9. Rebound X
I made a documentary in 2014 with a guy called Rollo Jackson which is on Vimeo now. I think we were going around together for about three months just filming, covering loads of stuff: he had me up on blocks like we used to do for radio putting up aerials, everything. It was proper mad to be honest. I mean back in the day I had the keys to get up there but now, well, there’s cameras up on every three floors, so if anyone got caught they would probably go jail. But I know people who still go up there for BASE jumping, which is just a mad one in itself. It’s really hard to get up there now, there are proper locks and that. Back then it was Gerda locks, these special German locks that were hard to get around. But I knew some firemen so I’d get the keys off them. And lift engineers, they could be good too. Back in the day some people would take the money we’d offer. To get that key it was worth a hundred quid, because that could be you set for years, no one could go up there and steal your rig so it was all set. Back when those keys came out there were skeleton ones called red-tops, there were master keys, those were hard to get. But anyway, we were doing this documentary and we went to that club XOYO in Shoreditch and I was playing for Jackmaster’s birthday bash. I played this tune and originally the version I played was owned by a few of the big DJs, really not many at all. I was playing it about a week after he made so it was like brand new at the time. But when I played this tune [at XOYO], and you will see if you watch the doc, you will see what it did to the rave.
I think there’s a short YouTube of me and Jackmaster interviewing each other. He bought me a load of Snapple or something. This was like ten years back now. I was really overweight there. I was on this medication that really mangled up my head, but I’ve lost weight since those days, I’m on the ball now. I mean I had a nervous breakdown back in 2004. I was doing so much, working all round the country. It all just got to me really; just things in general. Like, I can’t really tell you any more as I don’t know how to say it. I sort of gave up for ten years; I couldn’t hack it. Life was just too much. And then grime also went kind of down too. In those ten or so years I had kids and a family but my mind wasn’t with it, not really. I just felt like I wanted to sit down all the time. But around 2014, I wanted to force myself back into doing something. And that was the year that people like Stormzy were winning awards so that’s when grime come back around again. That’s when the CD decks, the Pioneers, come out that were really big as well. I went back on NTS Radio for my show and I felt it all coming back around.
