Lava La Rue is a rapper with a collaborative attitude. Growing up in west London without connections to any of the city’s cultural institutions, she learned to do things with and for her community. “When I started hitting my teen years, I really felt the divide,” she told us when we interviewed her in 2018. “Class plays into it, race definitely plays into it.”
One of the ways she expresses this collaborative approach is with her collective, NINE8. The NINE8 collective create everything from their songs and music videos to their clothes together, with other artists involved with the group including Biig Piig, Mac Wetha, and Bone Slim, among others.
All of this is to say that Lava understands the importance of working with others and passing on your knowledge. And this Saturday (February 15), she will be doing just that, hosting a class as part of Converse’s Creative All Star Series, a programme that sees local talent share their creative wisdom.
The event is titled the ‘Goofy Hearts Club’, a post-Valentine’s Day clubhouse and vidzine-making workshop narrating alternative love stories. The Goofy Hearts Club workshop takes place at London’s Hoxton Docks between 1pm and 3.30pm, and is followed by a ‘Lava Rave’ from 8.30pm that sees the Goofy Hearts Crew celebrate the making of their vidzine with a screening and afterparty.
Ahead of the event, Lava put together a Goofy Hearts Club-themed playlist, featuring recent tracks by Yves Tumor, Sorry, and Biig Piig (a member of Lava’s own NINE8 collective), as well as older cuts by Santigold, Amerie, and Chet Baker.
“These songs are soundtracks to different forms of love in my life,” Lava La Rue says. “They give me the feeling of nostalgia, of past romances that I might have never had. They make me dance goofily with myself.”
RSVP for the event here, and listen to Lava La Rue’s playlist below.
