This was originally featured on my Lager Time Substack blog, where you can both read it and have it as audio. You cal also subsribe and have it as an email, or in your podcast feed, or both
I’m not sure exactly where I was when I heard Skibadee Mcing, for the first time but I’m quite sure it was on the school bus, sat next to my mate, Graham, who lent me a copy, which I copied, of a DJ Brockie set; from a One Nation tape-pack. What I do know is, that it was on that tape, that I first heard Skibba and it stayed in my Walkman, for a very long time. I still have it somewhere and can still recite many of the MC’s lyrics on it. We all have a that tape – I’ve got two, this is the other one.
The year was 1998, I would’ve been about 14. The tape itself, was definitely from 98. That was the year that another legendary UK MC passed away, Stevie Hyper D. His name, along with ‘R I P’ was chanted a lot throughout that tape and a lot of the other DJ sets that were in that same tape-pack. It was pertinent, because from my point of view, and a lot of others, Skibadee went on take Stevie Hyper D’s crown, as the King of Drum and Bass MC’s and all-round UK MC legend.
For those that don’t know what, or who I’m talking about, that’s ok, I’ll try and explain but I’m not quite sure where to start. Perhaps yesterday (Sunday, 28.2.22) I saw online, whilst sat watching that new Kanye West documentary on Netflix, that Skibadee had passed away. I felt that pang in my chest and belly, took in a short breath and paused the telly. This, a week after another UK music stalwart (albeit, from a younger generation) Jamal Edwards, had also passed away.
This morning, I felt compelled to put some thoughts down, not quite sure why but I hope I’ll figure that out as this goes on. It will probably be a bit all over the place, as I’m going to try and link it to something else that I’ve been thinking about, which is something along the lines of; posting-things-on-social-media-as-a-form-of-expression- and-when-is-it-genuine? But I’ll deal with that, in a second post, I’ve got too much to say about Skibba and it’s probably more interesting.
But back to Skibba and that DJ Brockie tape. If you grew up in the 90’s, were from the UK, London or the surrounding counties and were tuned in to underground dance-music, chances are, you’d know about jungle / drum ‘n bass. Maybe you went to the raves, maybe like me, you had a mate and an older brother, who played you a tape, or a record, maybe you heard it blasting out of a souped-up Ford Escort XR3i, or maybe you were playing with the radio dial one day and you picked up one of the numerous pirate-stations that were broadcasting off London rooftops. And if you were nerdy, like I was and still am, you’d get obsessed and chances are you’d know that line of lineage, from Jungle to Drum and Bass - to UK Garage, to Grime, to Dubstep, to UK Rap to Drill, and the roots of that line from rave / hardcore, breakbeat, acid-house, techno, hip hop, bashment /dancehall /ragga / roots-reggae and dub. And you’d be proud of it. Too me, being a nerd is just an extension of passion, after all.
I loved Drum and Bass. I still do. I’ve talked about it a lot in my writing. I played the actual drums as a kid, so I love beats, big beats. When I first heard sped-up, chopped up, amen-breaks, I lost my shit. I soon learned that there was this whole scene, that came from London, just up the road from me, in Surrey and in it existed producers, DJ’s, promoters, pirate-radio stations, raves, flyers, tape-packs from said raves, record shops, record bags and clothes and of course, MC’s. It was sick. And it was from London.
But back to that tape, again, finally. When first hearing it, I didn’t yet know how it all worked. The raves, the pirate-stations and the setups, how the music was communicated, with the DJ’s and the MC’s and how they worked together. I had little or no exposure to that world. I knew hip hop and knew about house and techno, through my older siblings, amongst other sounds. But Hip hop was on TV, house and techno were on BBC Radio 1. I remember trying to exclaim to my brother, Will, that I’d heard this tape with all of these London MC’s on the records, that the DJ was playing. He had to explain to me, that the MC’s were live, on the mikes, at the event, hyping up the crowd and spitting their lyrics over the beats the DJ was playing. That was how it worked. Despite its similar DJ/MC lineage, 90’s hip hop and its era of wildly successful recording artists, making actual tracks in studios, were hardwired into me at this stage. I had no idea, I thought all those voices that I was hearing on the tape, were recorded on the records. I even thought Skibbas name was ‘Skipper-d’ for a good while.
