Born - 08/10/1986 - Click image to enlarge
I first started writing lyrics' when I was about 12 or 13. What inspired me to put pen to paper was watching the older kids some of which were older brothers of my best friends. At the time they were mainly mixing old skool garage and drum and bass. A few of my friends got decks, bought a few beats and started to record mixtapes of themselves. I knew I wanted to be a mc so I went out and got my first mic from Slamin Vinyl in Kingston. That's when I started recording live sets, reading rhymes out of my note book while the Dj's battled it out with the decks.
At this point growing up, when it came to rapping and mixing it was either garage or drum and bass. We picked drum and bass and this is where it really began for me. I was writing lyrics' every other night, and then going round a mates after school to drop the new lyrics' on a set. We would have blends for hours and hours, and after every session we'd be left with butterflys, rewinding the tape to play it back.
Everyone among my crew was competitive to the fullest. Dj's clashed, spinning vinyl, making cuts and double dropping beats. Mc's/Rappers would go head to head firing their best bars and switching up flows to try and smack the Mc before them.
During School we would mark out a large square box, 4 mc's would be split into 2 teams. A Rapper would stand on each corner then each team would take turns to battle out accapella verses. The winning team is decided by the on looking crew.
When I turned 16 I felt people started to notice me and rate me as a good mc/lyricist. I got asked to do Pirate radio with mc Sense and my home Dj at the time Jackson. We agreed, went to the studio and tore up the set. After this we got a regular set on Face Fm and at around the same time Dj Zeka and Creative Minds got a regular set on Kurupt Fm. We formed a crew called D.S.J which included no less than 8 Dj's and 3/4 good Mc's. We made a little Reputation for ourselves and got invited to do other Radio Stations such as Subliminal, Freeze and World FM. We would travel all around London just to get our voices heard and our mixes played.
Then some of the crew started producing tunes. It started off as a craze nearly every member got themselves fruity loops and started stringing tracks together. One of my boy's called ‘Stopah’ reached out to me with a beat he had made. It was hip hop. I loved hip hop at the time and a lot of the American rappers such as Eminem and Snoop dogg were my role models. I studied the beat at home and practiced writing to it first but wasn't happy with what I had written so I didn't record the song.
Stopah followed up his first beat with 3 or 4 others and again I started writing to each of them. Now this is where I started to convert from drum and bass to hip hop. It begun with me getting hooked on online battle rap sites. It started off originally as just a way of getting feedback off my verses and upping my game by studying others. I got hooked because I enjoyed being able to write the battle lyrics rather than freestyling it. It really helped me understand how to structure my verse's better and also I learnt a lot about throwing punch lines. I would battle every night of the week and began to create a status on the net.
Stopah got given some software and equipment for his birthday which now meant we could record professionally. So I started focusing my time on Stopah's tunes and wrote and recorded 3 tracks. I still have the original CD from when I was 17 with all the tunes on and it. Around the time fruity loops blew Creative Minds jumped on the band wagon and also started producing. Creative is my brother from another mother so he told me as soon as he felt he had made something special. So after collage that day I went back to his heard his track and loved it. From then on we started writing and recording tunes together.
We showed some of our friends the tunes we were making and started networking. We found a good singer and started work on making our debut album. We had finished recording 7 or 8 songs when we decided it was time to step up our game before releasing an album. So Creative worked on his shit while I switched up mine. Around a year after that day we pressed up 200 hundred of our debut albums and pushed them out to everyone, including radio stations and magazines'. We got a lot of praise around our area and received tones of feedback.
The album "The Writings On The Curb" was huge "Love at First Sight" and "Day Dreams" were the two big singles. Creative and I became determined on making our dreams come true, so without hesitation we began work on the second. Around a year from that day we released "Put Your Life On The Tracks" the big singles are "Staying Alive", "Drink Up" and "Where You Going?" If you haven't got either album I suggest you buy both today through www.aim2breakrecords.com because both are Excellent.