One S.P on the DECKS – DJ One S.P –

As an Mc from the early generation, records have always been part of my craft and part of my life.
When i first discovered the world of vynil -and hip-hop music- , i was 16-17 years old, and it would change my life forever. My high school best friend – jay bosco – was the only person who owned turntables and collected records. Not only that, but he had a lot of hip-hop 12 inches of the likes of rakim and kool g rap whom i never heard about (i only knew mainstream music). And lucky for us, there was always music in jay’s house, as his parents used to both teach classical piano upstairs while we were practicing downstairs… (probably infulenced a lot jay on his productions that have a lot of piano loops and classical music instruments, lol !)

On the b- side of each 12 inches record, you could find remixes and/or instrumental tracks and at least one acapella. That’s how i learnt to freestyle and later on to write my first raps. using the instrumental tracks of my favourite mc’s and using the acapellas to scratch and do remixes. (i didn’t owned a turntable yet but i was there, in my friend’s basement , every day after school) .
So it was a somehow subliminal process to start buying second hand hip-hop records and then soul and funk and then , anything that could be used for samples (a few years later i joined my first crew, gueriya, and -the producer- was using an akai s 2000 sampler, so we were vynil hunting all the time !)

A vynil changed my life :

1996. in a recording studio in york. I was living in teeside at the time, doing an exchange year with Uni. and became friend with this crazy bunch of producers/dj’s/rappers from yorkshire and the north east of england. So i get asked to lay some vocals on a song called “international networks” on a new flesh for old track. I get on with my life and move back to France. A year later, I’m in a train station checking music magazine, and to my surprise, my friends got signed on big dada recordings (a section of ninja tune that later on signed roots manuva , and more recently in 2015, the scottish based hip hop band Young fathers) and the track we did together is out on their first ever release, electronic bombarments ! So my dream came true , I am on a vynil !! A few months later, A DJ/producer called jonny crawshaw , a.k.a dj red 6 (from york) heard the track and got a hold on me through newflesh to invite me to play in edinburgh at the original bongo club in newstreet. I came up with the crew (Jed 104, out of order and toastie taylor ) and he response from the crowd was incredible (no french mc has ever played in scotland at that time…)..the rest is history..

So , here it was, more than 10 years later , i had accumulated a fairly good number of records -old i knew- and i moved them over a few months, to my new home, edinburgh, scotland.
And naturally i was offered by my friend SHOW N PROVE , to start djeing with the realness crew , once a week at the medina club , and that was it, i’ve been djeing ever since ! Being an mc, i’ve always been around hip-hop dj’s
either on stage, in the studio or just at the crib, so they showed me all their tricks (like putting stickers on the record as markers for a scratch, or using toilet paper underneath the slipmat , so the 45’s won’t slip as much)
and it took me a little while to be confident enough to do my own events.

My favourite mix: mixing acapelas of rappers onto funk or soul tracks -really fun to do, and the tempo of funk for instance easily matches the tempo of mc’s flow –

And of course, expect me to play a lot of obscur underground music, and a lot of french hip-hop !

Filed by ONE S.P at October 29th, 2016 under