Flavor Mix #429 4/6 19h00

Diylan Mills alias Dizzee Rascal was brought up by his mother, a native of Ghana, in a poor neighbourhood of London. With only 15 years he attempted MCing on a pirate radio station in London. With friend and rapper Wiley he founded the Roll Deep Crew. They have developed the grime sound- a mixture of drum'n'bass, dancehall, 2step and hip hop. Three times Dizzee was excluded from school. On his fourth school, his music teacher showed him a music software whereby Dizzee created his first beats and tracks. His song "I Luv You“ which was about teenage-pregnancy helped him to get famous all over the UK in 2003.

Dizzee was honored with a "Mercury Music Prize“ for his first album "Boy In Da Corner“. With just 19 years he was the youngest prize winner ever. After releasing his second album "Showtime“ and first top-ten-success with the single "Stand Up Tall“ he created his own imprint Dirtee Stank.

In 2007 his third album „Maths and English“ was published, in autumn of 2009 the record "Tongue n’ Cheek“. All three single of this album has become huge hits, "Bonkers“ his collaboration with house producer Armand van Helden in particular.

During the early 90s Philippe Zdar and Blanc-Francart alias Boombass left their first marks in the French hip hop scene. They met in 1988, three years later Hubert hired Philippe as sound engineer to produce the first album of MC Solaar. In the following years there did a couple of productions with rap-artists from Paris.
 
After creating the downtempo-project "La Funk Mob“ they turned towards electronic music and started different projects e.g. as Motorbass with Etienne de Crécy.
 
Named as Cassius, Zdar and Boombass created their first house-track "Foxxy Lady“. The moderate success let them remixing tracks for acts such as Air and Daft Punk, before their debut album "1999“ named after the year of publishing, became a success.
 
Until now the duo is primary active as house and electro-act. Zdar and Boombass succeed the split between different genres- especially with electro and hip hop, shown by their collaborations with Pharrell Williams, Ghostface and others.

Not just since yesterday, it is well-known that these two Canadians talk the same language. JFK, with real name Jesse F. Keeler, and Al-P, originally Alex Puodziukas, are connected through a longtime friendship and have been working on several music projects together for years. JFK may still be familiar to some fans of the harder genre as the bassist of the band Death From Above 1979, for which Al-P already operated as a producer. Since 2005, the two are MSTRKRFT.

Everyone being interested in electronic music stumbles over MSTRKRFT sooner or later. Because there is one thing that these two DJs definitley master: remixing! The duo can exhibit a long list of remixes. Amongst them are popular names from different genres such as Bloc Party, Armand van Helden, Justice and Kylie Minogue. Until now, MSTRKRFT have also released two albums, including "Fist Of God" in 2009.

MSTRKRFT website: mstrkrft.com

The singer, originally from North Carolina, has been spotted in 1991 by Jodeci's DeVante Swing, who got Horace Brown a job as Christopher Williams's singer. Like this, Andre Harrell, at that time boss of Uptown Records, took notice of the singer and offered him a contract.

As a result, the already completed debut album was postponed. While other Uptown artists like Puff Daddy switched to Bad Boy, Brown stayed faithful to Andre Harrell, who became CEO at that time.

Horace Brown on MySpace: myspace.com/horacebrownmusic