Uncle Dugs x DJ Slimzee

Post-depression diagnosis, I have noticed this place being a great source of random outpouring. My writing's now going out to other places, after a long, tedious hiatus away from it all. That leaves this space open for anything really; musings a fair distance from the grime scene are possible but likely few and far between. I'll probably cover what vinyls I pick up out and about and try my utmost not to mix in anything political. I'm still around regardless. Send it out to JP, keeping me busy elsewhere, generously.

The highlights of the past week both feature Slimzee. Tuesday nights show with Blacks (and Fuda Guy toward the tail end) is worth a revisit - once again an incredible dub-after-dub assault. Friday saw the legendary DJ guesting on Uncle Dugs' regular Rinse show and the brief interview was pretty compelling.

Dugs's Rinse show is one I've followed from the absolute start. I can't confess to knowing much about him prior to his immensely popular 'RunComeFollowFriday' slot besides the fact he once ran the station - think Dagenham days, the latter days of Pay As You Go and the early days of Raskit. I caught his show by accident and like most shows I enjoy it turned out to be ritual-like listening for a while. I was at college, enrolled for painting and decorating - a stop-gap course, albeit necessary  underpinning for my current career - the show would wind the clock down unbelievably. Mainly, however, the show helped me put names to some of the classics I'd heard growing up with a young mother who adored everything '88 to '92 and my (later to be) estranged father who would also dabble in Jungle. I'd collected Acid and Chicago records, so identifying them was easy, but Dugs put a name to the records I'd never really bothered to browse through -  a couple of examples below.

Thankfully I'm eternally indebted to my actual father for giving me Garage. As written previously, it was the gateway to pirate radio for me, aged around 11/12. Besides So Solid on Freeze and Delight, anything Slimzee, tape packs included, was probably what I listened to most frequently.




Dugs' quick chat with the man himself wasn't as in-depth as he might go with his normal guests (mostly people who were in and around the hardcore/jungle scene) but it was brilliant all the same. It's more of a chat between two old mates, really. Some highlights:

• Slim drives round to Madonna. He doesn't reveal which ones, but I'd like to think it's 'Lucky Star'. (Only because it seemed to be on a loop recently on a holiday to Benalmadena, of which I spent most of my time not remembering where on earth I was).
• Wiley used to wander aimlessly around Southend. 
• Rinse has been located nearly everywhere in East London: Whitechapel, Cable Street, Tower Hamlets, Dagenham - possibly three flats (Crossways Estate) as well?
• DJ names evolve: Bogroll - Slimfast - Slimzee.
• You can be booted off of radio for being too good.
• we've both got 'I'm Raving I'm Raving' on white label.
• A Plus started off playing Garage, which prompts me to go back and search for sets, as I don't recall that. Maybe I just completely missed him, until Practice Hours, obviously.

There's a lot more but I'll let you listen for yourselves, it starts roughly around the hour and half mark. The interview concludes with Slim running down ten of his favourite rave anthems, the first of which is also one of my absolute all time classics via Ragga Twins. For more in-depth and less fanboy-style Slimzee focus, have a look here and here. Big up Uncle Dugs! 

So a Wiley book is happening

and as it's set to be a biography, some insight into a few career defining times would be an incredible read. Over the next few weeks I'll be covering some of my favourite Wiley moments, and the first one sees us as far back as 15 years ago.

The Slew Show

There's a plethora of incidents I could cover when talking about Wiley and radio, but I cherry-picked this one due to it's significance in Grime history. This is the radio show that followed on from the [now] infamous night at Destiny Nightclub, Watford, where the first of Wiley's widely acknowledged crews, Pay As You Go Cartel, had an impromptu clash with Heartless Crew.  and were (eventually) verbally ushered off stage by the crowd.

Listening back as I often do, I sometimes think the bars are childish and almost nothing more than juvenile re-workings of either their's or Heartless' bars, but to hear one crew directly addressing the other in the unswerving fashion Wiley and co did the following Sunday on Rinse (the accapella moment at around 23 minutes is a delight) was fresh not only to me, but many of the early Grime pirate-massive also.  With Grime now having two dozen photographers and a video crew at every rave, information on the dance finds it's way to the internet within minutes of people getting home. In them days, if you wasn't there yourself or didn't know someone who was, you had no idea what had gone down and naturally this fuelled the mystique of that set for me.

