Just A Name Vol 1

A long time ago, in a land far far away (in my head) and an era when in my ignorance I'd never even heard of spoken word and knew very little about poetry or theater, I was rapping.
I still do it. I love it. It's a special feeling kicking a verse over a beat, but from late 2000 onwards for a long time, outside of my work life, it's pretty much all I did.
It's a topic I cover in the show I'm working on A Tale Fron The Besdit in which I moved to Brighton to further what I was already doing, at the time, predominantly MCing in small clubs under the name of Kase One before I began to move towards making Hip Hop and Grime.  
  During that period while I was down there, I wrote a lot of lyrics, which at the time, didn't seem to amount to anything. When I left Brighton in early 2006, the few music projects I was working on had all seem to drift by the wayside and I was left with a shoe box full of lyrics, and one day, whilst sorting through some stuff just before I moved up to London, I had the idea to put a CD together. So I saved up, bought a laptop, borrowed some equipment, went to Bristol  and got a crash course in Logic from my brother Gatekeeper and set about recording some of these words over tracks that I'd selected, or used to practice rapping over.

Mixtapes and CD's were pretty much common place for MC's and rappers even back then, but for me, it was a big achievement and I think I surprised a few people when they listened to it back then. It never really went anyway, at most, I probably gave away 100 copies which I burnt and hand drew the sleeves for, and hearing it back, it's very raw, both lyrically and in the recording of it, and despite most of it making me cringe I'm proud of it, it was a milestone for me. Most of the lyrics were the result of a stream-of-consciousness style of writing I used to do, because it was all I knew to do, I didn't know much else and never really worked with other MC's about from old friends Boogaloo Dee and later on, through the Bristol connection, Grilza, all of which helped me to develop

I've had 3 of the tracks up on Soundcloud for a while, but decoded to stick all up on line (bar 1 track which Soundcloud won't let me, which is fair enough, as I didn't get permission for most of the tracks) and here it is.

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Just A Name Vol 1 Tracklist

Small Town Perspective – RJD2 Ghostwriter (Deadringer)

I Drop A 16 - Metal Fingers – Spikenard (Special Herbs vol 4)

Figure It Out – Metal Fingers – Lemon Grass (Special herbs vol 4)

Story – Black Grass - Toys (Black Grass)

Thursday - Roll Deep - Fire Hydrant Instrumental (Poltergeist Relay EB001) 

Trials and Tribulations - Myst aka Gatekeeper

Remember Your Roots - Various Artists - Distorted Minds In The Mix (Knowledge Magazine Issue 46 / DJ Fresh – All That Jazz (Instrumental) / Q Project – Ask Not

A Visual Blast from the Past

 A few days ago, an old friend of mine from school sent me an email saying he'd come across some DTP pictures and did I want to have a look. As soon as I saw them a had a wee chuckle to myself, not just because I had a shaved eyebrow, how serious the pictures are and the fact that I still wear that blue Nike hoody (though most of the blue has by now faded) but it made me realise how much has changed since then (I think the pictures must have been from 2002), but also, how much hasn't!


DTP (Digital Transition Promotions) was a little crew set up myself and a guy I was at Crawley College with called Mike (Mickey T, though back then his DJ name was Delusion), we're still very good mates now and speak often.


He was a DJ, I was an MC and we both wanted to perform. They were quite a lot of people doing it back then in the Crawley, Horley, Redhill and Croydon areas but not many places to do it at. Looking back, we wanted to create a small local scene for underground music, but in hindsight, having London half an hour north and Brighton half an hour south, it was wishful thinking!


Anyway, we eventually got a monthly event at this little nightclub in Horley called the Liquid Lounge (which over the years had several name changes and often had it's licence revoked but it was always the same family owning it, just a different brother!). The venue had possibly the most 2 bob soundsystem I have ever come across and was certainly not in anyway equipped to handle sub heavy Garage and Drum and Bass. There weren't many nights that didn't have some kind of punch up either during or after (having lots of different rude boys, and not many girls, from a series of small towns in the same space was never a good idea) but I learnt a lot from doing those and we drove on. We eventually ran 2 nights down in Brighton and forged links in London and many other places. We set up a website, had a bank account, T shirts and business cards, banners and we owned a bit of equipment. Not bad a for a pair of 18/19 year olds, I'm quite proud (There was also a 3rd guy for a while, another old mate called Marc, who was also a DJ, the 3 of us are at the front of 2 of the pictures).


We wanted to run events where it wasn't just the same style of Music all night long. Myself and Mike both had a passion for most forms of underground dance music and wanted to push it all, as well   as give ourselves and others a platform to perform, as gigs were to hard to come by.


In the end, it didn't quite work and it all died down. I realised event running weren't really for me, and often at our events we found some people to be very closed minded about other genres of music, even between Garage and Drum and Bass. However, low and behold, with this new umbrella term of "UK Bass" or whatever it is, DJ's now seem to be drawing for tune across the board. It's not uncommon to hear Garage, Jungle,  House, Dubstep and Techno all blended in to sets now which I think is wicked.


What hasn't changed is my own drive. Back then, all I thought about (apart form girls of course) was how we could push DTP. What was the next thing we could do, lyrics I could MC with, should we set up a record label etc etc, it's never stopped and has continued, in my head, through every job, lunch break, bed time and holiday I've had since. I learnt a lot doing all that back then, one day, I hope, it might just pay off!