult, and there was a lot going on, but we went: okay, we're still gonna have something for you. Potter was saying, “how can I help you make it into something for the summer? It could be that you go on stage and you say, Hey guys, we don't know what we're doing here. We're trying something new out. And that would be fine, you know, people want to know what's going on with you.” And then we went to Green Man, and we had this [Wee Willy Winky] show, and it was almost to the point it is now.

Binbags: And it was really nice because Potter said “I expected you to do, like, basically, nothing different. And this is almost finished”, and we were like, oh, okay – nice to know that what we might see is not-quite-a-polished-final-piece actually does really work.

How do you distinguish between what’s a great idea that you want to go ahead with and what’s a pipe dream – or do you just go for anything and everything?

Binbags: I feel like we probably do just go for everything, in as much as everything's on the table. And we just listen to where our effort lies, in a way – when we were writing a short story called ‘Keneeth’s Tale’ together, Jack would message me and be like, “I've written another five pages of this book. It's your turn to do some”. If you have the impetus to do it, you should go forward with that. And if one of us had the motivation to write a song about cowboys in space, that's what would happen then. Just like when we wanted to write about the Sons of Gloin, that's what we wrote. And like, maybe it's a bit scattergun, and maybe we would get one thing done to a more finished product if we did select one…

I think what you guys are doing makes the most sense. You know what your priorities are by asking ‘what do I spend most of my time on?’ And even if you think that that's not a priority of yours–

Binbags: Well yeah, it must be.

…And if it's writing about space cowboys or post-apocalypse miners, then that's important.

Binbags: I've been thinking a lot recently – especially this morning – about AI stuff and what that's going to do for the quality of everyone's output, if people start harnessing it in a way that, for me, feels incorrect. Like I feel against using AI in art in general, but I think that people inevitably will be using it more and more to create art. And what that will do, I think, is create this reality where products can be absolutely polished without all the years of effort and training that it historically has taken to complete something. And I think that it's important to allow yourself to put something out that isn't polished at all, because otherwise, what we're going to do is we're going to go, well, mine's not finished, but the AI thing is finished, so I've got to get mine finished. And it's like, you shouldn't get it finished. Actually, you should just go with it anyway.

Yes – double down on your humanness and your fallibility. I think on that unpredictable journey that we're going to be on for the next however many years, when it comes to AI and AI in art, it will require us to get weird, to get raw.

Binbags: Yeah. And just allow each other and ourselves to be unfinished and imperfect and shit. And, you know, that's obviously an important thing in general: to allow each other to be shit and imperfect, but we don't seem to want to do that when it's our art. We seem predisposed to go: “this thing – this song, this drawing, this short story, whatever – must be representative of my entire creative soul”.

…And it must justify me as an artist.

Binbags: I've recorded plenty of songs I think are pretty average and been unable to release them because I think they're pretty average. And then I listen back to songs on my computer from five years ago, and I'm like, fuck, I never released that song. Like, there's nothing wrong with that. It's a good song.

Wisdom: A lot of stuff I really love [from other musicians] and loved especially when I was growing up, was like live bits of audio, or bits that they just chucked out kinda spontaneously. Sometimes that's the best stuff. My advice to people is always “just put stuff out”, but I don't listen to it myself.

And people aren’t keeping tabs on what you’re doing. People aren’t like “well, you put out a song I don’t like, so I’m never gonna listen to you again”. No-one’s watching you.

How long have you two been collaborating, scheming, cracking each other up on stage?

Binbags: It's our 15 year anniversary on the day of the gig. About making each other laugh – when we started doing that, there's like, this great song on that Lyricist Lounge freestyle, the Black Thought and Common one–

Wisdom: –‘After the booth’.

