What Does Dee-Do Fenwick Do on the Other Six Days?
The grime MC has put out every track on a Tuesday for three years. It is Friday, nothing is announced, and she would like to talk about a clementine.
Dee-Do Fenwick peels a clementine over a bin in one long strip. We are in a rehearsal room above a tyre place in Walthamstow. It is ten to five and the streetlights outside are coming on one at a time.
"So what do you do on Wednesday?" I ask.
"Wednesday."
"The day after the drop."
"Wednesday's Wednesday."
This is the fourth time I have asked some version of it. She has put out nineteen tracks in three years. Every one landed on a Tuesday, at six in the morning, with no warning and no trailer. Fans set alarms. A man in Leicester has apparently taken the day off work twice. The next one is due in four days and she will not say whether it exists.
I try Thursday. She says Thursday has a bus in it. I try Sunday and she says she sleeps, then adds, "Sometimes." I ask whether she writes on the off days or just waits for the clock to turn over. She looks at me the way you look at someone who has asked what you dream about while you are trying to park.
"Dee-Do. Six days. That is most of your life."
"It's a lot of days."
Here is where I am supposed to say the Tuesday rule is genius. It has a lot going for it. It made her releases an appointment instead of an announcement. It made the silence feel like a decision. In a year when most artists post a countdown for a single, nineteen quiet Tuesdays is a real piece of discipline.
But a rule is a fence, and I would like to know what is in the field. Everything she says about the six days is a door pulled shut politely. The tracks are sharp, fast and a little cruel about people who ring their friends on speaker. Someone who writes that well has opinions about Wednesday. I would bet the tyre place downstairs on it.
I ask whether the rule ever feels like a trap. Whether there has been a Tuesday she did not want to release anything.
She thinks about it for a full eight seconds. The compressor in the tyre place downstairs kicks on and shakes the floor.
"Yeah," she says.
I wait. This is the oldest trick I have. Most people cannot stand the quiet and fill it with the real answer. Dee-Do eats a segment of clementine and looks at the window, where a bus goes by lit up like an aquarium.
"Yeah," she says again, and that is all.
She splits the rest of the fruit and hands me half. It is the longest answer I get all afternoon.
