Hey, you're cool! Check out curve model Neelas latest interview with London magazine Mass Appeal. As she talks record labels, collaborations with musician Denai Moore and indie photography. See below for the full article and don't forget to check out this models portfolio here.
At 23, Neela is living her life to the fullest. With a dream job and ambition driving even more of her dreams into fruition, it’s exciting just to sit and watch her process it all. There’s a lot to say and even more to try and comprehend when it comes to her multi-faceted projects. She’s full-time at XL Recordings and their Young Turks imprint; manages best friend and Soulection DJ Hannah Faith’s burgeoning career; and has a string of other creative outlets like photography and indie publishing.
We met up with her for a lazy weekend brunch to try and find out how exactly it is that ‘t’ came to be so cool and keep her cool at the same time. Read on for some real knowledge bombs.
How do you define yourself?
So, until recently I’d been just listing everything that I do, but now the list is so long that I feel that I need to come up with a blanket term and I hate the term ‘creative’ because, what even is that? I’m communications manager at two record labels, a photographer, the editor-in-chief of Cozy Mag, an artist manager, soon-to-be music video director and part of a collective creative agency called In Bloom. I’m also a model from time to time. Basically loads of things—I’m a radio host and DJ, too.
I would say that’s a storyteller. Would you consider yourself that?
I think storyteller is a good one!
What artists do you work with at XL Recordings and Young Turks?
Literally everyone. Sampha, Ibeyi, Kaytranada, The xx, Adele, Radiohead, Sam Gellaitry, Nines, New Gen… so all the artists on there. Basically the whole roster. I’m probably the only person in the label that, because of what I do, I have to tap into every single artist. There’s never a project I can’t work on because I’m the only person doing what I do, whereas other people might be assigned to certain artists and that’s it. For me, I have to keep tabs on everyone.
How do you convey their story authentically when there’s distance between you?
Young Turks is a management company as well, we are both the management and the label for our artists. So that means when Sampha or another artist is in town that I get to hang out with them. I’m just really lucky that the label that I work for has the artists and bands around all the time; they come into the office. We do parties and stuff to make people feel included.
What’s the story with Cozy Magazine?
Now it’s less of a running, functional publication because it’s been three years and my drive has shifted. My goal is no longer to have a publication that’s pushing out articles every day. I like the brand of Cozy and the parties that we throw, so that’s the focus of it now.
We just did our biggest show at the Jazz Cafe in January where we brought Joyce Wrice over from L.A. and it was her debut London show and it sold out and it was just really sick. After that we just thought, this is what we want. I’d rather support that artist by helping create content for them—whether it’s directing their video, taking their photo or putting them on the lineup at one of my parties—rather than pushing out these articles that just get lost now. There are so many other publications that are doing a really good job of it.
How old were you when you started Cozy?
19 or 20. I’d just quit uni to do an apprenticeship at an ad agency and basically didn’t have enough responsibility or interest so was just sitting and doing nothing for a long time so I was like, I’m basically just gonna make something since I’m here. I decided to make it detached from me so I can write articles and not feel weird about it. It was just me for the first six months, I wrote every single article, interviewed every single artist. Everybody assumed it was a whole team and that was what was so clever about it. My job at that agency was in social media anyways, I was learning a lot about how to present it—so from the outside, it looked like this very polished thing, more than what it was.
There's no catch-all term for what Neela does, but she hates the phrase "creative." She works at XK Records, manages artists, shoots, writes, and more.How did you get started managing Hannah Faith?
So Hannah and I became friends after something called Rip The Runway, which a lot of people in London know about. It’s like an amateur fashion show. I met her there and we just became really close and it was just a case of; she’d just started DJing and was getting what we thought was a good amount of money. Now we’d laugh at it but at the time, we’d be like, yes! We’re doing so well, this is sick. She had a manager and… there were just certain things that women understand that men don’t.
In the end, we met Vic Mensa, and he was just like, “Why don’t you just manage her?” We both looked at each other and were like, “I dunno… yeah! Maybe we should.”
So Vic Mensa is responsible!
Yeah, Vic Mensa is to blame for that! He wasn’t really Vic Mensa back then like he is now. That was his first time in London, he’d never really been here, people didn’t really know who he was. So that’s when I started managing her.
I had no idea what I was doing obviously, I’d never been a manager before but I knew how to argue and how to write very good angry emails and that was basically what I was having to do because Hannah’s a female DJ. Working in that industry I quickly realised you have to be on the defense all the time because people are always trying to discredit her as an artist, or they underestimate her because she’s a girl, or they just they don’t think of certain things that a woman would; simple things like making sure she’s got a taxi home from a really, really late gig in a bad area.
You really fight her corner.
It’s just a symptom of the industry. Women are not regarded in the same way as men, so there are simple things that sometimes you have to be like, “excuse me, is [said expectation] not gonna happen?” Promoters would do it for any other DJ but don’t think to offer it for her. It’s a lot of catching people out. Actually, I take quite a lot of enjoyment from it, fighting her corner and getting what she wants. Some people may call that being a Diva.
I think I’d call that being a manager.
It’s being strong and knowing what you want and what your artist deserves.
How do you find time to work on your own projects?
Up until recently, it had been really hard, I was getting actually frustrated because I have to be careful with my character because I love helping everybody else all the time. It’s definitely been a 2017 thing for me. Even just the act of getting all my photography work on my website was the most arduous process. Since doing that I’ve gotten so many bookings and realize I should have done this ages ago! I just did Denai Moore’s album cover, which is coming out soon, so that’s exciting.
And you’ve started directing music videos?
Yeah, I’ve got three coming out that I’m directing. I got the opportunity to direct a video for an artist who cannot be named right now. They just seemed very confident in my ability to do it… More confident than I was! So soon come!
I guess it’s just a new medium in which to tell stories.
I don’t sleep and I don’t really have a social life. I do obviously but my social life is my work, it’s the same thing. Everybody is in music or design or art or fashion and that’s it so I’m lucky I just like have friends that get it. They understand I’m not going to speak to anyone because I’m in my room editing photos all day. It’s also really lucky for me that my job is really flexible. I’ve worked full time from the beginning, but they knew I did all these other things and didn’t want me to stop.
Anything else?
Being cool is not about all the things that you’ve done. Cool people are people who have positive dispositions and a good attitude towards life and I think good things happen to people like that. That’s all it is, really. I literally cannot be a negative person.
