DJ Hype is one of the most influential drum and bass DJs in the world. His labels True Playaz and Ganja Records are known to every fan of the genre.
Alex began his DJ career in the early 1980s, when he was about 14 years old—long before rave became a mass phenomenon. He started out by taking part in the projects Shut Up And Dance and Heatwave Sound System. At first, Alex played a mixture of reggae, soul, hip-hop, house and garage. He then began taking part regularly in DJ competitions and quickly became popular. In 1989, Alex took first place in the European DMC DJ Championship. Hype is almost universally recognised as the best “scratcher” in jungle. “I learned to scratch before I learned to mix. I didn’t have a mixer, and the turntable didn’t have pitch, so I simply took up scratching—and quickly taught myself how to do it. Nobody showed me how it was done—I discovered scratching for myself.” Among those who influenced his technique, Hype names the hip-hop DJs Cheese, Jazzy Jeff, Aladdin, Pogo, as well as Max & Dave (who hosted a show on the station Kiss FM). Hype admired their skill, but at the same time was disappointed by the average technical level of DJs at the time. “I took part in competitions, but in reality they gave me almost nothing. I worked in a warehouse and listened to pirate radio stations all day. And loads of DJs were making huge amounts of money while barely being able to mix two beats. So I began taking all this seriously—I thought that most DJs were playing at an extremely low level.”
Like many other famous DJs, Alex spent some time playing on pirate radio. In August 1989, Alex’s friend Ricky Razors founded the pirate radio station Fantasy FM across the street from his home. That was where Alex began playing. At first he had no permanent alias (he most often called himself Doctor K), but one day Alex wore a T-shirt to a party with a huge logo reading HYPE across the chest. Without thinking twice, he took the word and, as is customary, added “DJ” in front of it. After six months of working with Fantasy FM, Alex was dismissed from his day job and became involved in the electronic music industry. This happened because a certain Peter Harris from Kickin’ Records would periodically call members of Shut Up and Dance and ask their opinion of one track or another. Eventually they got tired of this and “passed the buck” to Alex, suggesting that Harris hire him on a permanent basis. Hype was taken on at Kickin’ Records as an A&R manager. His job was to listen to huge quantities of music and select the tracks that should be released. That same year, 1989, Hype wrote his first compositions. “My first tracks are the ones best known to a broad audience—things like “Exorcist”, “The Bee”, “Champion Sound”, released jointly with Scientist and Kickdsquad… They all reached between 75th and 60th place in the national charts.” Ironically, “Exorcist” and “The Bee” were sold in huge quantities, but few people knew that Hype had been involved in creating them—the success was attributed exclusively to Scientist.
In mid-1991, Hype returned from a Japanese tour with Shut Up and Dance and parted ways with Kickin’ Records. After that, he moved from label to label for a long time, gaining experience and making new contacts. Hype worked with Mark Ryder at Strictly Underground Records, then with Chris Paul, owner of the club The Rocket. Together with the latter, Hype recorded and released several tracks, one of which climbed to number 25 in the charts. Hype then wrote “A Shot in the Dark”, released on the label Suburban Base Records and becoming a club hit.
By 1993, Hype had become a fairly well-known DJ and musician. Offers from clubs kept pouring in. From 1993 onwards, he played regularly at clubs such as World Dance, Desire and Helter Skelter. Hype first began playing abroad in 1991–1992. He travelled to Germany, Switzerland and Japan, finding jungle fans everywhere. In 1994 he was named DJ of the year (and in 1995, the best radio DJ).
At this point, Hype began to realise that, working with Suburban Base, he had to spend too much effort and time releasing each record. In 1994, he decided to establish his own label, Ganja Records. As it turned out, this was an exceptionally sound decision. “Actually, I hadn’t intended to turn Ganja into a label. Initially it was conceived as a side project, but then everything literally exploded! I didn’t want people to know it was my project, but somehow everyone found out anyway.” In 1996, Ganja Records released the album Still Smokin’ jointly with Frontline Records, the label of Hype’s friend DJ Pascal. The album achieved tremendous success, reaching number two in the national dance charts. Very little money was spent on the album’s technical processing—approximately one quarter of what went into promotion. Emboldened by this success, Hype continued working. The example of Ganja Records also influenced other independent companies, giving them optimism and confidence in themselves. And Ganja Records was offered contracts by three or four of the largest record companies at once, but they refused and continued working independently. It is worth mentioning that Hype encountered some difficulties marketing abroad, as certain authorities disapproved of using a marijuana leaf as a logo. However, such minor details could not affect the enormous success of Ganja Records.
In 1996, Hype founded the label True Playaz together with the DJs Zinc and Pascal. On this label, they released a series of albums under the name Ganja Kru. Zinc’s track “Super Sharp Shooter” became world-famous, rolling through the music industry like a blast wave. Many still consider it a key track in the history of drum and bass. The remix of the Fugees’ “Ready or Not” was equally successful. In Hype’s words: “Pascal is more of a musician than a DJ, although he mixes brilliantly too. I think he is greatly underrated; he deserves much more recognition, but Pascal himself is not trying to become a hugely famous DJ—for him, creating music is much more important. Zinc, like me, has always done both. We write music and then play it.”
In 1999, Hype released the album F**k the Millennium and a compilation on Mixmag Records. As for his favourite work, Hype admits: “Most of my favourite compositions go virtually unnoticed—in comparison with some other tracks, at least. The best tracks, in my opinion, that I released on Ganja Records are You Must Speak First and Tiger Style. You can also add Roll the Beat and the track Fever, a remix of the track Six Million Ways To Die (RAM Records) and Species from the compilation Fuck The Millennium.”
And, by way of a follow-up, some advice for aspiring DJs from Hype himself: “Over the last 4–5 years, I’ve noticed a trend that I personally don’t like very much—but it is nevertheless there. A new DJ can only succeed if they write music themselves, although that is not what being a DJ is really about. Everyone who is popular at the moment has released their own albums. But that only means they have a ‘name’ and fame. They are not necessarily good DJs. I know many DJs around the world with incredible technical skills, but if they do not release their own music, nobody will know about them. For example, over the last few years we have seen Roni Size, Bad Company, Ed Rush, Fierce and so on… They all brought their music to jungle, but not DJ technique. I’m not trying to put them down, but it is a shame that things are this way. I was lucky, because I am both a DJ and a music producer. That is who I have always been and always will be.”
Recommended listening
Tracks:
- DJ Hype & DJ Zinc – Peace, Love And Unity
- DJ Hype & the Scientist – Exorcist, The Bee
- DJ Hype – Shot in the Dark, Hello Lover (DJ Hype Remix), The Trooper, Roll the Beat, R.I.P (DJ Hype Remix), True Playaz Anthem
Albums:
- True Playaz – In the Mix (vol. 1, 2, 3)
- DJ Hype presents Ganja Kru
Author: Mickey Slim. Originally published by mixmag.ru.