Knowing Wiley as most of us do, it isn't hard to conceptualize the time period between the rave ending and the set starting: the blue touch paper being lit and his inability to let things lie - the nothing to lose approach that has set him that well throughout his career, he's managed to outlast the majority of his adversaries - he outshines his crew on this set as well. Maxwell D epitomises the infantile nature of the lyrics I mentioned before, and whilst God'sGift strikes listeners over the radio as a man who would ask a Lion what it thinks it's looking at, he too gets lost in the hysteria.

This would be the first of almost literally a hundred lyrical incidents involving Wiley over the years but it sets the tone brilliantly, and was the door-opener for years of radio clashes to come. Discussion about any pre-existing rivalry between the two biggest Garage crews of that time (Grime not being the in name yet and So Solid victims of media assassination) is scarce online, so any revelations from Wiley that stretch further than his or Buskin NFTR interviews would be great. 

2: Kwam

These interviews are not intended to be Piers Morgan styled life stories, but they do aim to provide insight into your favourite artists, be they MCs, DJs or even photographers. There's a lot more to come. Me and Kwam go back to when I first stated writing and since then he has continued to excel and impress many across the scene. Below, I catch up with him one more time, enjoy.

Let's talk about two of your easiest to find videos on YouTube: "Fire In The Streets" via Charlie Sloth and "#LongLiveGrime" via SBTV. In both you choose to sign-off by mentioning that besides MCing you're a tennis coach.  I'm going to silently assume why, but I'm interested to hear it from you, what's the particular reasoning behind this?

There's nothing specifically strategic about mentioning my work tennis coaching if I'm honest - if anything the intention is to emphasise that having fun is my primary objective with the MCing thing, which hopefully comes across in everything related to it which I do. I haven't always strictly had fun MCing, so it's refreshing to be able to do so now with the safety net of an actual working career behind me.

Well yeah, that's what I was half getting at. I think "humble" gets bounded about a lot these days but you're certainly not one of these MCs whose ego gets inflated with ease. In a way I was wondering well you've spat those bars but really you've got a career, and MCing is just a hobby: do you feel that drawing attention to a 9-to-5 per se undermines your less conceptual lyrics?

Not at all if I'm honest - my content's changed over the years according to how things have been going and what I've been up to, and that continues now. I can't see any way in which anyone can pull me up on anything I'm saying just now, I've probably screened the lyrics in ways others haven't even thought of before making them public!

Do you ever read the comments on them or your own videos?

I always read the comments on my YouTube videos, it's always interesting to see what people are thinking (or not thinking!)

How would you react to something like this (taken from the Fire In The Streets video) "basic bars...wouldn't really call that 'fire', but it was aiight"

I'd wholeheartedly agree. It was a good, clean showing and that, but that was super light work. I've got tracks where I'm saying ten times more stuff in about the same amount of time! Maybe I should have gone all out on that, I dunno - at the time I was very much half-hearted about doing music generally speaking.

Is it difficult to film that sort of video - where you're lyrics are more based on traditional Grime content - and then try and sway people who've watched that into buying your purchasable material which delves deeper?

That's an interesting question, and the honest answer is I haven't really thought about that connection in regards to promoting and marketing my formal releases. What I will say is, I enjoy all the aspects of grime music I'm aware of: from spitting, to producing, to mixing, to hype, to collaboration, and everything in between. That's possibly why you'll see me leap from the centre of a madness on a grime set, to the bones of a difficult topic on a grime track. I like to get involved with as much of the process as I can!

Tell me about the Face and the question mark drawing.

The 'confused guy' as I like to call him is actually a creation of an old friend of mine who I need to reconnect with, just in case everything takes off! Way back in the mists of time we used to communicate on this thing called MSN Messenger which, at the time, was the closest thing we have to Whatsapp today, and one evening he just drew that in response to something I'd said - once I'd stopped cracking up, I told him I'd put that on a shirt one day. So now here we are. I reckon it's a pretty appropriate insignia for my personality and lifestyle!

