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

rODIUM Blind, live session video.

A couple of weeks back I had another session with rODIUM playing drums again. Things are getting tighter, I think (hope!), well anyway, here's links to 2 of the songs Take Me Away and Blind, big up Monique who filmed, Matt on guitar, who you can't see in the first video and of course Dean (Boggaloo Dee), who is a very old friend a mine who came in on bass for his first session and smashed it. Enjoy

P.S You download the latest rODIUM single You're A Star from Itunes HERE

Lenzez and rODIUM Jam 'fly' live

Yo.

So I was back again on the drums recently for rODIUM . I'm still getting into the swing of things with this and I'll probably take a while to get up to a good playing standard but again it was fun. Check the vid...

Music, it's all gone full circle!

Greetings!

This is a little update to let you know about some music projects I've been working on of late...

For anyone that's known me for a while, or for that matter has ever listened to me talk about myself, which, I do, erm, probably a bit more than I should... the'l know prior to entering the world of Poetry and Spoken Word, I was a rapper and an MC, prior to that I was a drummer, prior to that I was a fan of music! I've been lucky enough to be born into a family of music and have had many different influences around me my whole life.

So about 18 months ago I was offered the chance to go into the studio of Conrad Murray aka Cakey Monkey. I knew Con through working on theatre projects at BAC, and together with Dani Marshall whom I also know from BAC (but did'nt know at the time she possessed the voice of an angel) we put this track together (the working title is Outcast) as a little experiment, it was the first time I'd been 'in the booth' rapping for a few years

We all clicked pretty quickly and soon enough a whole project was born. At the moment, a lot of it is still under wraps but here's another work in progress track (Working title Time, Blood Sweat and Tears). 



and then finally, as if going back to rapping wasn't enough, I was just last week invited to play drums on the video shoot for Conrad's Hip Hop group Rodium (Cakey Monkey, Joypad B and Killer PLO). I must say, I was a bit rusty too begin with but it was a lot of fun in a dirty old studio round the back of the legendary Tin Pan Alley!
Here's a sneaky behind the scenes video for the track You're A Star.



To top it all off, I've been working on my self produced EP which I hope at some point will see the light of day! Who knows...

Hope you enjoy these as much as I did!