Binbags: And you know, in so much rap stuff they'll be doing ad libs, so they'll be doing stuff off the lyric, like ‘whoo’ or whatever, Will Smith style – but there's this great lyric lounge thing where one of the guys in the background goes like ‘HOO-HAA’, and the other guy starts cracking up, and then he goes ‘WHUPPAAAH’ – and it just derails the whole experience. Everyone has to stop because they're cracking up. And I thought, that is so good to hear – someone rapping something that is actually quite serious and important and really skillful, but then his friend just goes ‘WHUPPAHH’ and it, like, ruins it perfectly, you know? And so me and Jack would be doing our verses, and had this almost-competition. Part of me sometimes really wants Jack to kind of fuck up his lyrics–

Wisdom: And often I do.

Binbags: And often he does, and I just think that's so fun.

Binbags, you once said: “when we love each other, the show is good”.

Binbags: I think our show is best when we are in love, yeah.

Wisdom: I thought we were in love every time, no?

Uh-oh. This is the rift that ends 15 years…

Wisdom: You did it, you did it with your magazine.

Binbags: We don't always spend a lot of time together outside of the project – we did a show last week at SWX [now called Electric Bristol], and Jack had just been on holiday, so he came straight from the airport to the venue, you know. So we've caught up for 20 minutes before we go on stage. And it's so nice – SWX, probably 1000 people in there, a fucking great venue and a great stage, and it's me and my mate, we haven't seen each other for a while, and we're on there having fun. The show is our friendship. It’s special because of that.

Thinking about other wild, explorative projects that mix their mediums, I’m curious what musicians come to mind for you two. I mean, another Bristol-seeded project was Halloomi’s album–

Wisdom: Yeah, it’s a masterpiece.

Binbags: Oh yeah, come on. Beat Tape Murders…

…Burn After Listening. This concept album has a level of world building and storytelling that goes so beyond the norm for this genre. And it’s very common to see musicians who mix their genres - but less who mix their mediums. Who comes to mind for you?

Binbags: One great example for live show theater crossover stuff is Henge. I haven't seen them that many times, but when I have, I've been like, this is so fun. These people are putting in effort to have fun. That's what I think is so cool about it, and that's what I really like about Halloomi’s stuff, about Beat Tape Murders – he's put so much effort in.

The thing that gave me that “oh shit you can do that” moment really early on was Del The Funky Homosapien, the album Deltron 3030. I also loved the War of the Worlds album from the 80s [by Jeff Wayne]. There's something about storytelling – I loved musicals growing up, and thinking of conceptual art in music and storytelling and music has always been something for me. Like the Blues Brothers, you know – when I was a kid, that was one of my favourite movies.

Wisdom: There’s Rebel Cell, the play from 2008, too. Baba Brinkman. He did it almost 20 years ago.

One song from the show that stood out in its parallelism to DREAMERS was Mad Love – a song about self compassion that's grounded in the non-linear reality of progress. Not necessarily about healing, but perhaps progressing as a person. I loved the conversation back and forth: “yes, I am anxious to move differently/I'm gonna get where I couldn't be”, and the refrain of “I hope you're doing beautifully,”. How long ago did you write Mad Love?

Binbags: Maybe it was three or four years ago? It's a song with Halloomi. And I remember it came so quickly to me. Halloomi sent me a beat, and it was called ‘My Arch Nemesis, Wrigley Crumb’ – and he was like, “hey, bro, I've got a new beat for you, I hope you like it. I hope you're doing well, mad love”. That's what the message was. And that was the last thing I had seen when I started writing it, Mad Love. And you know, I was going through this journey of like, coming out of the pandemic and coming out of a relationship, and trying to understand why things weren't serving me. I was thinking, I'm not where I want to be right now, mentally and perhaps creatively, and perhaps career-wise, and you know, so many other things… but instead of feeling absolutely overwhelmed with it, I just thought: maybe I'll assume things will be better in a bit, you know, and so I'll talk to him, this future version of myself, and I'll say “I hope things are good for you, man. I'm sure they are, because they’re shit now”. So I felt a lot of relief writing that song.

