6. TNT
See that was DJ Trends, the guy Gifford Noel, who I knew. He died sadly, back in 2010. He did a tune called ‘2 Degrees’ back in the jungle days; that was seriously heavy too. But ‘Nissi’ was another Sidewinder classic. It even had my name in it. It was personal jump-up sort of tune. And when it come out it was on a red vinyl, which was a rare thing at the time too. This was early, like 2002, or 2003 or so. That was a garage-into-grime kind of tune. Great dark beats. It was a big tune in Ayia Napa actually, everyone knew it and it had a wicked intro, like a 16-bar intro but then it went into a different time. Napa was mad; I first went over in 1999 or 2000. Because I was in Pay As You Go Cartel at first and from 2001 I’d go for a few years running. I used to play for someone called George [Melas, ex-footballer and father of So Solid Crew’s A.M Sniper] at Gas Club. Some people had booked us for Gas Club but I was also booked solo for Sun City, another of the local clubs. There was a bit of friction between them and they didn’t ramp in those days; it was proper rivalry and they weren’t messing around. So this one time I remember going out there at Sun City playing for their guy and he paid the deposit but didn’t pay the balance. So to tell the truth I flew back home. The next year I was playing for Gas Club. It was a sick club. There’s a photo online I think of me, Target and Geeneus there. Loads of the Pay As You Go people. It was a really good vibe.
There was a club, Insomnia, it was an after party type thing and that ‘Nissi’ tune used to go off in there. I mean, it opened after 4am, and even the bouncers at the front used to scare people by saying ‘Ohhhh the Pay As You Go Cartel’ as if we were gonna kill everyone or something. I remember the bouncers being absolutely massive guys. Like properly huge people. It finished about 10, 11 the next morning. OG afterparty, right next to the KFC it was. You’d go straight in there after the club, then on to Insomnia. Like that one in Brixton that’s on the corner near the station. They’d also get the army down because you needed work permits to DJ. There were thousands of people around the door, bloody thousands of us taking over the country; people were making a mess all over and they didn’t like it. Do you remember those little red dot laser pens? When the army or the police, military police by the look of ‘em, turned up, the young boy on the door would laser the DJ which means you have to get off the decks and a Cypriot DJ would go on. It was a bit mad, basically. But I remember dropping ‘Nissi’ in that club and absolutely smashing it out. One of the best tunes in the early 2000s, for real.
