Arrogance Dialect - Album out 1st October

Who is Arrogance?

I m not arrogant, well not, particularly I could see why people would make that assumption. Its meant to be ironic. The name Arrogance came to me while I was recording a freestyle tape with my old rap crew. The name was a blessing after years of shit names that I wont disclose, my brother and sister still take the piss out of me to this day. I later added the name Dialect because it says a lot about me and my approach to lyricism. I am interested in anything to do language, I try to take something from everything I hear or read and use what I learn to convey my own lingo in what I write. When I write, my main objective is to be honest with myself and others by telling my story, Im not a thug, Im not a ghetto yout and I dont pretend nothing.

This is the story of my career as a MC from the beginning to the present day. Its quite a lot to read but its here if you are interested.

I started rapping when I was fourteen inspired by LL Cool Js track loungin. LL Cool J was my gateway into hip hop. After buying that single it became my hobby to collect music especially hip hop. I surrounded myself with all things hip hop, my early favorite artists where the Fugees, Biggie and of course LL Cool J.

I expanded my collection of music and my knowledge of hip hop with the aid of my old school friend Leon. Its easy to find someone that likes hip hop, but its much harder to find someone like Leon, someone that really knows what theyre talking about. The common interest I shared with Leon kept me fascinated with hip hop to this very day. Leon AKA Kaizen was the first person I made a track with, using my Soundlab CD player to loop EPMDs Symphony, a cheap Philips microphone and a cassette tape player we recorded one verse each. The track had no name, no chorus and it had a blatant break between our verses where I stopped the tape. Regardless of how poorly the track was constructed, it got me recruited into my first rap group.

A work friend Michael had told me that a rapper he knew had recently got a record deal, I was to find out within a month that the rapper had lied to him. I gave Michael my tape to play to the rapper, a week later Michael gave me the news that the rapper wanted to meet me. That weekend I met the Caniva clique Darragh (Hooded), Tom (Tee), Daniel (Roodx) and Paul (Griffin). A week later I met the rest of the clique, Anthony, (Twinky Blu Tac) and Steven (Stary Dayz). After being inducted into clique with welcome arms we had many memorable freestyle sessions. Mine and Leons approach to writing was mainly lyrical and punch line based, the Canivas focused more on their flow, our contrasting ideas helped us to grow as people and to become more rounded artists. The Caniva clique did the rounds on open mics at Kung fu, Funkin Pussy and other smaller hip hop nights. During my time with my new crew, Roodx got me interested in drum and bass and became a DJ.

The only regret I have over the time I spent with the Canivas was that I only recorded two tracks, although we all spent a lot of time together, we were not organised the way we should have been. After one of the best year of my life the members of Canivas all left London to go to their universities. Hooded went to Essex University, Tee and Twinky left for Manchester University, Roodx went Bristol University, Griffin went to Bournemouth University and Stary went to Nottingham University. I stayed in London to continue studying in my second year for my own degree at Middlesex University. This was a sad time for me. But though we were now all separated, Caniva had not disbanded.

Hooded had an old school friend, a rapper from another group The Apollos, which was my current music spa Nemesis. After getting into contact, we found out that we both had experience as DJs. Using Nemesiss link we were able to get a show on Itch FM, the Tuesday tune in show 10 to midnight. We later tried making tracks together. Nem would produce using my Korg sequencer which I had bought two years back and never learnt to use. It was hard at first finding common ground since our opinions on beats and rapping, although they met at points were very different. Despite our differences we managed to make two tracks Day after Day and Money power ego with the help of our friends who were starting a label. Both tracks got a moderate response on the radio. Nem started a music production course at college.

I managed to get hold of a copy of Reason and gave it to Nem. This helped us on our path to seeing eye to eye in terms of music. After wanting to try for a while, Nem got me started producing and thanks to having better software Nem started making better beats. We were able to record many tracks at Nems college. Things were looking very promising our new label managed to arrange Skinnyman featuring on one of our tracks. Around the same time some of the other members of Caniva where busy. Tee and Twink linked with another rapper (Bill Zoot) in Manchester and formed a new collective, the Random Acts. Stary would also visit Manchester to record with them. The Random acts is now part of a bigger collective named Mancan. This collective also includes DJ IQ, Big Deal, Apocalypse, (Kaspa) Bill Zoots rhyming spa from the duo called Unwritten Characters. Roodx carved out a name for himself as a drum and bass DJ in Bristol. I would visit on certain weekends and go back to back with him at performances.

After the feature, we were invited on tour with Skinnyman, appearing in Exeter, Swindon, Bristol, Brighton, Hull and Oxford. We also performed at Kings College, Ministry and Fabric in London. We now have the means to record at Nems Home studio and are currently putting the finishing touches on our first mixtape set to be released at the end of the year. Presently the future looks bright, most of us are young professionals, some of us are still at university and some of us are just getting started studying. Although Tee retired from rapping (replaced by Apocalypse) and Hooded is in Sweden now on the whole the extended family is more flexible to collaborate. Mine and Nemesis's first single change Your Heart is out with a mixtape to follow, The Random acts and the Mancan Clique just finished filming there first video for U and Roodx(Dexter) looks ready to heat up Bristol. If one of us makes it, we all make it.

Thats all you need to know, but if you would like to learn more send me a message and if I think its worth answering Ill get back to you. If you read this far, bless for taking the time and thanks in general to everyone for visiting the space. Feel free to comment on my music but please put any constructive criticism in a personal message.

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