The whole thing was exciting to me, for a number of reasons. A lot of the MC’s were rapping in the double-time style. Super-fast lyrics, that sounded like machine-guns. I love breakbeats and what there were doing, was making their voices into rhythmic instruments, like watching a drum solo from Buddy Rich, not just sitting in the background providing a beat. I often had no idea what they were saying but it sounded sick. Sometimes they were freestyling, I couldn’t believe that either, just making it up on the spot, like it was magic, they all seemed so talented. But they were doing it, over Drum and Bass beats, which I loved and they had London accents, often intermixed with Jamaican ragga styles. But that sounded far less alien, to this pasty kid from Surrey, than an American accent on a hip hop beat did; as much as I loved hip hop, of course, it was American.
Typically, on a DJ set from one of the big raves, like One Nation, if it was Drum and Bass, you’d have two or three MC’s, sometimes more, sometimes less. The raves would then produce the sought-after tape-packs that you could buy, with all the DJ sets recorded onto cassettes and they’d have these mad futuristic designs on the covers. That first tape from the One Nation 98 pack that I heard, if memory recalls correctly, had 5ivo, Shabba, Fearless, Moose and Skibbadee all MCing on it. Skibba wasn’t on it much but when I heard him, he really stood out. I assumed then, that he was like a young up-and-comer, so only got a little spot. Again, highlighting my lack of understanding about how those big rave events worked, he was all over the other tapes that I later heard, just not the Brockie one. I wanted to hear more of him, though. That little segment was enough to get me hooked. He came on, mid-set, with that lyric that included the words ‘when am I gonna get my dividend’ which is also where I first heard and later learned the meaning of that word; financial education from Skibadee – what was school for?
His staccato, double-time flow, sounded so cool to me. No one did it like him but we all tried. Go on, say that above sentence to yourself, rapidly, without pausing for breath and you’ll go someway to understanding why he was so effective as an all round MC .
‘when am I gonna get my dividend, I get my piece of the action’
His vocal tone, flow and energy, just sounded perfect. I’d rewind that bit, over and over, loving it when he cut in and rode the beat, like a horse to war, full of slickness and confidence. It was his bars and a few of Stevie Hyper D’s (someone else I’ve also written about) that I first tried to copy, when I decided I was going to be an MC.
Since I’ve been into it, Drum and Bass’s popularity has often fluctuated. At the time I first heard that tape, it wasn’t that popular anymore, it didn’t seem it anyway. Wide-boys at my school were listening to speed garage – maybe their elder siblings liked Jungle back in the early 90’s but it was seen as either too fast and aggressive, or just a bit mental. The music was definitely quite-dark, back then, when I first latched on to it.
Me and my brother Will, would go into the newsagents and scan through the big dance music magazines of the time, like DJ and Mixmag and see if there were any Drum and Bass features, it was slim pickings, they barley got a mention. I remember getting upset one day when Loaded magazine casually said it was ‘dead.’ How arrogant have you gotta be to say that? Regardless though, that music soldiered-on, along with its infrastructure of raves like One Nation, Helter Skelter and Droppin Science.
With the commercial success of UK Garage, came the rise of MC-led garage and the So Solid Crew era. Suddenly, UK MC’s were at the forefront, as rappers, on tracks and in videos, not just crowd hypers at the raves anymore. UK hip hop has always been around, as far as I can remember but it was very niche. At this point, Drum and Bass seemed to get more popular again, this time, with a lot more focus on the MC’s, so naturally, Skibba rose to the top. He even featured on a chart-topping Shy FX track that got playlisted on BBC Radio 1. I remember getting pissed-off when Chris Moyles played the record on his drivetime show and was doing bad impressions of Skibba. I felt like he had no idea who Skibadee was and had just disrespected an underground legend, who’d found commercial success.