I was watching an interview of yours with Idan Quaterly and they questioned what sort of music you make and you firmly emphasise being a Grime MC, but you did chuck in the electronic and rap tags - in the internet world this has once again become a big discussion: what Grime really is. Someone asks you to define Grime, how do you go about that?

If someone asked me to define grime I'd probably play them the Slimzee session on NTS Radio that we all turned up to the other month. I could say whatever and try and look smart and experienced and knowledgeable and all that but really that audio would best explain it for starters I think. Probably the only words I'd add to it would be, grime is the sound of the streets of early millenium London which, by chance or otherwise, seems to have resonated with people all over the world up to this point.

I think the main point to be made is music, UK music, whatever, it's all evolving constantly. How do you feel the Grime sound has changed musically compared to when you were just getting on radio, say Boasy FM days?

The biggest thing is that I reckon it's all way cleaner sound wise. Productions, vocal tracks, radio sets, everything - I reckon grime has transferred from an analogue to digital sound pretty well all told, though I do miss the snap, crackle and pop of the pirate radio transmissions a little bit. As time's gone on, people within the scene have gained a better understanding of how to use the hardware and software needed for music production, and as grime's gained in popularity, so people with useful knowledge have been attracted to and lent their knowledge/expertise to what started out as basically a bedroom/youth club music genre which advanced via that most trusty of methods - trial and error.

How's the rave scene for you lately? Where have you been spitting out and about?

We've had some really good turnouts this year - the Boiler Room set at the ICA London will live long in the memory and most recently we were at Birthdays in Dalston a few weeks ago for a live set which went off really well, and weirdly I'm booked for a thing somewhere in London next spring. I hope rave organizers aren't thinking that because they see me tweeting about waking up early for work at weekends that I'm not available for stage shows - you can definitely all still shout me!

I don't know if I've ever seen you live, thinking about it, and whilst I don't want to make the interview too personal I've know you sort of 5/6 odd years, so I guess that's just bad luck and there were times where I actually couldn't go raving. Do you enjoy being on stage?

I've always enjoyed showing what I can do in front of an assembled audience; way, way back in the mists of time when I attended church religiously (couldn't resist), I would always put my hand up to do scripture readings in front of the congregation. Mate, I was Joseph in the Xmas play at primary when we did Justin And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, frontline shit you know - I had a wardrobe malfunction with these trousers I had on that came down in front of basically the whole school. Still firmed it. Hold tight my dad, dived to the front and spared my blushes, but even then I don't remember being in floods of tears, or even any tears about it, and I'd definitely remember if I'd burst into tears that day. My day job basically involves loads of showing off in front of people, it's an integral part of my personality!

Most importantly we should talk about what you're working on at the moment, what's the latest?

I released an EP a few months back entitled I Don't Know (BUY HERE) which has been brilliantly well supported - as for what's happening now, just loads of sets with Nico, Lee, Darkos and Rocks, and other sets, and tracks fired out into the atmosphere at random . I'd like to do more live stuff going forward, and plans are being put in place to permit that to happen. Most importantly, I'm probably going to have booked or be booking onto a Level 3 tennis coaching course by the time this exchange goes public, so all good wishes from everyone for that endeavour will be appreciated!

I'm intrigued about "I Don't Know" and I'll start by asking about the message that accompanied it: "Essentially I see this as a celebration of the helplessness of the human being in solo form." Give us some expansion on that if you will, how and where specifically in the release is this personified?

When I said that particular sentence, I was trying to encourage people to understand that as humans we don't control the world as much as we'd like to think really, and to be relaxed rather than apprehensive about it. I'd like to think the helplessness theme weaves in and out of the whole body of work, from querying "why do I take this" on 'Just Another', to saying fuck it: there's nothing for it, let's all 'Freak Out'. Then asking myself what I'm here for and to do on 'Thinking Aloud' and finally with me stating on 'Let It Sink In' that it's sometimes okay to admit one's lack of knowledge.

