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The London House Scene


Kuffir

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read this interview with Mark Radford and instantly thought of the conversation that took place at the start of the MOBO thread as well as others i've had in the past two years..

 

figured this would make for an interesting discussion as it's something we're all aware of so thought I'd put make a new topic and stick it in here rather than whatever

 

this is just an extract but touches on all the pertinent points from genre woes and mainstream ibiza, to the urban scene and goons, shuffling and the deep house squirrel, fire london to ministry of sound and much more

 

 

MR: I think the fact that I did something different and we created a new scene is why I’m getting away with it at 40 years old, but because no-one knew of me back them, I’m still new to them, so I’m still fresh and exciting as a DJ, because it is a new and exciting scene.

 

B: This is the thing I was trying to talk about before, it’s just so hard to nail this and express this, but, it’s the fact that house is new to a whole new generation, a demographic.

 

MR: Definitely.

 

B: I’m convinced of the fact that a lot of this stuff is blowing people’s minds, because they probably have never heard it before, not just like your type of house perhaps, but like big house clubs generally. I’m sure there has been house parties for different parts of London for all these years, but as you say, you know, there has definitely been a shift, the groups of people that went to them, so it’s new to them.

 

MR: Now we have got I think, we touched on this earlier, the same sort of people that when I was a kid and you was younger, we were going to jungle, the garage raves, them kind of people are now coming to our raves, people that were going to Helter Skelter in the midlands, they are going to the big house raves, so yeah, we have definitely got them, and when we did the first party initially I was very conscious of that because when we did Fire the year before, obviously it was a bit more mixed, a bit more sort of rougher, we kind of changed our promo tactic slightly, even thought the music was still exactly the same, we didn’t do any traffic boards, didn’t do no flyers, because Ministry don’t want that at all, you know Ministry is like the biggest brand in club land, so no posters, you can do flyers and CDs, but they don’t want to know about it, and I was a little bit dubious, I was thinking, how are we going to get people here? But it was just… 2,500 people in there. All younger outer London kids, no goons at all, no trouble, no-one in … don’t get me wrong, obviously the jungle went hand in hand with the smoking the weed and whatever in there, but these big clubs don’t want it no more, so there was none of that in there, it was just mad. So to know that now that is our crowd which probably if they would have come out raving two years ago they would have been into… I don’t know what they would have been into.

 

B: There wasn’t any.

 

MR: No.

 

B: That’s the thing, it makes me think though, that that crowd wants to have music they can escape to. Whereas before I think with the grime is a concert, or whatever, or at like So Solid v Pay As You Go on stage at Alexandra Palace and all these things, concerts stuff, it was more in your face, and suddenly there has been a shift and they say “no, we want to get lost in this shit”. Like they say, people say “don’t bother with that until we get our heads down, get lost in the music”. Like some form of escapism is the thing.

 

MR: It’s weird, now it’s gone back to the bottle of water culture, because it is just full of, even though we are still doing… it’s funny, because I had to say to Ministry “how do we do on with the bar?” they were like “we sell out, we kill it on the bar” but they were just drinking water. You know you have got a good mix, you have got the young kids that are just coming and just want to dance their hearts out, then you have got older people that are sort of like our generation that come and appreciate the music and want to have a drink. It is weird, it is just nice to see, it’s quite humbling, you know?

 

B: You’re talking about the shift of people as well, I wondered whether like, a couple of years ago, there were sort of various like, disagreements and so on, the sort of shuffling thing, when you look at that, those arguments that went on around shuffling and anti-shuffling, it felt to me like two different social groups blending suddenly?

 

MR: Yeah, definitely.

 

B: Like house purists versus new crowd? Can you describe what happened to people who weren’t aware…

 

MR: Well the whole shuffling thing, like I said, where I have come from has been predominantly mixed genre parties, a lot of black people, a lot of white people, then you had the other side of the fence, the house purists where it was all the trendy Italians, mainly white, so we started coming up, they are looking at us, must be thinking ‘we’re running at full steam’, the are just doing their little thing. You go to one of their parties it’s alright, you come to one of ours, people are losing their minds. So they were like, must have looked at it and thought ‘what are we going to do to stop this? Because once they get level with us…’ I always knew, I thought “once more people know about us, it is over for you lot, you can’t create the vibe that we create in our parties, end of, because you are too pretentious, you are too poncy”. I go in there, my main concern is to make people lose their minds.

