Tiffany Calver: “If I can advise you to do one thing, it’s fail”

nme.com:

Tiffany Calver has shared her advice to aspiring music industry creatives, encouraging them to “fail as much as you can.”Speaking on a panel in celebration of International Women’s Month, the UK rap trailblazer collaborated with Sondr to host a talk with fellow DJs and UK club titans Bossy LDN founder Izzy Bossy and Hannah Lynch of Girls Can’t Sync.

The event was held at east London creative hotspot BeauBeaus and was part of the Telford native’s Tiffany Calver & Friends series – in which she highlights her talented peers.Calver spoke about her humble beginnings in the north of England where she “started a music blog because there weren’t really any opportunities” and thought she “could use it [as leverage].” She further revealed how she got to work for the late UK rap visionary Jamal Edwards and vlogged for his seminal music blog SBTV – which she said was her “foot into the industry.”She told the audience that the internet has made it so “there is so much at your fingertips” that can give you a fighting chance to succeed no matter where you’re from. “You have the opportunity to really self-promote yourself,” she said, “really put yourself out there.”There was always a need for Calver to “find [her] own tribe,” and she did eventually in London.

Speaking to the panel, she reiterated the importance of community: “Don’t look too high, sometimes look forward, look around you, look at what the people around you are building.

Genuinely, those are the relationships that will keep you going, the people championing you now will take you higher and further, they’re just as important.”Calver eventually learned to DJ on the Virtual DJ app and then had various radio shows on NTS, KISS FM and the controversial Radar.