You once cited how hard it is for a hip-hop DJ from the U.K. to get the same opportunities or respect that is given to hip-hop DJs in the states. How do you feel the perception of British tastemakers and DJs in hip-hop has changed?
I’ve had a blessed life. It has been a blessed journey, man, and an amazing experience. I think with the internet and everything, the role of the DJ is so changed now. We’re not the tastemaker, we’re not the person that brings you the new music. There’s no such thing as a world premiere. The consumer would get the music before us and be able to find what music he likes as opposed to what we’re saying is hot. I think the role of what we do now is just to reflect the soundtrack to people’s lives. So I’m just reflecting people and how they live their Saturday nights. So if you’re in the car going out to a club or going out with your boys or if you’re at the crib getting ready to go out, chilling, smoking, whatever you’re doing, what I’m doing is just providing you a soundtrack. Like when you go to a club, just getting turned up.
So that’s what I see my role as and I think through the likes of YouTube now, we can visualize and syndicate a lot of stuff that we do so it’s blessed that people in the states are seeing what we’re doing ’cause before when it was cassettes what used to happen was is on that school bus run on a Monday morning, people would be saying like, “Yo, who’s got the Westwood tape?” and swapping it with another tape of someone else and that’s how it used to work. But now you can just syndicate and get it out there for people to have if they want it and consume it, man. So I think it’s blessed that some of the shyt that we’ve done now can be experienced throughout, which is blessed, man. I mean, I’ve just been grateful to be part of this, I’ve been grateful to put in work. We’ve had some real moments, man, some real hip-hop moments, man.
You’ve been at the forefront of the U.K. hip-hop scene since day one. Who would you say makes up the Mount Rushmore of U.K. rappers?
I’ma be honest, going back in the day, there was a lot of wack U.K. rap and I’m just being really quite open about that and I wasn’t that great a sport of that early music. It was all doom and gloom, it was like… I mean, anyone can rap and anyone can dress like a hip-hop artist so it doesn’t make you any good. So everybody used to rap in American accents, everyone was rapping some miserable shyt, man, [while] we was up in the clubs celebrating life, man. There was some good cats out there in those early days. The London Posse were like some early cats in the game that had something good to say and then S.A.S., they set New York on fire, courtesy of Cipha Sounds. But what’s happened now is our own music came, this style called grime and instead of beats being 70 beats per minute, they’d be 140 beats per minute and no samples, just like a crazy, intense music.
And don’t get me wrong, grime is very much like punch you in the face music, man. It was like real out there, like, intense hard music and some great artists come through that. And the artists which dominate to this day through it, like Skepta, Stormzy and Jme, incredible. But then, what we’re seeing now is the rise of U.K. rap and that’s, like, these street guys making amazing music, man. And C Biz has definitely been the founder of that. He represents where he’s from, Peckham, intense, man. Peckham rides for that cat, man, and he’s made some of the biggest records out there. And then also in that, you now got all these new U.K. street crews coming out and these guys are like 67, Grizzy and MDot [who was murdered in April of 2016]. They’re representing they’re specific areas and they’re so connecting, man.
You could call it, like, U.K. drill music, but it’s the realness, man. It’s absolutely the realness of what they’re living and they’re telling their stories and their stories are the realness, man. And people are really buying into it, man. Especially young people; they can so really relate to their struggle, man. It’s all the street shyt, but it’s the most powerful music out there at the moment. So I think U.K. right now is on fire like never before. And we represent a lot of these guys. We do this thing called Crib Sessions. C Biz, he was banned from the radio, he was not allowed to come into the radio [station]. They thought he was too gangster to have in there and then he had some beef with one of the producers and he was banned. So what we did, we set it up in my crib where I live, where I keep my records and we got all of the equipment in there and now these artists come down and do freestyles, we do the occasional interview.
These artists are doing enormous numbers, getting millions of views from these Crib Sessions, literally millions. People are really, really feeling it, man, because it’s not the radio, it’s not no editorial restrictions, there’s no restrictions of swear words and the artists can come be themselves and get their drink on, get their smoke on, bring all the crews, all they mens and dem so they can get they shine and they can just win. And talking about U.K. artists which are dominating, I think the hottest cat now is some guy named J Hus but there’s also a dude named C Biz and it’s probably C Biz that is the hottest new guy on the street. He’s setting it on fire, man. You’d [also] have to claim Dizzee [Rascal], man. You’d have to put Dizzee in the history of. And you’d have to put another artist called Wiley in the history. They make really different music to what they started as, obviously. Dizzee makes music with Calvin Harris so he’s obviously big in that white scene, but Dizzee was definitely founding in it.
The 2000s saw names like Dizzee Rascal and Lady Sovereign exposed to the public, but they never seemed to be wholly embraced by the American rap fans compared to how artists like Skepta are now. Why do you think grime is finally beginning to catch on in a big way in the states after all of these years?