This era also spawned a whole load of rudeboys, to want to pick up a mike and start MCing – when I first was in my early teens, everyone wanted to DJ, Mc’s were thin on the ground where I grew up. That all changed. Skibba was the one they always seemed to gravitate towards, trying to imitate his rapid double-time style. When am I gonna get my dividend. Everyone loved Skibba. But there’s only one Skibadee and a DJ set, with 7 rudeboys doing bad impressions of him, could easily be MC-overkill and ruin a DJ set and often a whole event; which it did, many times. Thus, the tables had turned somewhat, in the eternal conflict between DJ’s and MC’s but it turned off a lot of people, myself included.
I was heavily into Drum and Bass, for a long time but as I got into my early twenties, I gradually started to drift away from it. I’d been Mcing for a few years and had a few gigs under my belt but had gradually transitioned to focusing more on writing lyrics and trying to make tracks but not drum and bass tracks - hip hop, grime and whatever else; drum and bass was still very a much a club-based scene and I didn’t think I had what it took, to be the hyper-energetic rave MC. That and I got fed-up with moter-mouthed rudeboys trying to hustle the mike off me all the time.
I can’t pretend I’ve been this unwavering, hardcore Drum and Bass head. I haven’t. I still went to the occasional event but chances are it would be something like Rupture – which focused a lot more on the breakbeats and didn’t seem to attract the crowd that wanted the MC’s, spitting constantly over Jump Up beats. In some of those circles, it was almost frowned upon to like those MC’s, or the beats they typically rapped over. Even in an underground sub-genre, with sub-sub-genres, there was still elements of classism and cultural superiority. I certainty had traits of this but if I’m honest, I still loved a bit of Skibba and Shabba on a jump-up set. Every now and again, I’d blast an old tape with MC’s like Skibba spraying all over it. And with the advent of You Tube and the wider application of the internet in general, people were uploading all sorts of old DJ sets from raves and radio and records – so I’d go down these rabbit-holes and enjoy the lyrical-barrages of an MC Convention set, in the safety of my headphones and a few premium-strength lagers.
I work a lot with young people and I often ask them what music they listen too. Many will cite British-born rappers, in fact, these days they’re more likely to listen to British rap music, than they are American. It’s a huge turnaround from where it was, when I first got interested in all of this. I remember people smirking when I told them I liked UK hip hop. Those drum and bass MC’s, along with the UK Garage MC’s and of course the likes of So Solid Crew, Heartless Crew, Pay As You Go (as well as the UK Hip Hop guys Like London Posse, Blak Twang, Roots Manuva, Jehst and Skinnyman) made it a lot more acceptable for your average British kid, to listen to UK MC’s.
The wider acceptance of British underground dance and rap music, was helped massively with the advent of BBC 1Xtra and Channel U. Both national platforms, with a much bigger reach than anything before, where a wider audience could be cultivated and it was. These platforms allowed rappers to have legitimate careers and it sent Grime into the mainstream. I was always chuffed, when those stations showcased the Drum and Bass guys that came before; Skibba was often on 1xtra doing freestyles. And you’d often hear the first wave of successful Grime MC’s, who were getting major record deals, paying homage to Skibba, Shabba, Dett, Stevie Hyper et all, preserving the lineage.
Years later, with social media, I’d be able to occasionally check in with these guys. I followed SASASAS all those MC’s and DJ’s from my past and have regularly watched short video clips of all those guys, shutting down raves and festivals the world over, still going after all these years and as someone that still likes to rap and MC, fast approaching 40, it’s inspiring to me that they’re all still doing it, into their 40’s and 50’s even, and still headlining events. It was only on Saturday, that I looked at a picture of Shabba, Harry Shotta, DJ Phantasy and Skibadee, with the caption asking their fans what festivals they wanted to see them at this year.
With the current crop of Drill rappers, making their way in the music world, I don’t know if they know, from whence they came, in terms of the rap industry in the UK. It’s neither here nor there if they do, they’re doing their own thing and I respect it, as any new generation should - however, if they care to look – they’ll see Skibadee up there, as one of the great UK MC’s, who helped blaze a path for this whole British rapping thing to happen, and me, and countless others who grew up on the tape packs, pirate-radio and car-stereos and raves, will forever be indebted to his legacy.
I hope he’s up there, in his final resting place, going back-to-back with Stevie Hyper D, keeping the eternal rave-souls lively in the dance. Skibba dealt with the matter and dealt with it proper.
