Push it: Barely Legal

“Giant rock star in a small body” is how Big Narstie describes Barely Legal ahead of her show at Manchester’s Warehouse Project, where she’s about to play two sets for the Kurupt FM-curated Champagne Steam Rooms. Perched on a fire escape at the back of the club, trying to keep her bare legs warm, she looks even smaller than usual in her big puffa jacket. Outwardly there isn’t anything too outrageous about Chloé Robinson. She’s actually unflinchingly focused. Every time someone barges in or recognises her, she politely asks them to wait until she finishes our interview.

“It’s a bit of a long story,” she confesses when pressed about how she got her DJ name. Playing out for a solid six years, the 25-year-old is now somewhat of a WHP veteran, doing several shows for the third year running. Hailing from Birmingham, Robinson is revered for her genre-twisting approach, mixing everything from grime and hip hop to dubstep, drum ’n’ bass and jungle. She got her break on MistaJam’s show after sending in the first mix she ever recorded aged 19. Since then she’s done Fabric, Boiler Room, played countless festivals across the globe, had a year’s residency on 1Xtra’s Daily Dose and even started her own label, Pretty Weird Records.

Thanks to her mum’s taste for UKG, Barely Legal’s early sets were imbued with a nostalgia at odds with her then young age, evident in backstage interviews at Croatian festivals where she exuded the kind of enthusiasm you’d expect from someone embarking on their first 18–30’s holiday. Robinson isn’t a classic tale of a pushy mother living her dreams out vicariously through her daughter, though. Before she even became a DJ, Chloé made it her business to learn about every genre of music, even taking a solitary trip to Outlook fresh out of school.

t’s precisely this studious approach which sets Barely Legal apart from some of her contemporaries and has gained her a following among the bass, grime and dubstep elite. Wiley booked her for Eskimo Dance early on in her career, and at WHP she arrives flanked by Manchester heavyweights Chimpo, Chunky and Strategy, all cheering her on from the front of the stage as she opens the night in Room 1. Later they jump on her set in Room 2, which turns into a carnival-like affair with Robinson at the helm, sustaining the crowd’s gun fingers with banger after banger, or as Kurupt FM’s MC Grindah puts it, “the four-foot shelling machine dropping them sub-atomic danger dubs!”

One of Barely Legal’s talents as a selector lies in playing with confidence the kind of tracks you might wince at in public but secretly love. She once claimed to have regretted mistakenly pressing play on Sweet Female Attitude’s ‘Flowers’ but it’s probable she was really trying to see how far she could push it. There’s power in being a tastemaker, but there’s even greater power in being able to make the lowbrow seem progressive – and Chloé has the Midas touch. “I feel like a true DJ, I play what I like. There are trends and people follow them because there’s money involved, but I can’t help but play what I actually want to,” she says.

“I remember that trio of Ben UFO, Oneman and Jackmaster [playing b2b2b],” she continues. “You wouldn’t know where they’d go. It’d be an eighties track, then a dubstep track then something else, and it was really exciting. I really like the element of surprise.”

She puts just as much emphasis on audience interaction. “It’s cool to go and listen to a full album of unreleased music if you want to go and see your favourite producer, but I think a DJ’s there to read the crowd – and that’s what I try to do.”

Unfortunately that kind of rapport can’t be made when a set is streamed online and it’s during such events that female DJs seem to face the most sexism these days. Nightwave’s much publicised 2016 Boiler Room incident is a case in point. During her storming Mixmag Lab set back in April Chloé came under fire from some YouTube warriors for her choice of outfit, which – scandalously enough – was a simple grey crop top. “You should be allowed to wear that what the hell you want; it’s about what you’re playing,” she says defiantly. “It took me about a day to get over, which sounds like not very long, but a whole day of being like, ‘Oh my God what’s wrong with me, what am I doing as a career, am I just shit…’ it just makes you think really negatively.

I think you have to learn from these things, though, and the more you get it, the more you just ignore it.”

Last year was a particularly rapid period of growth for Robinson as she played over 20 festivals, graduating to much bigger stages than she’s been used to. “It’s loads more pressure,” she concedes. “As an artist I was up and coming, and now I’ve come somewhere but I’m not there yet, so I’m playing sets on main stages where I’m supporting bigger DJs, having to hold the crowd for them, which I’ve found quite challenging.”

As it turns out, later on in the night Chimpo, Chunky and Strategy end up holding the crowd for Chloé, as she runs to the toilet mid-set. When she returns her presence is palpable. Yes, everyone is hyped to see the Manchester dons, but it’s Chloé who’s driving that energy. Chimpo notices this too: “Barely was shelling in her set so hard. It’s mad, I clocked the psychology of her technique tonight. She’ll draw in the crowd with stuff they know, then soon as they’re on side she’ll fire some mad darkside sub-low shit at them. It’s sort of lulling the crowd into a false sense of security. She’s got that balance perfect, and it’s not easy. I love Barely. She’s genuinely one of the best DJs about. I still learn stuff off her and she’s only fourteen!” This particular joke gets the side-eye from Chloé, but it’s clear she appreciates the compliment. Strategy concurs, saying she “plays tunes without being a dick about it. If it’s a tune she’s gonna play it, and you’re gonna buzz off it.”

As she comes off stage later, Robinson finally tells us how she got her provocative name. “I was out in London shopping and kept bumping into this guy in all the stores I went to. He was super-impressed with all the streetwear brands I knew and asked me how old I was, as I looked so young. I’d literally just turned 16 so he ended up calling me Barely Legal.” Did she not consider the name’s connotations? “I actually didn’t,” she says. “I used it on my first mix without really thinking about it, and then everything just went so fast.”

Currently doing three to five shows a week, it doesn’t look like the pace will slow for Barely Legal any time soon.