 

B: And that pretentious posh thing is what totally puts me off about mainstream house. It’s so annoying.

 

MR: That’s what I’m speaking about.

 

B: The attitude like: “Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.”

 

MR: Exactly, it’s all been too pretentious, poncy. “You can’t dance like this” You can f- off. You can come wearing whatever you want, you can dance how you want, you can come from wherever you want, as long as when you come to that rave all you are doing is dancing and having a good time. So what they tried to do is say look, “these people are now bringing all these bad people to the rave with them. All these ghetto kids, all these young black kids, look what they are doing, look at how they are dancing.” But I’m like listen to what you are saying. I never got what the whole anti-shuffle campaign on Facebook, there was the guy called Deep House Crew on Twitter, I never got involved in any of it, I didn’t comment on none of it, then one day they attacked, they went after Adam, my mate Adam Cotier, started saying “look at this prick” and I was like “listen, that comes down now, because we’ve not ever retaliated with you lot.” We are just doing our own thing. If you don’t like it, don’t like it. Don’t start naming people. You can slate people for dancing all you want, but don’t start because-

 

B: Names is a big thing.

 

MR: That’s a big thing, don’t do it, because we will find you, yeah? You don’t do it. So, then I think in a way they helped us because people who must have been in it were thinking ‘why are these making such a big thing out of these lot?’ so then all that Kent outer London crowd that was going to their parties, started coming to ours, and as soon as they come they were like “what the f… have we been doing going to their bad rave for? They don’t play music like you!” So that whole thing went dead, they can’t, they couldn’t win. They tried to supress what we was doing, I used to look at them and think ‘what are you doing?’ For me, a lot of it stemmed from racial hatred.

 

B: The funny thing is though, like, it’s really dumb, because look where house music came from. Multicultural and like black people dancing and Chicago and New York.

 

MR: Exactly. They hadn’t got a clue what they were talking about. They were making out that it was theirs, and that no-one else was allowed to have a good time, some of the things they used to say, they would be like a girl shuffling like that, the comment “hope she gets raped by 10 black geezers in the corner and catches AIDs and dies” I’m like “what are you talking about?!” She is a young bird in a rave dancing, so what she dances differently to you. Every form of music has got it’s own dance. This was just a dance that everyone has adopted. OK so it can get annoyed when they are all dancing the same. But I’m like, ‘just let them do what they are doing.’ I think because we just ignored it and didn’t get into a battle with them, it just went away, they left us alone.

 

B: What do you make of the “#iGOTSHAPES” videos?

 

MR: It’s just kids having fun, isn’t it?

 

B: I think they are amazing, and I watch them as much as I can. I even sampled one of them on a track. But the funniest thing about them, is the fact that they had done it in these places that aren’t raves?

 

MR: Brilliant isn’t it?

 

B: In the middle of a park?

 

MR: So ironic.

 

B: There must be more comfortable places to dance, in a park in the rain… I really like them by the way.

 

MR: They are brilliant, like I said, all it is, is kids having fun and dancing, so how can that be wrong? I remember one, when it was all kicking off, the only statement I said is ‘all I am doing is playing music to people and making them dance, so how can that be wrong?’ Because they was giving off all this negative ish about me, it was like, don’t let Mark play in your club, he brings all the bad people, and I’m like “I don’t.” All I’m doing is playing music. Aquarium for example, we would go in on a Sunday night, it is one of the only raves I can say I have ever seen people dancing through the door. There was no come in and stand around. They would be in, straight away on the dance floor, there was no hanging around the edges looking at each other, the dance floor would be the busiest place first of all, then it would just spread to the edges. There was no attitude. There might have been so and so from that gang, or so and so from that gang in there, but they were just in there, doing what they are doing, and partying. But it was the outside people that were looking at it going “oh look, all the bad people are going there, let’s put all the badness on that and say how bad that is, oh yeah, he’s the DJ that’s there, let’s tell everyone he is bad, don’t book him”. I was just like what, it’s crazy. Then certain promoters were doing parties at certain clubs, and they were like, we really want to have you in the line up, but the club and the council said we can’t have you in the line up.