There are few Grime releases that also have accompanying lyrics readily available to read, what was the reasoning behind you including them?

When I uploaded The Surgery EP to my Bandcamp page, I was emailed by a very kind and knowledgeable man called Andrew Dubber who basically said he wanted to feature it as EP of the week on the Bandcamp website, which at the time was and still is kind of a big deal to me. Part of the deal was that he wanted me to add my lyrics to the EP, the reasoning being that it would help listeners to connect with the tracks that little bit more, as well as adding a rigorous, professional look and feel to the release. If you look, there aren't any lyrics accompanying the tracks on Truth Hurts, which looking back is a bit of a shame. Anyway, going forward from that release I've adopted that policy of adding the lyrics to the tracks on my releases, mostly for the reasons above, but also because so much of my MC style relies on what I'm saying as opposed to how I'm saying it.

A Grand Don't Come For Free - why did you choose that track to be remixed?

Because it's a personal favourite of mine! It's what I would consider to be an "in-house job" as it were (Nico Lindsay produced the track, Sean D mixed and engineered it, both of whom I've known and worked with in music for years), but most importantly, I think the track's sole and central message is absolutely vital, and one which I know for a fact resonates with you - nothing worth having comes by chance or without charge. It seems to me that throughout the walks of life I've set foot on, I've encountered people who seem to think that they're owed something for nothing - getting that track remixed was, if anything, my little way of spreading the message that you've gotta work for what you get out here.

I think I'm right to assume People Power is your largest release to date and it's a year and a bit now since that came out. How was the initial reaction?

The initial response to People Power was so much better than I could have hoped for - I had people who'd bought the tape messaging me telling me they felt my sound was revolutionary, one person bought it for £50 which was unbelievable and generally speaking everyone that's spoken to me about that particular album has only had positive things to say. Given that I released it probably 3 years too late all truth told, and having come off the back of a split from the independent I was rather tenuously signed to (hence subsequent break from activity), it was really encouraging to see that there were still people who gave a shit about my music, to be perfectly honest.

I wrote a piece before on Grime as a music scene being very WWE-like to an extent, where the wrestlers chop and change on how "over" they were with fans, with the top "good-guys" being the most over i.e getting the most recognition. Was that reaction to People Power the most over you've been with Grime listeners? Excuse that analogy, but using a term like "adored" or "loved" really didn't appear fitting.

Hahahahaha! Over? What?! Never heard or seen it put that way - not even, I reckon the biggest sustained period of people loving me up noticeably more than usual was probably when I first went on Kiss FM with Nico, G Fam and some others in like 2011 and did well, because that was sort of my breakout performance for a lot of listeners at the time I guess. All that shit is weird anyway, it's like you say, with no dip in the quality of one's output one can go from hero to zero in a matter of hours nowadays, so really and truly I don't watch any of that too much, never have. I was basically one of the next big things in grime a few years back, and all the while I was fucking signing on with about few hundred quid to my name tops at any given time, so I know how much grime MC reputation means in the grand scheme of things. Fuck all or thereabouts.

Just touching on the career topic once more, finally, there are a lot of MCs who don't have careers aside from the mic, do you feel having one limits your opportunities in terms of how much time you get to promote your releases etc?

It probably does, but here's the rub - I need a way to pay my bills, and when the Conservatives came to power in 2010 - tenuous though it was, being as they had to share with the what are they called again? Miserable Neverlads isn't it? Led by that fella Prick Beg? Anyway when the Tories got in power in 2010, I sort of realised that this low/medium road thing I was dabbling in really wasn't going to be sustainable for me on its own after I lost the little part-time gig I had been doing at the time - and I also realised that that would be the end of easily getting the sort of little part-time gig I had been doing at the time too. I like to look at my situation the other way around - having the security (as long as I don't fuck myself up or get fucked up unwittingly or whatever) not just of employment, but of employment with a solid, rewarding career path, gives me the mental freedom to have fun with my music, which is when I'm 100% at my best. Dealing with pressure live on a set is a piece of piss when you're not coming to the set having had to deal with real pressure in your day to day, know what I mean.