3. WileyEskimo (Devil Mix)
Wiley and I go back to school days, Bow Boys days. He’s a year younger than me though. So yeah anyway, ‘Eskimo’ has that sample at the beginning from Toy Story and that kind of humming bass that just drops in. Wiley started doing all these bass mixes for radio where it’s not about beats, it’s just a fat bass that just goes through it. Wiley and Dizzee were spitting on it and I was playing out all these new tunes that no one really knew at about at the time. It was almost too advanced for people as they didn’t know what to expect. But it was sick you know; they were special times for us back then. I think that was 2002 or 2003. Definitely early days for everything. Back then I was setting up radio stuff every night. Getting on roofs and all of that. It seems mad now, but I was up there doing it all the time for years. Up on a roof with a bloody aerial. You had to find a studio, or a place you could use as one. Then actually put up the transmitter. It’s a lot to do but you can do it when you’re young as you’re fitter then. That was my gym, going on the roof every day. I mean I was a skinny kid in those days. Mostly radio was good, it was Rinse in its early days and I was meeting new people through that, new artists. This was all happening so quick that we didn’t realize just how much was actually happening. Just how much things were changing from the 2000s onwards. I got a gold record for working with Dizzee on Boy In Da Corner, then two years later I got the bloody ASBO! You had to laugh, I swear…
I’m talking about it like it was my job, but it was really a hobby that I was able to make a living through. I did have a job when was younger, briefly. I did one day, I think. It was at The Sun newspaper, stocking pallets in the warehouse and I’d done my back in after about eight hours. That was enough for me. I think I was about 15 or 16. I mean, with radio and everything that came out of it, it was never about the money. You do it for the love. It keeps you busy and keeps your mind off other stuff. You just want to be a really good DJ. When I first started playing out, someone called Lombardo, who was a promoter and DJ from Leicester, booked Pay As You Go Cartel and it was me, Plague and Major Ace, RIP. That was my first booking out of London, which was big for me at the time. After that we was all up and down the country, things went mad. But I remember that was the first ‘real’ gig for me. I was just happy I never had to go back to the warehouse to be honest.