 

B: The council said it?

 

MR: Why? Because obviously you have to do the 696 forms.

 

B: I wondered about this. Did that start to affect you as well?

 

MR: Only if very very minutely, it affected me for a couple of bookings and I addressed it. Then it has gone away.

B: For people who don’t know about this, it’s a form you have to fill in that just describes who you are as a DJ and where you live, the type of music that you play, and presumably sometimes you have to say what your crowd, i.e. ‘is my crowd attracting black people?’ It sounds pretty racist…

 

MR: Very racist.

 

B: And if I’d have known sort of like, I haven’t seen it literally in the form, but I know people had to fill them in.

 

MR: One incident that happened in the very really early stages of me sort of blowing up but that is the only thing - touch wood - that has ever happened in any party I have ever been in, and that was years ago, so I had a little bit of problems at the time, but as long as you work with them, and you can’t be ignorant and be oblivious, you have to understand you are putting on a party or DJing in a public place where there can potentially be trouble if you are bringing the wrong people.

 

B: But generally these days you are not getting people telling you that you can’t be on line ups.

 

MR: No, no more.

 

B: That has always been my sort of problem with that form, is that the police are saying what music we can make, and that doesn’t feel right.

 

MR: I think what my problem was is that those people on the other side of the fence that were putting on their raves had saw us coming and started bad mouthing me to other clubs, they were like “don’t let him in here with his parties”. This was even well after that.

 

B: You must have really scared them.

 

MR: Crazy, isn’t it? I will support and represent, give everyone in the world respect if they are doing something good, but I don’t need to fear anyone or do anything. Everything I have always done, even when I used to run my satellite company, I would always want to promote from within and push people and help people, and I would never look at someone and think ‘you might get past me one day, because if I have helped you get’. There is strength in numbers at the end of the day, that is why I have looked at so many labels that have been like, no, no-one else is getting in, your not getting in, your not getting in, and one day these people are just going to go past you, and you are going to be like, damn, why didn’t I look after him? So if I can have 10 labels, helping everyone I can see that has got talent out I would do. But I just physically haven’t got the time to do it.

 

B: You’ve got to sleep sometime.

 

MR: That’s why I started Plus, it was just an outlet for the newer talent that I could see coming through.

 

B: I do a bit of this stuff with my record label, Keysound, and I try and explain to people how good mentoring feels, because people feel like you are giving to them, but actually they are giving to you as a person. So how does it feel for you to mentor people coming through?

 

MR: It’s the best feeling for me. Obviously DJing it’s the best ride in the world when you are in a club and people are going nuts, but when I play the tunes by a young kid, and then the young kid is next to me, and he sees what it does and the look on their faces I’m like, wow.

 

B: Do you get that thing when you play the first tune by a producer on Rinse, like what that means to people?

 

MR: Yeah. It’s weird, because it is me doing it, and because I’ve always been involved in the music, and because it’s something I have always wanted, but it has taken me so long to get here, I think I got a little bit detached away from how it feels for them, because it has not happened overnight for me, I’ve had to work at it, even when I hear other people playing my stuff, I’m like wow, someone else is playing one of my tunes, so for them that are just new to it, and haven’t had to graft the life out of it like I had to get there, I can’t even understand what that must feel like for someone, because they look at me, they tell me that I’m their favourite DJ, so they must be looking at me like I used to look at Randall, so if I was a kid, and Randall played one of my tunes on the radio, I think my head would have exploded, so I try and think about that one, and I’m like wow, for me to be able to give that to you, that’s an amazing feeling.

