In the beginning...
I first picked up the mic when I was about 13 years old and would MC over Jungle at mates house parties. I'd go on the decks too but that was just a hobby. My main influences at the time were from listening to DJs like Brockie, Kenny Ken, Micky Finn and Nicky Blackmarket. My favourite MCs were The Ragga Twins and Stevie Hyper D (RIP) and the sets were from AWOL, Jungle Fever and Telepathy tapepacks
I'd get these from my local record shop which was called Suburban Base in Romford. I used to go there after school and at the weekend to buy vinyl and pick up flyers. A few years later House and Garage was the new thing and we'd swap tapes at school. The best sets were on Garage Nation and Sun City packs. A lot of pirate recordings from Kool and Mission FM were floating around too. By the time I looked old enough to get into clubs MCing was becoming more popular and given the chance we'd get on the mic and do our own little chats
Thus...
When I went to college I met a DJ called SJT who shared the same interests and we started going to raves at places like the Ally Pally and Brixton Academy and up West to venues like Gas Club when Heartless, Pay As U Go and So-Solid were getting big. I begun taking MCing more seriously and when my brother started putting on his own events he'd help us out and put our names on the flyers. Over a short space of time we built up a little name for ourselves and started getting booked by other promoters
In 2003 we formed our own crew; New Breed Ents. and over the next few years were booked to perform at bars and clubs including Corks, EQ, Hollywoods, Legends, Purple, RM1 and Secrets. We played Garage mainly and put on a few of our own events, as well as getting interviewed for a couple of magazines. I lost touch with a lot of my old schoolmates but when I bumped into some of them I found a couple were still DJing. We joined up together and got a slot on a local pirate called Shake FM. This helped us get a bit more attention and we ended up being asked to go on other stations like Temptation, Heat and Flava
Now...
Naturally when there's a lot of people involved in a group effort some are more hard-working than others. Eventually a lot of those involved in what we were doing became frustrated at their lack of opportunity and we decided to go our separate ways. I carried on doing things under the New Breed name to keep it going and have since built it all back up to quite a good level; recruiting some new members who are serious about sustaining a career in music and developing our business interests
To gain a bit more experience I also worked at a couple of labels to further my knowledge and understanding of how the industry works. After this I launched Hennessy Records and I've since brought in some talented acts which I hope to release for in the near future. One such artist is Monkey; an MC and Producer formerly of NASTY Crew and the Newham Generals. He was signed by Dizzee Rascal to Dirtee Stank, producing and featuring on their first track 'The Anthem' but left soon after due to personal reasons
Its All Bless
Alongside the labels I've also set up a distribution company to provide an outlet for other promising artists and producers to get their material released. It keeps me busy and to date our biggest achievement is having material played on commercial stations such as Kiss and 1Xtra. Not to mention getting a Top Ten in the UK Garage Chart with our first release for Nottingham based producer Snowman. We also exclusively distributed Swindle's highly acclaimed '140 Mixtape' featuring the likes of Bruza, Ghetto and Purple amongst others
Last year I opened up my own record shop too. I ran New Breed Records in Romford's Market Place area throughout 2007 before expanding online which now enables us to reach a much larger customer base from Birmingham to Manchester and even as far afield as Paris. I'm also developing a business plan for a charity that will provide children and teenagers in the local community with access to music instruments and technology and hopefully get them off the streets and involved in doing something both constructive and productive
