7. Mista Sick96
This guy was my best mate growing up in Ireland. His uncle and sister had amazing record collections and were some of the biggest influences on my taste as a very young kid, from age 12 until I left Ireland at 17. And this guy was one of the biggest diggers of music I knew. Without him I don’t think I would have had my eyes opened up to a lot of amazing stuff like Crass and Bob Dylan and hip hop – he was bang into hip hop as a young lad, taping stuff off the radio. He actually did this record in 1998, even though it was called 96. I had this cassette, and we were touring with Lightning Glove a few years back: they were staying in my place in Islington Mill. I knew they were bang into hip hop and we were listening to stuff like DJ Screw. They said ‘what the fuck is this?’ They wanted to release it on their little label in the Czech Republic which is how the release came about. In this list I wanted to have some hip hop because I fucking love hip hop – everything from Public Enemy to Wu-Tang to mischievous gangster shit to J Dilla and The Alchemists, a lot of the UK hip hop – drill, trap, I love all of it! I love the Houston chopped and screwed stuff of the mid ‘90s and my mate took it all in as a young lad living in rural Ireland, using this really basic stuff to make this fucking amazing tape that really has the true spirit of hip hop in it. He made it when he was 17 or 18 and was listening to Screw’s stuff that he was managing to get on early internet radio and he was making this stuff with basic computer programs and shitty keyboards and it still stands; it still sounds fresh.