 

B: I remember when my first tune was played on Rinse, it was a pirate, it was a very good day and the first time I had my tune played in a club by somebody else, and they are special moments, and you will never get that first moment again. It is so good to give, and give it to loads of new producers who deserve it, and only do it if they are good enough, and you are sort of telling them. You have made it passed the threshold mate, keep going.

 

MR: But it’s weird though, everyone I work with and get involved with and I put the time and energy into, when they all meet each other, they are all like, everyone is so wicked, like there is so much unity and decent people that are involved in making music, there is no prima donnas, there are no people who think they are better, because if they are, they can go, I’m not interested. It’s not about that.

 

B: I find it doesn’t matter how good they are, I have dealt with some people who have some promising music, but they are so difficult to deal with it’s just not worth it.

 

MR: Definitely not.

 

B: Look mate, your not that good.

 

MR: Definitely not, it’s not worth the headache at all.

 

B: Dudes that want an advance on an album that’s like the size of your annual turnover and you will be like, ‘you are not that big. We are not that big!’ So, I wanted to read you something from an interview I did here at Rinse in 2007 with Super D and Geeneus and Soulja from the beginning of UK funky. So Geeneus says “it’s like a new sound that’s evolving”. Super D says “me, I’d just rather call it house.”, and Geeneus says “the only problem with you calling it house is the serious house people when you call the UK stuff ‘house,’ they won’t take you seriously because the big people in house are big already. But if you were the leader of a thing that has not got a name, you would be the biggest in that whole scene, but you can’t be the biggest in mainstream house, because they are already the biggest, no matter what you do you are not going to beat them”. So I wondered if that same moment now applies to you. You are the biggest guy in your scene that you have built that exists within house music as a whole. You are talking about where you want to take Audio Rehab. How do you do that, whether you want to keep this thing distinct enough from other house, but maybe that might limit how big it gets, or get bigger but then you are a small fish in their world.

 

MR: It is something that we’ve, as a label we have sat down and thought about, and I look at it and I go onto BeatPort who is a pain in the arse and I hate dealing with them, but it’s the one everyone goes to, and then I’m like right, where do we put… people say to me, that have never heard the music before - dubstep & drum & bass bods - they are like, ‘what’s it called?’

 

B: Does it have a name what you are doing?

 

MR: Who knows what can I call it? It’s house music. Yeah, but what’s genre is it, because it’s not deep, it’s not tech, it’s not minimal, so where can you put it, and for ages, since we started the label I was just, because everyone was just so caught up in yeah it’s deep house deep house, I was like right, because I know that is where people are going to look for it, we’ll put it in the deep house section. But now I’m like no, you can’t have a deep house section.

 

B: I mean, you know, even with the shades of house, it’s difficult to that.

 

MR: It’s not possible.

 

B: It’s not Naked Music. It’s not Prescription or…

 

MR: Exactly, that’s the problem. Promoters started pigeonholing it, trying to stereotype it, as everyone does, they wanted to name it. I’ve always been like, it’s not that though, you can’t call it that, the closest thing you could call it if there was a genre for it would be deeptech, but there isn’t, even that I don’t like, so…

 

B: Because there is deep house and techno and tech house.

 

MR: So now I’m just like, it’s just house music, because that’s all we can call it, so with regards to the label, I have just literally said to the label manager, I’ve said just deliver it as house, we can’t label it as nothing else, because we are getting pigeonholed and people that are making deep house are going to look at us and go “but you aren’t making deep house”. People that are making tech will go “but you aren’t making tech”, so unless they give us a page on BeatPort that says Audio Rehab, I have just got to call it house music.

 

B: So I wonder if something is happened on the internet where everything is accessible, it is harder to build different scenes, like the way that jungle and some of these things were kind of different, but I’ve been thinking about the idea of whether now its more about smaller labels and camps of people than actual scenes?

 

MR: Definitely.

 

B: So you could just say Audio Rehab, and people know what that means. Like people say Night Slugs, and they know what that means. Or Metalheadz

sound, you know what that means? You don’t need to call it deep, you just say ‘Audio Rehab.’

