Say what you like about commercial rap music. The one thing that continually surprises about this much-derided part of hip-hop is just how honest some (not all) of its artists are. Sure, they make bubblegum, danceable, pretty damn basic pop songs. But the one thing very few of them do is deny it.

Take for example, Dwayne Tah Macintosh. The man otherwise
known as Tah Mac has absolutely no illusions about what his record Welcome 2 Tahland sets out to do.

Right now he’s sipping a glass of dry white wine and tucking into a plate of Holiday Inn ‘French fries” - despite his professed love for the UK, the slight New York native hasn’t quite got around to calling them chips. In between bites, he’s philosophising.

“In the current state of music, a lot of kids can only relate to gangster rap because they see some of their heroes doing it. That’s just a part of entertainment. But what I injected into this record was to make feel good again, to dance again, to go back in time again, to go have the time of their life again.

“I designed this record as a popular record,” he continues. “Not an underground street record, not a record that is sectioned by certain people. It’s something that can show you that anything can be accomplished.”

And if we’re going to give Tah his due, he’s summed up his music perfectly. It is hip-hop in name and music-rack branding only; Welcome 2 Tahland is a slice of basic, bouncy and brazen pop music, with some raps over the top. Tah produced most of the record himself, and his shouty, rhythmic, slightly old-school flow and stripped-down lyrics do work.

According to Tah, it’ll work brilliantly in a live setting – especially when he has his live band (who do not appear on the record) backing him up. One can certainly imagine the Run-DMC-flavoured ‘Let Loose’ or the synthed-out lead single ‘Time of My Life’ blowing the roof off the club. Tah seems pretty confident about working an unfamiliar British crowd: “I take you on a musical journey…When you go to see a live gig, you’re excited because you wanna see your favourite artist in action, and hear the records that you fell in love with because of that artist. That’s what I go out there and do. I listen to the public, I listen to the people and I deliver what they want.”

Tah also insists his music is global – indeed, he goes as far as to label his record a global hip-hop experience. “I think if I hadn’t been able to travel, I wouldn’t have been able to create a record like this,” he says. He’s been to and done shows in a fair few countries, including Germany, Japan, Greenland, St. Kitts and Rwanda. His current UK tour is taking in several English cities, plus Wales, Ireland and Scotland, before moving on to France. That’s a lot of club roofs blown off.

It is, however, difficult to imagine a kid in Rwanda getting down to a track like ‘Lavish Lifestyle’, where Tah rhymes, “Got 24s on my Diablo…” There is no doubt the music would strike some chords worldwide, but how would that Rwandan kid relate to the lyrics?

Tah takes a bite of his chip, and after mumbling something about Barack Obama and leaders making history gets down to meat of the matter. “We have a lot of issues going on around the world,” he explains. “There are only so many global young leaders – from a musical perspective, from a global perspective. We have the Jay-Zs, the Diddys, but there are other untapped markets that are not fortunate enough to have an individual that can make a change in their environment by being heard musically as well as politically.”

And is he someone who can inspire that change?

He demurs: “People are looking for change, and these young people are the only ones who can make a change. Music is a universal language, and no matter what language you speak you can relate to music.”

If there is one thing that will annoy non-mainstream hip-hoppers about Tah, it’s his pedigree. He grew up in Brooklyn, but moved to Long Island in his teens. A family friend introduced him to Erick Sermon (of EPMD) and when Sermon formed the Def Squad and took the young Tah as a protégé, Tah went with him to Atlanta. “He showed me the art of production and the art of entertainment. He formulated the Hit Squad with Parrish Smith. When they split apart and Erick formulated the Def Squad, I went where loyalties lay. I stuck with it for years on out.”

In Atlanta, Sermon (with Tah right behind) established The House.

Not even many people in hip-hop know about it. It was, literally, an eight-bedroom house – where cats like Redman, Keith Murray and Da Rockwilder passed through and made their music. As chop-making goes, that’s about as heavy as you can get. When the House ended in 2002, Tah was ready. The time under Sermon had been well spent. He went from working with Onyx (in particular member Sticky Fingaz) to his boy Fredro Starr to helping out Ciara. Nowadays of course, Tah’s even managing to pull in Sugababe Mutya Buena for a hook or two.

You can hate on that as much as you want, but you have to respect the pulling power if nothing else. What will annoy the backpackers is going from rocking with the Def Squad to making the music Tah makes now. It doesn’t fit. Not that, one senses, he gives a toss.

“It’s a universal vibe. It’s not conscious rap. It’s not hip-hop. It’s a global record... The art of entertainment is what really counts. I can go out and rock a thousand people and then turn around and do a crowd of ten. I’ll make sure my spirit travels through everybody.”