Where has Mad Love found you, that little message in a bottle from four years ago?

Binbags: Yeah! I’m doing beautifully, I’m doing beautifully, man. And it's not as if that song did it, but I think that thought process is something that I try and carry. It didn’t hurt.

The second half of the show’s title is ‘How to find purpose in a rap desert’. Do all artists need to embark on a necromantic, evangelical, wine soaked desert adventure to find their purpose?

Binbags: Yeah, I think everyone should.

Wisdom: Yeah, one hundred percent.

Binbags: What I liked about deciding that that was a continuation of the title was how, like we've said, the show is an exercise in shoehorning. We're trying to tell a story for storytelling’s sake, in a way, but – it's like freewriting in the sense that after the fact, you go, “well, what story are we telling? What the fuck are we on about?”. And actually, you realize that the story is very much about trying to figure out why you do your creative practice, and trying to figure out why we write and perform rap. You have this experience of “well, this is pointless. Why are we rapping? Where are we going? What's this for? We should do something real with our lives”. And being lost in the rap desert, is how it can feel sometimes when you're just trying to get gigs and, you know, trying to write music and trying to convince yourself to release music, and trying to play the social media games and all this stuff that isn't fun – it can be really, like disheartening.

And so to look back and go “that's actually the story we were telling here - we're lost in the rap desert, and we're looking for purpose, and the purpose, you know, eventually we find it… you don't release this till after the show, do you?

Your spoilers are safe.

Binbags: …Eventually we find it in the form of the one true God, Wee Willy Winky, of course, but I think that's us saying – whether it was intentional and conscious in the creation of the show – that's just us saying that ‘one true purpose’ is absolutely fucking stupid.

Binbags (incredulous): We resurrect a character from Scottish folklore whose whole shtick is ‘send your kids to bed, it's eight o'clock.’ Like, that’s his whole ethos. That’s everything he thinks. And like, we've woken him up and he's pissed off that people are awake. But that becomes our purpose, to convince him that actually, everyone should stay awake and have fun at a rap show. That was the purpose all along, you know?

Wisdom: It was all a dream.

Binbags: It was all a desert based dream…. It was a wine-soaked, sunburned, desert dream. But afterwards we could look at it and see oh, we've kind of written a story here. There is a sort of narrative thread.

Wisdom: Yeah, let’s just make it and work out the meaning afterwards. There we go.

Binbags: To be able to then sit and work out the meaning, and it not feel super convoluted, felt like a nice thing too. I thought “oh, yeah. I do actually think that that's true. I do think it feels overwhelming and scary to convince yourself you're allowed to be creative, it can feel isolating. And actually, the whole purpose of it is moot. There isn't one, you know, and that's fine.

Which is very cheering for the audience members, especially those who are creative. Because the show is both brilliant, and also couldn’t take itself less seriously. You come away with the message of, okay, god is absurdity, - do whatever the fuck you want.

Wisdom: Boom.

Binbags: Wee Willy Winky Forever.

“The Ballad of Wee Willy Winky OR: How To Find Purpose In A Rap Desert” is a show as delightfully indulgent in nature as it is in name. This new project teases out the magic behind the best of Binbag Wisdom’s past performances and sits it centre stage – the joyful back and forth between Jack and Jake and the silly, almost swaggering self-deprecation – while also opening a door into their shared love for storytelling and improv. These are boys who simply love to riff and prance around to make each other laugh. Sometimes that looks like witty wordplay in lightning-fast bars, sometimes it’s one of them landing an audaciously-shoehorned segue from one scene to the next – sometimes it is literally them capering about on stage like a couple of 14th century jesters. What holds the show together is a true commitment to the bit – their DJ-pantomime act with their wise 'Brother Fitz' is slick, their comedic timing is on point, and every song gets people moving, no matter how ridiculous.

Follow @binbag.wisdom on IG for upcoming show dates and more.