 

MR: That is what a lot of people are saying, it’s just Audio Rehab sound. That’s what I’ve… because I was so focused in the beginning, and everything had to have that sound, I think that is what has obviously given us that platform. It’s not something that you can just force upon people, they have got to like it and it has all got to grow organically, you know like Hot Creations, the Hot Creations sound.

 

B: Is that distinct from house? To me the stuff I have heard from them, I’m not an expert, to me it’s very ‘classic’ house style.

 

MR: Yeah, it is, but I can, I think because not a lot of people are doing it now, and Jamie has still got his own twist on it so you can tell straight away that’s it, I can, if it’s a Hot Creations tune.

 

B: But “Benediction” could have been made anytime in the last decade, it could have been Jamie Principle, it could have been that, it could have been some big warm, classic disco influenced...

 

MR: But I think they were the ones that brought the kind of discoey sound back to the forefront.

 

B: Or maybe it never went away, I don’t know? I know what you are saying. But that’s the problem. If you keep going out with Audio Rehab, eventually you are going to get into that world, right? You know, Pete Tong on a Friday night, Ibiza, and so, that is the interesting thing, how you go into that and still stay Audio Rehab?

 

MR: I’ll be honest with you, I’m not really too worried about what they are thinking or whether they play it. Obviously it would be nice of them to play my music, but I can see the power that it’s got and the momentum it’s gaining and the fact that everyone loves it so much that I don’t think I really need to worry too much about that. I would rather get to where we are getting off our own steam and being our own entity.

 

full interview

http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/mark-radford-interview.html

 

/

 

They will probably blame record labels, radio stations, sales, there is loads of things you can blame. Thats why the UK music industry is viewed as a joke cos even when we have something, we give it up and not just sme of it, usually all of it lol.

 

realness

 

/

 

house is picking up where grime left as being this generations garage

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They will probably blame record labels, radio stations, sales, there is loads of things you can blame. Thats why the UK music industry is viewed as a joke cos even when we have something, we give it up and not just sme of it, usually all of it lol.

 

realness

 

/

 

house is picking up where grime left as being this generations garage

 

Cant compare house now to our garage days.

Fully co-sign TF

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They will probably blame record labels, radio stations, sales, there is loads of things you can blame. Thats why the UK music industry is viewed as a joke cos even when we have something, we give it up and not just sme of it, usually all of it lol.

 

realness

 

/

 

house is picking up where grime left as being this generations garage

 

Cant compare house now to our garage days.

Fully co-sign TF

 

 

why bro

 

the london house scene, audiowhore, siesta, outbreak festival vauxhall thomas a beckett yadda yadda is one of d healthiest, most underground music scenes about

 

u may not be into it but anyone aged 18-30 has hit 1 of dese parties

 

only difference is it's not a shirt n shoes affair

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Yeah you are right maybe because I am not into it.

but garage in its prime > ________

It was a movement, culture, Producers were very influential.

 

 

the london house scene is just a bubble tbh, it will never touch garage on any level what so ever simply because it is nothing new. It is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things when it comes to house, even funky had more respect for its influence and innovation.

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Yeah you are right maybe because I am not into it.

but garage in its prime > ________

It was a movement, culture, Producers were very influential.

 

 

the london house scene is just a bubble tbh, it will never touch garage on any level what so ever. It is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things when it comes to house, even funky had more respect for its influence and innovation.

 

 

u dont even live in london bro

 

ignore this guy

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Yeah you are right maybe because I am not into it.

but garage in its prime > ________

It was a movement, culture, Producers were very influential.

 

 

the london house scene is just a bubble tbh, it will never touch garage on any level what so ever simply because it is nothing new. It is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things when it comes to house, even funky had more respect for its influence and innovation.

 

 

!!

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Yeah you are right maybe because I am not into it.

but garage in its prime > ________

It was a movement, culture, Producers were very influential.

 

 

the london house scene is just a bubble tbh, it will never touch garage on any level what so ever. It is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things when it comes to house, even funky had more respect for its influence and innovation.

