LSD Magazine - Issue 9 - Chasing Dragons

Residency. Sounds great – but unless you’re Carl Cox at Space, what it basically means is doing the warm up and the graveyard shift. So you’re doing all the worst slots – but then it’s training – that’s how I always looked at it. But you’re not allowed to play any of the big songs – there’s no stealing of big name, middle of the night thunder or you’re gonna get sacked, but at the same time you’re desperately trying to find a way to get people dancing to you and doing something fresh without getting in trouble. It’s a fine line. So this one night, Mark Ronson was on after me and after a couple My point is – all of this shit’s been happening of hours of dancefloor deadness, about 10 in hip hop for years. Nothing I’ve done is minutes before he came on, I suddenly found new. I think that for me it all just fell into myself with this full dancefloor. And it was at place as the technology came about, the time that point that I realised how critical those 10 seemed right and a whole bunch of things just minutes were – that was it – that was your organically came together. When I first started moment, so from then on I’d always try and having my stuff played on the radio – it was play a few sneaky massive records to get the somehow the right time. Had it been a couple vibe jumping. So I’d do something like take of years earlier – it may have been a different a big tune and change the acapella on it, so story – who knows. Annie Mac was doing while it had all the instant recognition and mash up mixes – so was some dude from XFM. vibe factor of a big tune, I’d changed it just But I arrived at the mash up primarily through enough to get away with it. doing the residency at Pacha.

So I’d be knocking out versions and edits into There was this tune by the D and D All Stars called 1, 2 Pass with everyone who had recorded in the D&D studio coming together on a beat. You had Doug E. Fresh, Fat Joe, Jeru the Damaja, KRS-One, Mad Lion, and Smif-NWessun. But on the B-side, you had this mad remix where the DJ had flipped the beats and so each rapper’s section of flow was riding the beat from their most famous tune. And then the DJ would switch it out the second their verse was done and drop what the next rapper was best known for under their bit.