I think, maybe, and I can’t call it, but I think Skepta so positioned himself and went to the states a lot. I think Skepta’s cosigns, first with A$AP Mob, especially A$AP Rocky, and then his cosign [when] he was onstage at an awards show over here with Kanye and performed at the Kanye West, some private pull-up show. And then the love that Drake’s shown him, I think those cosigns by those major artists, especially Drake, has made people pay attention to what Skepta’s doing. And Skepta’s part of the crew Boy Better Know so people have looked at them and then from there, you’d see the likes of Stormzy, you’d see the likes of Section Boyz, Lethal Bizzle and so on. But I think, really, the heat’s come from Drake showing love, man, and that love is really powerful, man, and I think that’s why it’s resonated more in the states. But that’s only from me looking at it from the U.K.
N.O.R.E. once shouted you out on his classic posse cut, “Banned From TV,” which kind of exposed your name to a different kind of listener that may not have been familiar with your work beforehand. How did it feel to be vetted like that by one of the hardest artists in the game?
When that record came out, man, people up in The Tunnel used to think I was some out of state drug dealer that Noreaga was [dealing with]. Like I was the plug, I was the plug in Atlanta or Miami that he was coming to see [
laughs]. They didn’t realize I was a DJ, man, they thought I was the plug. That’s what they thought, man, ’cause in those days you couldn’t even research cats like you can now so yeah, people thought I was some plug up in Atlanta or Miami. Yeah, man.
That’s just love, man. He showed love, man. That was my theme music for many years. We used to work a club called The Temple, that was the equivalent of The Tunnel, but in North London. We was really shutting down shyt with that, man. That was love, that was real love.
What is your relationship with N.O.R.E. like today? Do you still keep in touch?
Yeah, [we’re] super cool. He came over with C-N-N the other day and everybody was getting high backstage, man, and he came to the crib and did a freestyle as well, man. I got nothing but love and respect. These veterans of the game, we wouldn’t be here where we are now without them, man, we gotta pay them homage. We’re probably living in the best era, I feel now. I think 2016 is the biggest era of hip-hop and it’s only gonna continue, but those veterans, man, that’s part of me. That’s all just part of this journey and I’ve got nothing but so much superthug love for those guys, man.
You’ve had a lot of interesting and humorous moments. Most recently it was having Rick Ross pay homage to pears, as well as your interview with Young Thug, which got a lot of feedback as well.
That was hilarious, man. That was a hilarious moment. I think with Rick Ross, man… I don’t know, I’ve met him so many times before, but that was just a moment where he was high, I was high [
laughs]. Also the one backstage with Young Thug, that was a big moment for me, man. That was real good.
Did you think those two interviews would generate as much buzz as they did?
Nah, man. They was just real casual throwaway things. To be honest, that pears stuff, we didn’t even see it until it became a meme and then it was a Vine. We put the interview up and we just left that out there as some funny interview shyt, but we didn’t see the Vine of it, the Vine came months later and that’s when the momentum came. And it’s definitely a signature thing for Ross, evidently. I went backstage with him, there’s people always leaving him pears, showing pear tattoos. It definitely became a massive moment, but at the time we didn’t see it as a moment. Even the Young Thug, which is just some crazy shyt, we didn’t know it was gonna become the moment that it became.
You’ve been known to consistently unload unreleased material from your vault of freestyles. How big is your archive and what made you compile them?
When I was up at Radio 1 for 19 years, as part of what we had to do, we had to record every show in case there were any complaints and stuff like that and we were recording them on DAT tape. So every time we had an artist on, we’d write down the name of the artist on the DAT tape. And what happened, we had these boxes and boxes and boxes of DAT tapes taking up the whole crib space, so we were like, “Yo, let’s throw away all of the DATs except the ones with artists on.” So we threw away thousands of regular show DATs and then all the ones with artists written on them, we kept. One of [the employee’s] jobs was to transfer those DATs onto a hard drive, so every day he would come in and he’d do that five days a week and it took him three and a half years to transfer all these DATs with artists’ names on them.
It’s all on one hard drive, believe it or not, on this massive 5 terabyte hard drive. So what he does, he just goes to the artist’s name and he just finds these things. So the other day he goes and finds a Jay Z freestyle. I couldn’t even remember we did, I couldn’t even remember this freestyle. And every Thursday for Throwback Thursday, he puts one on YouTube and I have no idea [what’s coming]. When I hear them again, I can remember the moment, but it’s not like I can say, “Oh yeah, let’s go grab this moment with Jay Z” or whoever from last week. I don’t remember these moments. It’s been so many blessed moments.
How much more unreleased stuff do you have left at this point and how long do you think it will last until you run out?
On the real, If we put one a week out, we might have another 10 years of it, man. It took him three and a half years [to transfer the DAT tapes], and every artist in those days would freestyle, so the archive is strong. I mean, Flex had an enormous archive, but nobody was pressing play and record, that was the thing. Whereas with me, I had to press play and record ’cause the station required it for complaints. So I was blessed to do that and I was blessed to keep them and now it’s all on the hard drive and we just roll ’em off once a week. I don’t even know what’s there, man. They went out one time live, 15 years ago, and that was so they’re really never heard before. I mean, people may have caught them on a cassette tape, but way past my lifetime, I reckon.