 

 

u dont even live in london bro

 

ignore this guy

 

Regardless he spoke the real.

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But Kanya King and her team is too blame for this mess that is The MOBOs now lol.

 

She chased commericalism for the awards. She gave up their ownership/stakehold in what many of us think an awards show like The MOBOs should uphold.

 

They will probably blame record labels, radio stations, sales, there is loads of things you can blame. Thats why the UK music industry is viewed as a joke cos even when we have something, we give it up and not just sme of it, usually all of it lol.

 

Well the US scene is a joke as well then, because BET did exactly the same thing.

 

 

Explain...

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Yeah you are right maybe because I am not into it.

but garage in its prime > ________

It was a movement, culture, Producers were very influential.

 

 

the london house scene is just a bubble tbh, it will never touch garage on any level what so ever. It is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things when it comes to house, even funky had more respect for its influence and innovation.

 

 

u dont even live in london bro

 

ignore this guy

 

Regardless he spoke the real.

 

 

Id say that gives me a better view of its influence without any bias.

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Yeah you are right maybe because I am not into it.

but garage in its prime > ________

It was a movement, culture, Producers were very influential.

 

 

the london house scene is just a bubble tbh, it will never touch garage on any level what so ever. It is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things when it comes to house, even funky had more respect for its influence and innovation.

 

 

u dont even live in london bro

 

ignore this guy

 

Regardless he spoke the real.

 

 

Id say that gives me a better view of its influence without any bias.

 

 

you could say that, you could also say you're too detached to really appreciate what's going on

 

i've written at length about this subject elsewhere cbf to rehash so just a few basic points/question

 

whats the grand scheme of house got to do with it, funky and garage didnt start or effect any international scenes so why is house bein held to dat standard?

 

ima assume faze u meant u had more respect for funky innovation/influence, innovation certainly but influence where?

 

this house ting has already ran the same kinda timelength as funky which is probably half of garage, overly premature to write it off espesh when its showing no signs of slowin down

 

an i beg no1 bring up ayia napa aka londoners abroad

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The London house scene is definitely not the one that contains black people shuffling and all that trash. That's the "Black" house scene.

 

From time I know most man I've seen in black house raves would rather listen to Lance Morgan than Jamie Jones then I know they don't know shit.

 

The more black people I see in a house rave the worse I know it is.

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of course thats the house scene im on about why would i be tlkin bout mulletover, fuse and all that stuff that been established long time

 

id much rather listen to lance morgan playing uk productions than jamie jones n i guarantee i know more about house than u no offence

 

even naming jamie jones and lance morgan, two of the most populist djs in either scene says it all tbh

 

i love scala snm

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of course thats the house scene im on about why would i be tlkin bout mulletover, fuse and all that stuff that been established long time

 

id much rather listen to lance morgan playing uk productions than jamie jones n i guarantee i know more about house than u no offence

 

even naming jamie jones and lance morgan, two of the most populist djs in either scene says it all tbh

 

i love scala snm

 

Have a cookie:

 

871135_1.jpg

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The London house scene is definitely not the one that contains black people shuffling and all that trash. That's the "Black" house scene.

From time I know most man I've seen in black house raves would rather listen to Lance Morgan than Jamie Jones then I know they don't know sh*t.

The more black people I see in a house rave the worse I know it is.

Pretty sure you hated seeing blacks at garage raves back in the day too.

Probably downloaded DJ luck instrumentals only. The thought of mc nests voice on a track made your skin crawl.

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The London house scene is definitely not the one that contains black people shuffling and all that trash. That's the "Black" house scene.

From time I know most man I've seen in black house raves would rather listen to Lance Morgan than Jamie Jones then I know they don't know sh*t.

The more black people I see in a house rave the worse I know it is.

Pretty sure you hated seeing blacks at garage raves back in the day too.

Probably downloaded DJ luck instrumentals only. The thought of mc nests voice on a track made your skin crawl.

 

Hahahah

 

I quite enjoyed hearing MC Neat talking about how he didn't want "a fuss and fyderrr"

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no such thing as uk house tbh.

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